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 924 092 742 141 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924092742141 
 
A HISTOEY 
 
 COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
A HISTORY 
 
 COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 THE EAELIEST INDEPENDENCE OP THE COMMUNE 
 TO THE FALL OF THE REPUBLIC IN 1531. 
 
 T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the GIRLHOOD OF CATHERINE DE' MEDICI," "THE LIFE OP FJLIPPO STROZZI,' 
 *' PAUL THE PH.IAR AKD PAUL THE POPE," ETC. 
 
 IN FOUR VOLS. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 
 
 1865. 
 
 [The Eight of Translation reserved.^ 
 
LONDON : 
 BRADBURY AND KVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRlARS. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 The narrative oflfered to the reader in these volumes, 
 is the history of the future capital of Italy. It contains 
 also, as the writer hopes and believes, such an exposition 
 of the antecedents of the old Guelph community, as 
 sufficiently demonstrates the fitness of .this culmination of 
 the grand old city's fortunes, and the justification, apart 
 from any of the more pressing considerations of con- 
 temporary political expediency, of the preferment which 
 has been awarded to her. Despite all those faults and 
 shortcomings which marred the early destinies of Florence, 
 and which have been set forth in the following pages with 
 the severity of one wishing to utilize a warning, rather 
 than with the indulgence of one mainly anxious to direct 
 admiration to what was admirable,^ — despite aU this, many 
 of the thoughts and many of the feelings which have con- 
 tributed to the civilization of the world have gone forth 
 from Eiojence, And Italy has of course, in far larger 
 proportion, been similarly indebted to her. If the city 
 and community, which has contributed most towards 
 bringing Italy and its people to such a point of advance- 
 
Ti PREFACE. 
 
 ment as to make freedom and self-government a feasible 
 attempt for them, be deserving of being chosen as the 
 . leader and head of its new career, the claim of Florence 
 to the distinction must, I think, be conceded. If the 
 characteristics ineradicably implanted in the nature of a 
 people by the traditional thoughts of many generations 
 are of the highest importance in deciding the question, 
 •to which of all the very differing communities of the 
 country should belong the task and privilege of influencing 
 the social life of the others, in such sort as the capital of a 
 great kingdom influences the provinces of it, then surely 
 Florence must be the most wisely chosen capital of future 
 Italy. 
 
 Any attempt, however, to develop these conclusions, as 
 arising from the consideration of the history here off'ered to 
 the reader, as well as any setting forth of the numerous 
 other grounds on which the choice of Florence for the 
 definitive capital of Italy may be well believed to be the 
 wisest that could have been made, would be out of place 
 here. The latter belong to various classes of subjects 
 foreign to the proper business of this work; and the 
 deductions which lead to the former must be left to the 
 appreciation of the reader of it. 
 
 Assuredly, however, when the present writer began 
 collecting materials for this work, amid the bitter dis- 
 appointments and disillusions which in Italy, more than in 
 any other part of Europe, followed the awakened hopes of 
 1848, it was without the slightest shadow of an expectation 
 
PEEFACE. tii 
 
 that he would live to see the subject of his projected task 
 preferred to the greatness that has now in the fulness of 
 time come upon her. Men were working — as is mostly 
 the manner of human work — to, though not for this 
 end ; and they were wholly ignorant of the goal to which 
 their endeavours tended. Nor was there any revelation of 
 that goal till this work was composed almost in its 
 entirety. 
 
 With regard to the manner in which the proposed task 
 has been attempted, it may be as well to say a few words. 
 
 It has not been the writer's aim to produce such a 
 narrative as he would have endeavoured to write had he 
 been writing the story, even on an equally compressed 
 scale, of any period of our own history ; nor such a book 
 as would be accepted as a completely satisfactory story of 
 Florence by the Florentines. In either of these cases, it 
 would have been necessary to attempt a more exhaustive 
 narrative of events than the writer of the present work has 
 deemed desirable. He has endeavoured to make his 
 narrative a full narrative of that which has been narrated. 
 But much has been omitted which, though it would, if 
 appertaining to Enghsh history, be interesting to English- 
 men, and as belonging to Florentine story be interesting 
 to Florentines, has appeared to the writer more calculated 
 to confuse the reader's view of the great march and 
 development of the history, than to gratify his curiosity. 
 It has seemed to the writer especially necessary to pay 
 attention to this consideration in the case of Florentine 
 
 b 2 
 
PHEFACE. 
 
 history : for the abundance of historical material is such, 
 that, with regard to every portion of the Florentine 
 annals, except quite the earliest, it would still be possible 
 to compose a narrative almost as detailed and minute as 
 that furnished by the annual chroniclers of contemporary 
 history. But however interesting a history written on a 
 scale calculated to comprise all the information that has 
 been preserved respecting the past of Florence, may be to 
 the descendants of those who made that history, and to 
 the historical antiquarian, it is not such a history that an 
 Enghsh reader wants. The writer believes that what is 
 wanted is such an account of the old Florentine Common- 
 wealth as, while leaving many a fact untold, should leave 
 no link in the chain of causes and effects which produced 
 that political and social development, unmarked or unex- 
 plained ; — such an account as should not fail to leave the 
 reader informed of the full significance and proper place 
 in the story of all those names of persons and of places 
 which have become household words in every European 
 language ; and should place in a clear light the amount 
 and the nature of that which Florence has contributed to 
 the civilization and progress of Italy and of mankind. 
 
 How far the present history may have succeeded in 
 attaining these objects, it is, of course, for the reader to 
 judge. 
 
 It may be mentioned further, however, that the writer, 
 looking to the desirability of occupying his pages with that 
 which has not, as he ventures to believe, been as satis- 
 
. PEEFACIi. is 
 
 factorily offered to the Englisli reader already, lias abstained 
 from enlarging on one of the most pleasing and tempting 
 branches of his subject ; — the literary and artistic history 
 of the brilliant Medicean period. He is not indeed 
 disposed to admit, that that Medicean era comprised in 
 truth the high and palmy, state of Florentine literature or 
 art. And some remarks on this subject will be found in 
 their proper places in the course of this work. Whatever 
 that age may have been in respect of aesthetic culture, it 
 was unquestionably a period of political decadence ; and 
 it may well be questioned if such a time can be found to 
 have ever coincided, or can be expected ever to coincide, 
 with a period of high literary or artistic worth. But 
 however this may be, the literatuTe and art of the 
 Medicean age have been so amply and so brilliantly 
 treated in works which have long been favourites with the 
 public, and are in the hands of every one, that it has 
 seemed to the present writer that in going over the same 
 ground, he would not only be doing that which was 
 unneeded, but would risk doing it far less well than it 
 has been done already. The celebrated and universally 
 read works of Roscoe are admirable as literary and artistic 
 histories ; and, as guides to the literature and art of the 
 period in question, leave nothing to be desired by those 
 who are duly on their guard against the social and 
 political fallacies and errors with which they abound. 
 And the writer hopes that the readers of his own pages 
 will be so on their guard ; and will be in a position to 
 
X PKEFACE. 
 
 profit by Roscoe's splendid and brilliant pictures of the 
 Medicean era, without the danger of being led to accept 
 that rose-coloured brilhancy for more than it was worth. 
 
 There remains one more word to be said. The present 
 writer has in former years given to the public certain 
 episodes of Florentine history, the result of his many 
 years' reading on the subject. And as he found that he 
 was unable to say what had to be said on certain portions 
 of the latter days of the Commonwealth, better than he had 
 already said it, such passages of these former works — 
 mainly from a volume entitled " The Girlhood of Catherine 
 de' Medici" — as were to the purpose, have been incor- 
 porated in the present history. The remark applies, 
 however, only to a few pages. 
 
 Tloeence, 
 8th March, 1865. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Municipal civilization in Italy — Its capabilities — Eapid growth, of 
 Italian civilization — And its early decay — "What was the cause of 
 its decay ? — History of Florence specially fitted to furnish a reply 
 to this question — The completeness and splendour of the subject 
 — Duration of the Florentine Republic — The terms " Commune," 
 " Republic," " Commonwealth" — The latter preferred — Influences 
 that shaped the course of Italian mediseval history — 1st. The idea 
 of the Roman Empire — 2nd. The relationship between the Empire 
 and the Church — 3rd, The tendency to a municipal organization 
 inherited from the Roman civilization — Earliest notices of Florence 
 — Florentine petition to the Roman Senate recorded by Tacitus — 
 The historian Malispini — His prse-historic legends — Giovanni Til- 
 lani — His history — Dante's notice of the early legends — Catiline — 
 Attila — Charlemagne at Florence— The Countess Matilda— Slight- 
 ness of her connection with Florentine history — Modern specula- 
 tions on the history of Matilda— Father Tosti — Gregory VII. — 
 Infl.uenoe of Matilda on the rise of the Comuni .... 1 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 FEOM THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE COMMUNE, A.D. 1107, TO 
 THE BATTLE OF MONTAPERTI, A.D. 1360. 153 YEARS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Dante's good old times— Mixture of races in Florence— No Tuscan 
 nation existed in medieval Italy— Dante's description of the sim- 
 plicity of manners in old Florence- Yillani on the same subject— 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The first walls— The second walls— Population of Florence in early 
 times— Government of the city in the earliest period— Political 
 constitution— Expeditions of the Florentines against the feudal 
 nohles of surrounding country— Monte Orlando— Expedition against 
 Prato— The Emperor Henry IV.— Imperial Vicar at Sanminiato — 
 Vicar killed by the Florentines— Relations between Florence and 
 the Empire— "War between Pisa and Lucoa — Florentines guard 
 Pisa — Porphyry columns given by Pisa to Florence — Great fires in 
 Florence — Scantiness of early Florentine history— Pisan estimate 
 of Florence in the, twelfth century — Expedition against Monte 
 Boni — Buonaparte family — "War with the Counts Guidi — with 
 Arezzo — with Siena 29 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Feudal nobles come into the city — Retain the hope of recovering their 
 original position — Overbearing violence of the nobles — The Uberti 
 — Their locality in the city — Civil war between the nobles and the 
 citizens — Great conflagrations in the city — Disastrous floods — 
 Treaty with Lucoa — Capitulation with the Albert! — City nobles do 
 not support the territorial nobles — Expeditions against castles in 
 the Valdelsa — Foundation of Poggibonzi — Of CoUe — Frederick 
 Barbarossa in Italy — His dealings with Florence — Tuscan league 
 under the protection of the Pope — Florentine ambition — War with 
 Semifonte — Albert of Semifonte — Constitutions granted by feudal 
 nobles — Statute of Valdambra,— Remarks on this constitution, by 
 Professor Giudioi — These efibrts of the feudal nobles unsuccessful . 56 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Foreign Podesta elected — Extension of the territory of the city — Forces 
 
 against which Florence had to contend — Influence of the Papacy - 
 
 Public opinion — Civil dissension fatal to Florence — Sameness of 
 the underlying causes of the successive feuds — Why these quarrels 
 were fatal to Florence — The title of Podesta not a new one— Sig- 
 nificance of the regulation, that the Podesta, must be a foreigner 
 
 Policy of distrust — War with the Siena — Quarrel between Buon- 
 delmonte and other nobles— Origin of the dispute— The jilted bride 
 —Murder of Buondelmonte— Origin of the Guelph and Ghibelline 
 feud attributed to this quarrel — Not so in reality — What the 
 Ghibellines were — Real causes of the feud 84 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 Quarrel between Tloreiice and Pisa — Erroneously attributed to a 
 frivolous cause — Tlie Cardinal's lapdog — Florence endeavours to 
 avoid war — Florentine victory — War with. Pistoia — The carroccio 
 ^-Expedition against Siena — Intervention between Orvieto and 
 Perugia — Braggadocio spirit of the mediasval Communes — Solemn 
 treaty with Siena signed near Poggibonzi — Origin of the Order of 
 Servites— Paving of the streets in Florence — Ponte di Eubaconte 
 — The " Misericordia" — Its origin— Frederick II. — His character 
 ' — His conduct towards Florence — Movement among the Ghibel- 
 lines — Frederick obtains hostages from Florence — Civil war in the 
 city — The Guelphs driven out of the city — Funeral of Kustico 
 MarignoUe — Destruction of Guelph palaces — Tower of Ouarda- 
 morto — The Baptistery saved from destruction by Nicoola Pisano . 108 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Indestructibility of Italian parties — Mitigations of the misery of the 
 Guelph exiles — The GhibeUines attack Capraia — Guelph traitor^- 
 Ghibellines attack Montevarohi — Are defeated — Result of the de- 
 feat in Florence — Eising of the people — Popular constitution — 
 Demolition of the towers of the nobles — Tidings of the Emperor 
 Frederick's death — Peace made between the parties of the people — 
 Expedition against Pistoia — Ghibelline treason — GhibeUines driven 
 out of the city — Ubaldini chastised — Second expedition against 
 Pistoia — Assistance sent to Orvieto — GhibeUines restored to Arezzo 
 — Pisa attacks Lucca — Manfred, son of Frederick II.— Lucca, how 
 regarded by Florence — ^Pisan army defeated — ^Negotiations with 
 regard to Castel Mutrone — Aldobrandino Ottobuoni — Ghibelline 
 outrage — Prosperity of Florence — Ghibelline attempts to recover 
 their position in the city — Rising of the people — Destruction of the 
 Uberti palace — Execution of GhibeUines — The GhibeUines leave 
 the city — Their palaces destroyed — Abbot of Vallombrosa killed — 
 Florence under interdict — GhibeUines in Siena — They seek aid 
 from Manfred — Farinata degli Uberti — Florentines march against 
 Siena — GhibeUines send a second time to Manfred — The people of 
 Florence insist on fighting, against the advice of the nobles — Cece 
 de' Gherardini — Popular arrogance — Battle of Montaperti — Great 
 defeat of the Florentine army and the Guelphs — Montaperti still 
 remembered in Siena — Anecdotes — Effects of the defeat at Florence 129 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 FEOM THE BATTLE OF MONTAPEETI, A.D. 1260, TO THE BEGIN- 
 NING OF WAR WITH CASTRUCCIO CASTKACANE, A.D. 1380. 
 60 YEARS. 
 
 * 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Cousequences of the battle of Montaperti — Tlie Guelphs in exile — At 
 Lucca—" Lo Spedito "— Giordane da Anglona— Conte Guido Novello 
 — Meeting of the G-hibellines at Empoli — Farinata degli "Uberti 
 saves Florence — The Guelphs driven from Lucca — Their march 
 to Bologna — Their fortune there — At Modena — At Reggio — Cle- 
 ment IV. invites Charles of Anjou into Italy — His character — 
 Contrasted with Manfred — Guelph cavaliers presented to Charles 
 of Anjou — Battle of Benevento — Death of Manfred — Ghibelline 
 dismay in Florence — The Frati Gaudenti—The "Arti" — Arti 
 Maggiori — Peculiarity of the new constitution — Popolani grassi — 
 Popolo minuto — Guide Novello quits Florence — The city in the 
 hands of the people — Guelphs intrigue with Charles of Anjou — 
 Ghibellines leave the city — Charles made master of Florence — 
 Captains of the Guelph party — Expeditions against the Ghibelline 
 exiles — Gregory X. in Florence — Pacification of parties by him — 
 How the Guelphs observed it — Gregory X. passes through Florence 
 when under interdict — Interdict little regarded at Florence — Ex- 
 peditions against Ghibelline exiles — Nicholas V. sends a legate to 
 Florence— Fra Latino Frangipane — Pacification by him — Decay 
 of the Ghibelline party— Imperial Vicars in Tuscany— Disobedi- 
 ence to their commands — Change in the constitution of Florence — 
 " Priori "—" Arti Maggiori"— " Arti Minori"— " Gonfaloniere" 
 —Nobles allowed to be matriculated to the guilds — Festivities at 
 Florence Igg 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 "War between Genoa and Pisa— Pisan defeat at Meloria— Florence takes 
 the opportunity to attack Pisa — Ugolino della Gherardesca— 
 Eivalries in Pisa— The Archbishop Ruggeri— Ugolino reproved by 
 Marco Lombard!- Fall of Ugolino— His death in the Torre delta 
 Jisme— Feud between Guelph and Ghibelline extinct within Flo- 
 rence—Modification of the Ghibelline Party— Enrichment of the 
 commercial classes— Completion of the walls— io^^m of Or San 
 Miohele— Death of Charles of Anjou— Scarcity of food in Italy— 
 
CONTENTS. IV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prices — Charles II. of Anjou at Florence— Amerigo Nerbona in 
 Florence — "War with Arezzo — The Bishop Guglielmino — The forces 
 on either side — Guido BTovello — Departure of the army from Flo- 
 rence — The Casentino — Treason of the Bishop Guglielmino — Battle 
 of Campaldino — Yieri de' Cerchi — Corso Donati — Dante Alighieri 
 — Florentine victory — The Florentine army before Arezzo — Cost 
 of the war with Arezzo — Rejoicings in Florence .... 193 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The government of the Priori — Rise of the people to importance and 
 power — Giano deUa Bella — Ordini della Oiustizia — The object of 
 the code so called — Provisions contained in the "Ordini" — Dis- 
 franchisement of the nobles — First execution under the " Ordini" 
 — Complaints of the nobles — Conspiracy against Giano della Bella 
 — Defects of the "Ordini" — Popular insurrection — Giano is 
 banished — Prosperity coincident with great disturbances — Ancient 
 commerce less sensitive than modern — Character of the Florentine 
 merchants — Palazzo del Comune — Cathedral of Florence — Cimabue 
 — Giotto — Tuscan language — Dante — Guido Cavalcanti — Twelve 
 Florentine Ambassadors at Rome in 1300 — Saying of Boni- 
 face VIII 212 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Feud of the BiancM e Neri — Real motives of the quarrel — Origin of 
 the names Neri and BiancM — Chiefs of parties brought from 
 Pistoia to Florence — The Cerchi family — Vieri de' Cerchi — Con- 
 stituent parts of the Bianclii party — Guelphism in Florence — 
 Dante a member of the BiancM — Corso Donati — Popolani grassi — 
 Popolo minuto — Professions of the Neri — Private enmity between 
 Vieri de' Cerchi and Corso Donati — Causes of jealousy — The two 
 parties break out into open quarrel — Scene at a funeral — Scene 
 in the Piazza Trinita — Outrage by Simone Donati — Neri make 
 application to the Pope to interfere in Florence — Partisanship of 
 "■ Pope Boniface— His bankers, the Spini family — Nero Cambi — Vieri 
 de' Cerchi summoned to Rome — The Pope sends Cardinal Acqua- 
 sparta to Florence — Riot on the eve of St. John's-day — Chiefs of 
 both parties banished : Neri to Citta della Pieve : Bianchi to 
 Sarzana — Popular feeling strong against Cardinal Acquasparta — 
 He leaves Florence, pronouncing the interdict against the city — 
 The Bianchi return from Sarzana — Death of Guido Cavalcanti — 
 Neri send again to Pope Boniface — Dino Compagni — Dante goes 
 on a mission to Rome — Corso Donati also goes to Rome — They 
 plead against each other before the Pope — Boniface invites Charles 
 of Valois into Italy — He arrives near Rome, in September, 1301 . 234 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Incapacity of the BiancH— Elements of power in their hands— The 
 Bianohi not Ghibellines — Cowardice of the Cerchi— Soiatta de' 
 Canoellieri, Capitano— Charles of Valois sends a messenger to Elo- 
 rence— "II gran rifiuto" — Dante alluded to Vieri de' Cerchi — 
 Charles admitted to the city — The Guild of Bakers — The arrival 
 of Charles in Florence — His treachery — Tumult in the city — 
 Doubts and indecision of the Signory — Impotency of the govern- 
 ment — Summons of the people — Disregarded — Charles occupies the 
 Oltrarna quarter — Symptoms of anarchy — Corso Donati forces his 
 way into the city — Falsehood of Charles — Tocsin sounded — Por- 
 tents — Anarchy in the city for six days — Charles connives at it — 
 His rapacity — The Neri established in power — Cardinal Acqua- 
 sparta sent a second time to Florence — His attempts to reconcile the 
 two parties — Florence again placed under interdict — Ecclesiastical 
 censures disregarded by the Florentines — Bianchi banished — 
 Charles quits Florence 259 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 War with Pistoia — Ghibellinism out of Florence — Expeditions against 
 the Dbaldini — Evils of inviting foreign princes to intervene in the 
 affairs of the city — Temper of the populace — Courted by Corso 
 Donati — His character — Accusations against Dante — Anecdote of 
 Corso Donati — He liberates the prisoners in Florence — Scarcity in 
 1302-3 — Corso demands the revision of the accounts of the Signory 
 — Civil war in the city — Lawlessness of Florentine society — Bishop 
 heads the party of Corso — Preference of the Florentines for a 
 foreign to a native ruler — Street war — The Lucohese invited to 
 reduce the city to order — They do so — Anecdote of Ponciardo de' 
 Ponci — Benedict XI. sends the Cardinal Nicoolo da Prato to Flo- 
 rence — His policy at Florence — His endeavours to restore the 
 Bianchi to the city frustrated by trick — -The Cardinal goes to 
 Prato — Fails to pacify that city — Again pronounces the city under 
 interdict, and leaves it — Anecdote of a scenic representation on 
 the Arno — Feeling of parties in the city — Street broils — Second 
 mention of the Medici — Neri Abate fires the city — Bianchi foiled 
 in seizing the city — Neri endeavour to set aside the popular con- 
 stitution of the government — Twelve of the Neri summoned by the 
 Pope to Perugia — Plot of the Cardinal di Prato — The Bianchi 
 attempt to seize the city — Again foiled in their attempt — Robert 
 Duke of Calabria, general of the Tuscan forces — Siege of Pistoia 
 — Account of it by Dino Compagni — Duke of Calabria quits the 
 siege in obedience to the Pope — Pistoia taken — Expeditions against 
 Ghibelline castles — Effects of exile on the Bianohi — Consequences 
 
CONTENTS/ xvii 
 
 „ PAGE 
 
 ot the existence of fuorusciti—Konte Aoinigo taken— Cardinal 
 Napoleons Orsini makes war on Florence with a Ghibelline army 
 — Tricks the Morentines by a stratagem — Excommunicates Flo- 
 rence yet again — Florentines reply by taxing church property — 
 Monks of the Badia di Firenze resist— The convent sacked by the 
 people— The party thus acting against the Church were Guelphs . 280 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Diyisions in the Neri party — Suspicions excited by Corso Donati — His 
 marriage — Accusation against him — His condemnation-^He de- 
 fends himself against all the power of the city — He is overpowered 
 — His death — -Expedition against the Venetians — Against Arezzo 
 — Duke of Calabria in Florence — Is lodged by the Peruzzi — Festivi- 
 ties in Florence — Money present to the Duke — The Emperor Henry 
 of Luxembourg expected in Italy — Dante's views with respect to 
 the Emperor — His letters to the Emperor, and to the Florentines 
 — The Emperor's coming to Italy led to no lasting results — Betto 
 Brunellesohi' — His reply to the Emperor's ambassadors — Henry 
 crowned at Eome — His ambassadors robbed at La Lastra — Flo- 
 rence prepares for war with the Emperor — Sentence against Dante 
 — Pisa sends money to the Emperor — Murder of Betto Bnmel- 
 lesehi ; and funeral of Corso Donati — The Emperor approaches 
 Florence — Fails in attacking the city — Retires to San Casoiano — ■ 
 Goes thence to Poggibonzi — And thence to Pisa — Attempts, but 
 fails to take Castel Fiorentino — Encamps on the field of Monta- 
 perti — Is there taken iU — Goes to the Baths of Maoereto — Thence 
 to Buonconvento — Dies there — Results of his death — Suspicions of 
 poison 315 
 
 CHAPTER Till 
 
 Causes of the ill-success of the Florentine popular government — 
 Ghibellinism encouraged by the Emperor's presence — Lordship of 
 the city offered to Robert of Naples — Pisa hires troops and puts 
 them under the command of Ugucciono della Fagiuola — His cha- 
 racter — Peace between the Tuscan cities — Ugucoione will not ob- 
 serve the peace — He makes himself Lord of Lucca — Effect of this 
 on Florence — King Robert sends his brother Pietro Conte di Gravina 
 to Florence as General of the Armies of the Commonwealth — Cha- 
 racter of Pietro — Ugucoione prepares for war — The Valdievole — 
 Position of Monteoatini — The armies meet beneath that town — 
 King Robert sends another brother, the Prince of Taranto, to aid 
 the Florentines — Preparations for battle — Battle of Monteoatini — 
 Death of the Conte di Gravina— Defeat of the Florentines— How 
 Florence bore the blow — King Robert sends his brother- in-laiy 
 
lii COIfTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Beltramo del Bulzo to the Florentines— He is not well received— 
 The Signory fail to obtain another General from France, or 
 Germany— Creation of the "Bargello" Lando of Guhbio— His 
 atrocious tyranny— King Robert names Guido di Battifolla as his 
 Vicar— His character— Is iinable to check the abominations of the 
 BargeUo— They are at length put an end to by means of repre- 
 sentations to King Robert- The IntermineUi rise against Uguc- 
 cione in Lucca — Castruocio Castraoane — TJguccione loses both 
 Lucca and Pisa — Castracane made Lord of Lucca . . . 344 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 FROM THE BEGINiaNG OF THE WAE WITH CASTEUCCIO, A.D. 
 1380, TO THE CLOSE OP THE WAR WITH THE ROMAN 
 COURT AT THE DEATH OF GREGORY XI., A.D. 1378. 
 
 58 YEARS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Influence of Florence on the polities of Earope — Decrease of military 
 and increase of commercial aptitudes — Banking business of Flo- 
 rence — Peace from 1315 to 1320 — Italian Ghibellinism in the four- 
 teenth century — Florentine constitutional failures — Political divi- 
 sion of Italy — What the modern world owes to Florence — Influence 
 of the "fuorusciti" — Castruocio Castracane — Machiavelli's account 
 of him — Motive that induced Florence to take part in the wars 
 of Lombardy — Matteo Visconti — Incites Castruocio to make war 
 on Florence — Castruocio commences the campaign — Tariff questions 
 between Florence and Bologna — Philip of Valois in Italy — Death 
 of TJguccione della Fagiuola — Florentine demonstration against 
 Lucca — Florentines induce Spinetta Malispini to attack Castruocio 
 — He meets the Florentine army at Montevettolino — The Floren- 
 tine army falls back on Florence — Council of " popolani" created 
 for the management of the war — Mercenary troops hired — Death 
 of Dante— Notice of him by Yillani — Florence in alliance with the 
 Pope — Death of Matteo Yisconti — The Pope coins counterfeit florins 
 — Insurrection of Milan — Winter expedition of Castruocio in the 
 Pistoia mountains — Count Beltramo del Balzo general of the 
 Florentines — Valdarno ravaged by Castruocio — The people march 
 out of Florence to defend Prato from Castruocio — Florentine forces 
 pursue Castruocio into the Valdarno — Difference of opinion in the 
 Florentine camp — Referred to the senate — Florentine boys force 
 the decision of the senate — The nobles by treachery cause the 
 
CONTENTS. xix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 return of the army to Florence — Armed bandit exiles threaten 
 Florence — Treasons of the nobles — Failure of the means adopted to 
 keep down the nobles — Intrigues of Castruocio — He obtains posses- 
 sion of Pistoia — ^Political feeling in Florence — Raimondo di Cardona 
 arrives in Florence — His first exploits — Determination in Florence 
 to fight a pitched battle with Castruocio — Formal declaration of 
 war, 8th June, 1325 — Florentine forces — Castruocio refuses battle 
 before Pistoia — Dissensions in the Florentine camp — Azzo Visconti 
 joins Castrueoio — Battle of Altopasoio — Great Florentine defeat . 371 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Results of the defeat of Altopascio — Castruocio before Florence — Yal- 
 darno ravaged — Races run beneath the walls of Florence — Castrueoio 
 enters Lucca in triumph — ^Distress of Florence — Charles, Duke of 
 Calabria, made Lord of Florence— Piero di Narsi beheaded by 
 Castruocio in Pistoia — First appearance in Florence of Walter de 
 Brienne, Duke of Athens — Plan of Castrueoio to drown all Florence 
 by damming the Arno at Signa — Dulce of Calabria passes through 
 Siena — Arrives in Florence — His demands for money — For in- 
 creased power — The nobles support his demands — He pacifies the 
 people by withdrawing them — The Duke does nothing towards 
 repressing Castrueoio — The Emperor Louis the Bavarian comes 
 into Tuscany — Duke of Calabria quits Florence — Florentines take 
 Pistoia — Castruocio lays siege to Pistoia — Florentine army marches 
 to relieve the town — fails to do so — and marches into the Valdarno 
 — Castruocio takes Pistoia — Pisa offered by the inhabitants to the 
 Emperor — Castrueoio determined to hold Pisa by force against the 
 Emperor — The Florentines prepare for new struggles with Cas- 
 truocio — -The Emperor marches towards Florence — But is diverted 
 by a proposal of Peter of Aragon that he should first make him- 
 self master of Telamone — Florence saved by this delay from a 
 coalition against her of the Emperor and Castruocio — Death of 
 Castruocio 411 
 
HISTOEY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 Municipal civilization in Italy — Its capabilities — Eapid growth of Italian 
 civilization — And its early decay — -What was the cause of its decay ? — 
 History of Florence specially fitted to furnish a reply to this question 
 — The completeness and splendour of the subject — Duration of the 
 Florentine Republic — The terms " Commune," " Republic," " Com- 
 monwealth " — ^The latter preferred — Influences that shaped the course 
 of Italian mediaeval history — 1st. The idea of the Roman Empire — 2nd. 
 The relationship between the Empire and the Church — 3rd. The ten- 
 dency to a municipal organization inherited from the Roman civilization 
 — Earliest notices of Florence — Florentine petition to the Roman Senate 
 recorded by Tacitus — The historian Malispini — His prse-historic legends 
 — Giovanni Villani — His history — Dante's notice of the early legends 
 —Catiline — Attila — Charlemagne at Florence — The Countess Matilda — 
 Slightness of her connection with Florentine history — Modern specula- 
 tions on the history of Matilda — Father Tosti — Gregory VII, — Influ- 
 enoe of Matilda on the rise of the Comuni. 
 
 In every part of Europe the municipal element in modern 
 civilization has contributed an important portion to the 
 building up of the various social systems now existing 
 around us. But in Italy that element has entered far 
 more largely than elsewhere into the composite fabric of 
 society, as it there exists at the present day. The feudal 
 system, planted in Italy as elsewhere in Europe by the 
 Erankish conquerors, never throve, nor took kindly to the 
 
2 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLOE-EjSrCE. 
 
 soil, in which the roots of the old Eoman civilisation had 
 ineradicably spread their fibres. While to the north of the 
 Alps the ideas and principles of feudalism took possession 
 of the whole mass of social life with marvellous rapidity, 
 fashioning in their own likeness State and Church, town 
 and country, nobles and villains, in Italy they proved unable 
 to extirpate the older ideas, which remained imperishable, 
 after the bodily form of the social system that had gene- 
 rated them had long since perished ; and they quickly 
 dwindled and died out before the encroachments of a theory 
 of human society far richer in capabilities for social pro- 
 gress, feudalism died out, as of course we all know, 
 elsewhere also, destroyed by the same competing element 
 assisted by some other influences. But it did so northward 
 of the Alps very much more slowly. It possessed there 
 the entire social life of the people long enough, and com- 
 pletely enough, to tinge quite inefiaceably all their institu- 
 tions, all their thoughts, and all their customs. It was 
 not so in Italy. Italian feudalism never grew to its full 
 stature. Stunted from its birth, it perished in its infancy, 
 strangled by the municipal system : which forthwith took 
 possession of the national life, and succeeded in moulding 
 it in its own outward forms and inward spirit, strikingly 
 in contrast, both of them, with those of its vanquished 
 opponent. 
 
 Pew thinkers, probably, would be found to doubt, at 
 the present day, that the municipal system, as it was 
 developed in Italy, possesses capabilities of carrying social 
 life to a larger and higher degree of civilisation, and of 
 approaching more nearly to our present best ideal of it, 
 than the competing theory of organization. Still less can 
 it be doubted, that it is calculated to bring its good fruit 
 to maturity far more rapidly than feudahsm ever succeeded 
 in ripening the best results it was capable of producing. 
 The path on which Italy entered, on first emerging out of 
 
PREMATUEE ITALIAN DECREPITUDE, 3 
 
 the barbarism which followed the fall of the Roman 
 Empire, was then, to all appearance, calculated not only 
 to' lead its people far more quickly to a high degree of 
 beneficent social activity and civilization, than that on 
 which every other European nation started ; but to carry 
 them onwards further, and for a longer time in the same 
 favourable direction. 
 
 Yet although it very strikingly produced the first of these 
 results, it as remarkably failed to accomplish the latter. 
 Italy did, at the beginning of the race, outstrip the social 
 progress of every other nation. She reached what must 
 up to the present day be considered as the culminating 
 point of her civilization, while her competitors were still 
 struggling painfully, and with far smaller advancement, 
 among the impediments which beset the early stages of 
 their upward journey. But her brilliant career was a com- 
 paratively short one. The path, that seemed to promise 
 so much, came treacherously and suddenly to a most fatal 
 ending. When the other European nations were just 
 beginning to emerge from the comparative barbarism of 
 the earlier stages of their national existence, the palmy 
 days of Italy were well nigh over. When her sisters were 
 just entering on the adult portion of their lives, with such 
 more or less well founded hopes of a fruitful and progres- 
 sive future, as the peculiarities and character of each had 
 prepared for it, Italy was already decrepit. The favourite 
 in the great race, who had appeared to be so far ahead of 
 all the field, as to leave no possibility that she should be 
 overtaken, allowed every lagging outsider to pass her. She 
 rushed from the starting-post, and made all her running in 
 the first turn of the course. She knocked up, and was 
 nowhere during the remainder of the race ; — as far as it 
 has yet been run, let it be added. For it is not over ; and 
 there may be some even betting yet ! 
 
 But our present business is with the past. And it can- 
 
 B 2 
 
4 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 not be denied that the history of Italy up to the days of 
 the present generation has been that of one of those won- 
 derfully precocious children, whose extraordinarily early 
 and briUiant development seems to have necessarily involved 
 a proportionably early decay. 
 
 Now, of all the problems proposed by the history of 
 mankind for the instruction of politicians, and the interest 
 of philosophic students of social phenomena, there is none 
 more instructive, nor more interesting, than the question, 
 why this was the case. Why did the path of civilization, 
 on which Italy entered, and M'hich led her so far, and 
 seemed to promise well for carrying her so much farther, 
 come to so sudden an end ? What was the cause which 
 sapped all her energies, moral and intellectual, and left 
 her to premature decrepitude ? Was there some canker 
 at the root of her civilization, which from the beginning 
 destined it to an early death ? Was it that Italy, like 
 some vigorous tree, which puts forth its blossoms too early 
 in the spring, and is in consequence doomed to lose them 
 by some late frost, came to an early death, by reason of the 
 earliness of her civilization, in the raw spring-time which 
 followed the winter of barbarism ? Was she simply and 
 purely crushed, without fault of hers, by the wrongful 
 violence and superior brute force of outnumbering hordes 
 of comparatively barbarous neighbours ? Did a corrupting 
 material prosperity cause first her moral decadence, and 
 then, in necessary sequence, her material ruin ? She started, 
 as has been said, on a different road from the other nations, 
 and she arrived at premature decrepitude, while they were 
 yet in the vigour of youth. Are these two facts to be con- 
 nected together in the relation of cause and effect? Is 
 there some latent vice, some predisposing tendency to 
 decay and dissolution in the constitution of the municipal 
 form of social organization, by which the phenomena of the 
 case can be accounted for ? -i 
 
COMPLETENESS OF THE SUBJECT. 5 
 
 It seems to me that a satisfactoiy answer to these 
 inquiries will be the main object sought by an historical 
 student in his examination of the brightest periods of 
 Itahan history ; and further, that the history of Florence is 
 pre-eminently fitted to furnish the instruction required. 
 The conditions of the problem there present themselves in 
 the sharpest outline and completest perfection of develop- 
 ment. No finer specimen of the mediaeval " commune " 
 has ever existed. Nowhere did the municipal system 
 organise itself more vigorously, or develop its own special 
 fruits more freely, spontaneously, and thoroughly. No- 
 where have the good and great things, which that system 
 is calculated to produce, been seen in greater force 
 and abundance ; and nowhere was the collapse and 
 failure more signal than in that " most republican of all 
 republics." 
 
 No quality is wanting to the subject, which could con- 
 tribute to fit it completely and admirably for analytical 
 examination by inquirers into the laws which regulate 
 social systems and schemes of government. The action is 
 complete, and rounded off in its entireness with a degree 
 of finality rarely to be met with in human affairs. The 
 causes seen at work have produced their effects ; — not, of 
 course, their absolutely final effects ; for such finality is to 
 be found in no portion of the world's history ; — but they 
 have produced their results so completely, that the political 
 student may fairly consider the account to be closed, and ai 
 broad and most unmistakeable line to have been drawn 
 across the page, between the death of one social system^, 
 and the birth of another. 
 
 The smallness of the theatre too on which the action 
 has taken place, and the comparatively microscopic scale 
 of the organization to be examined, is also an advantageous 
 circumstance. The subject is not unwieldy. We can have 
 the whole of it conveniently beneath our eyes, and estimate 
 
6 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 all the more accurately the relationships of the various parts, 
 and the strength of the forces in operation. 
 
 But if the story I have undertaken to tell, be remark- 
 able for the completeness of the subject of study it presents 
 to the political inquirer, it is at least equally so for its 
 magnificence as an historical drama. It is, I think, no 
 exaggeration to say that the annals of mankind offer no 
 second story so brilliant, so varied, so rich in incident, so 
 full of action, so conversant with names, which have be- 
 come household words in every age and in every clime, 
 and so perfect in its epic completeness, as that of the 
 rise, progress, and fall of the Commonwealth of Florence. 
 Those, whose minds have been filled, and their imagina- 
 tions excited at the time of life when they were most 
 impressionable, by the story of the Athenian glory in arts 
 and arms, may be inclined perhaps to give the preference 
 to the glowing picture, in part, assuredly fancy-coloured, 
 of that brilliant episode in the annals of mankind. They 
 may assert, though not perhaps with such entire truth as 
 many persons will probably at first sight be inclined to 
 imagine, that the intellectual culture of Athens has left 
 deeper traces of its operation, and produced larger results 
 on the subsequent civihzation of mankind, than any of 
 the ideas, which have been contributed to the heritage of 
 humanity by the four centuries of Plorentine freedom, 
 and the great minds produced under its influence. The 
 question may at all events well be considered an open 
 one ; while it cannot but be felt, that the utterly different 
 constitution of society in the ancient Pagan and slave- 
 holding community removes it very much further away 
 from us, our sympathies, and our interests, than can ever 
 be the case with the national life of a people, the sharers 
 of our religion, and in a great degree the co-heirs of the 
 same fundamental elements of civilization. It must be re- 
 membered also, that notwithstanding all that has been so 
 
A HISTORY OF TOUR CENTURIES. 7 
 
 successfully done by a long series of scholars, critics, and 
 historians, the knowledge which it is possible for us to 
 attain of the real life and minds of Athens and the 
 Athenians is very vague, unsubstantial, and dim, com- 
 pared to that resulting from the matchless abundance of 
 Florentine history, and material for history, which places 
 the whole body of the old Florentine life before our eyes, 
 and enables us to comprehend each aim, each feeling, each 
 prejudice of every actor on the scene. 
 
 This history in its epic completeness is comprised within 
 a period of little more than four hundred years; — from 
 the beginning of the contests between the neighbouring 
 territorial nobles and the infant Commune, which thus 
 characteristically manifested its earliest consciousness of 
 life and strength, about the year 1107, to the fall of the 
 Republic in 1531. The latter unhappy date may of course 
 be stated with exact precision. The 5th of July in that 
 year was the ill-omened day on which Duke Alexander of 
 the Medici entered into conquered and prostrate Florence. 
 The former date, as may be easily understood, cannot be 
 named with equal certainty. An event may consummate 
 the death agony of a social system. The more composite 
 forces, which contributed to bring it into existence, work 
 rather after the unseen fashion of the forces of nature in 
 the production of the organic world. And the hour 
 when a new social organism may be said to have received' 
 the breath of life cannot with accuracy be discerned. 
 
 The new social organism, whose birth-time marks the 
 beginning of the period above mentioned was the Com- 
 mune of Florence ; — " II Comune di Firenze." And the 
 history, which it is proposed to relate in these volumes is 
 that of the Commune of Florence from its birth to its 
 death. Such was the title by which the social unit was 
 known to the members of it. And there are associations 
 of ideas connected with the more recently used term 
 
8 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 "Republic" injudiciously, as Italians say, adopted by 
 Sismondi, whicb make the original term the preferable 
 one. It is true that the idea suggested to the mind of a 
 thirteenth century Florentine citizen by the phrase " Res- 
 pubHca," was identical with that attached by him to his 
 own " Comune." For Brunetto Latini, Dante's master, 
 who died in 1294, in his translation of Sallust, renders 
 the Roman writer's "Respublica" by the phrase "II 
 Comune." But it is by no means true that every 
 Commune was repubhcan in its constitution, according 
 to our conception of the meaning of that word; which 
 was not commonly used in Italy, till classicism and clas- 
 sical phraseology were brought into vogue by the revival of 
 the ancient literature in the fifteenth century. 
 
 For these • reasons it has been regretted by Italian 
 students and patriots, that Sismondi, whose popular work 
 was for several years the main source of such acquaintance 
 with Italian history as was possessed by readers to the 
 north of the Alps, should have entitled his book the 
 History of the Italian Republics, instead of that of the 
 ItaHan Communes. But there is a thoroughly English 
 word, which seems to give accurately the sense of the old 
 Florentine phrase, and to convey satisfactorily to English 
 minds the very same concrete notion which the citizen of 
 Florence of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth cen- 
 turies attached to the well-loved title, " II Comune." In 
 Tuscany, at all events, if not perhaps with equal accuracy 
 in all other parts of Italy, "II Comune" may be well 
 translated, The Commonwealth. 
 
 And I have accordingly placed that word in the title- 
 page of these volumes, in which it is intended to give 
 the entire story from birth to death of the social unit so 
 named. 
 
 I have assigned the date, 1107, as about that of the 
 birth of the Florentine Commonwealth. It will be neces- 
 
CAUSES OF THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES. 9 
 
 sary, however, to say a few words' — and but a few — of the 
 previous history of Florence, and of the state of things, 
 which prepared the way for the rise of that form of social 
 life. 
 
 The destinies of Italy were directed to the issues and 
 fashioned into the shape they gradually assumed, during 
 the centuries which succeeded that chaos without form 
 and void, resulting from the breaking up of the Roman 
 Empire in the West, mainly by three influencing causes. 
 
 The first of these was the title of Roman Emperor, and 
 the idea of the Roman Empire, which had survived the 
 universal wreck, as ideas will survive, and had been be- 
 queathed to the nascent civilization by its deceased pre- 
 decessor. 
 
 The second was the new relationship towards each other 
 assumed by the Empire and the Church. 
 
 The third was the wonderfully indestructible tendency 
 towards a municipal form of organization, which the old 
 Roman civilization had so vigorously impressed on the 
 races governed by it, that it had become an instinctive 
 part of their hereditary nature ; and which powerfully 
 modified the materials subjected to the influences of the 
 other two recited causes. 
 
 And the mode of the operation of each of these three 
 causes was as follows : — 
 
 Firstly. The idea of a Roman Empire and a Roman 
 Emperor, bequeathed by the old to the new civilization, 
 encouraged and enabled a succession of foreign potentates 
 on the north of the Alps to aim at and partially accomplish 
 the realisation of that idea ; and to claim and obtain a 
 very considerable degree of submission to their authority 
 on the southern side of that great boundary line. It was 
 the prevailing notion that the existence of this Imperial 
 authority was the natural and Heaven-decreed constitution 
 of things. Men talked of " One God, one Emperor, and 
 
10 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 one Pope!" and felt as if the enunciation of the triad 
 thus devised, carried with it not only an argument in 
 favour of the vrhole, but an entire conviction of the ne- 
 cessity of each of its terms to the due stability and 
 acknowledgment of the other two. It seemed to the 
 simple-minded holders of this triangular formula, that the 
 chipping off of either apex would cause the entire symbol 
 to fall to ruin, after the manner of those crystals which fly 
 to pieces if mutilated in any part. And it was not to be 
 expected that they should perceive that their broken 
 symbol might be split into any number of equally well- 
 fancied triads ; even as the disintegrated crystal is crushed 
 but to repeat the original form in every fragment. We 
 have hardly yet earned the right to smile too scornfully at 
 such foundations of popular opinions, or to find it very 
 difficult to believe that the. notion, which thus made part 
 of the intellectual atmosphere breathed from the cradle 
 upwards by those generations, availed more probably than 
 all the Imperial forces that ever crossed the Alps in sup- 
 porting the Imperial claims in Italy. But for all that, the 
 success with which the Emperors asserted these claims to 
 authority in Italy was but partial, and especially fitful. 
 Those claims were recognised theoretically to a far greater 
 degree than they were submitted to practically. An erro- 
 neous idea of the social condition of those centuries from 
 the fifth to the twelfth is very frequently formed by those 
 who do not make a sufficient allowance for the discre- 
 pancies that existed between the theories and the practice 
 of those ages in every department of life. It is a slow 
 business in every social system to bring them into some 
 tolerable degree of accordance. And the disaccord be- 
 tween them in that spring-time of a society in its salad 
 days was greater than is generally borne in mind by 
 students, who forget that the theories then accepted are 
 easily read in the legislation and official documents of all 
 
IMPERIAL DELEGATES. 11 
 
 kinds belonging to the period, while the realities of their 
 practice have to be gleaned and inferred with far greater 
 difficulty from the much more meagre and less certain 
 record of men's deeds. 
 
 But of all the accepted social theories of the time, this 
 one of the Imperial authority in Italy was sure especially 
 to fail in practical application. Those Frankish and Ger- 
 man potentates were attempting an essentially impossible 
 thing. At a period and in a social condition, when the 
 successful exercise of authority necessarily depended on 
 the personal qualities of him who claimed to wield it, they 
 sought to rule by deputing their power to others. The 
 extent of tlie empire claimed made it impossible for them 
 to do otherwise. But the social elements of which it con- 
 sisted made it equally impossible for such a scheme to 
 succeed. If the hands to which this vainly-deputed power 
 was entrusted were weak, it was wrested out of their 
 grasp. If they were strong enough to hold it, they held it 
 for themselves. Whether Count, Marquis, Vicar Imperial, 
 Bishop, Lieutenant, or Podest^, the result was always the 
 same. Yet the theory of the Imperial supremacy was 
 always operative to a certain degree. And from time to 
 time, when circumstances were favourable, — when the 
 usually distant and unseen Caesar appeared in the flesh on 
 the Italian horizon, or when some competitor for power 
 found it convenient to strengthen himself against a rival 
 by a temporary fidelity to the Imperial ideal, — then the 
 theory became for awhile a practical reality. 
 
 It is a difficult, intricate, and, for the most part, thank- 
 less task to trace the ever-changing ebbings and flowings 
 of the Imperial authority in the different provinces and 
 cities of Italy. But the general result of this state of 
 things, which is all that is important to our present pur- 
 pose, may be easily stated and understood. It was, that 
 the continual state of uncertainty and fluctuation, in which 
 
12 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 the elements of society were held in Italy by this ever- 
 varying struggle between the theoretical supremacy of the 
 Emperor and the practical independence of his variously- 
 entitled agents, was singularly favourable to the gradual 
 formation of a new power, which could hardly have found 
 the means of growing and strengthening itself and sv/elling 
 into influence and importance, as it did, under any other 
 conceivable circumstances. It was to the state of fluidity, 
 as it were, in' which the social elements were held by the 
 theoretical admission and practical disregard of the Impe- 
 rial authority that it was due, that the towns had time 
 and opportunity to grow into independent and self-sus- 
 tained political bodies ; and although that old siiperstition 
 of the " Holy Roman Empire " has, with strange vitaUty, 
 survived, not altogether uninflueritially, even to the days 
 of men still living, that earliest effect of its operation, 
 which has been described above, has been, I think, 
 the most important result that has flowed from it to 
 Italy. 
 
 The second of the influences named as having con- 
 tributed largely towards shaping the destinies of the new 
 social system, evolving itself out of the chaos that followed 
 the fall of the Empire of the West, was the new relation- 
 ship assumed towards each other by the new Empire and 
 the Church. 
 
 That this relationship, from having been amicable as 
 long as the infant Church needed the protection of the 
 Imperial power, became hostile to an internecine degree of 
 bitterness, when the Church, grown strong, aspired -.to 
 gather all power into its own hands, is sufficiently well 
 known to every reader. We shall find -this quarrel, in 
 the subsequent stages of its long course, very actively in- 
 fluencing the domestic afi'airs of Florence during a large 
 and most interesting period of its history. But our pre- 
 sent business is merely to note how the first outbreak of 
 
THE CHUECH AND THE EMPIRE. 13 
 
 these enmities — from the middle of the eleventh to the 
 middle of the twelfth century — contributed to prepare the 
 way for the social system which, about that period, pre- 
 cipitated itself in solid form from the chaotic fluid in 
 which all the social elements had been held in solution by 
 the electric forces of that thunder-storm from the north 
 which had fused them. 
 
 It could not but be, that the Church and the Empire 
 should come to conflict. The doctrines held by the former 
 made it absolutely impossible that the two powers should 
 for long continue side by side in amity. No authority in 
 this world ever based its claims to the submission of man- 
 kind on so logical a theory as the Roman Catholic Church. 
 Admit its first fundamental postulates, and fully all that 
 any Pontiif ever claimed, must, if men M^ould act logically, 
 be granted. If it be indeed true, that a priesthood is in 
 possession of exclusive access to infallible truth respecting 
 the paramount objects and interests of man's sojourn on 
 earth, a very short series of syllogisms, starting from this 
 premiss, must lead to the inevitable conclusion that a pure 
 theocracy is the best and only reasonable form of govern- 
 ment. Men did admit universally and unreservedly the 
 postulate, and were ready to go great lengths towards 
 accepting the conclusion. Partially, fitfully, and unreason- 
 ingly men did accept it, monarchs as well as their subjects. 
 But they were not sufficiently logical, or sufficiently prac- 
 tical believers in their principles, to act up to them 
 thoroughly and consistently. And this inconsistency not 
 only contributed to keep the elements of Society in that 
 state of uncertainty and fluidity which has been described 
 as favourable to the rise of the Communes, but by setting 
 enmity between the two powers already in possession of 
 the field, provided that invaluable opportunity for the birth 
 of a third, which such contests always afford. Had there 
 been amity and alliance between those two powers — had 
 
14 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 the Church of those days contented itself, as we have seen 
 it content itself in later generations, with simoniacally 
 truckling its logical pretensions for the Imperial support 
 of its power over the people ; or had the Emperor bowed 
 sufficiently lowly and sufficiently perseveringly before 
 Gregory VII. and his successors to secure the patronage 
 and benediction of the Church, the fashioning of the new 
 social system to the south of the Alps would not, it may be 
 safely asserted, have fallen into the hands of the Communes. 
 As it was, Catholic sentiment was always ready to be 
 appealed to as an excuse and ground for refusing to submit 
 to Imperial prerogative; and allegiance to the Empire 
 served as a pretext equally at hand when needed for the 
 resistance to ecclesiastical encroachment. The great com- 
 petitors for power over the world fell out ; and the citizens 
 of the Communes were, in a great measure owing to their 
 quarrel, enabled to get and to hold their own, until — at 
 least in the case with which these pages are concerned — • 
 an alliance and friendship between the lay and the priestly 
 tyrant, — an alhance infinitely more corrupt, more false, and 
 more scandalous than their old state of feud, — enabled 
 the two together to crush the political system, which had 
 become so strong as to be able to hold its own against 
 either of its enemies singly. 
 
 The third of the influences named above as the agents 
 mainly operative in shaping the new social system in Italy 
 in the form assumed by it, was the tendency to a municipal 
 organization inherited from the old Roman civilization. 
 And it cannot be doubted, I think, that without this legacy 
 from Roman habits of life and modes of thought, the other 
 two agents described, largely and profoundly as they must, 
 in any case, have modified the society subjected to their 
 influence, would not have sufficed to produce so highly 
 organised a result, and so vigorous a political growth, as 
 that to which the larger Communes almost at once 
 
FLORENTINE DEPUTATION AT EOME. 15 
 
 attained, as soon as the circumstances favourable to their 
 development arrived. 
 
 In truth, in the case of Florence more especially, that 
 development may be said to have taken place, almost with 
 the rapidity of a sudden bound. It is true that a series 
 of scanty, and for the most part uncertain, notices indicate, 
 with a degree of consistency which may be accepted as 
 amounting on the whole to satisfactory proof, that from the 
 earliest years of the Christian era there existed a social 
 community of some sort on the bank of the Arno below 
 the ancient Etruscan city of Fiesole, on the site of the pre- 
 sent city of Florence. One of the earliest of these notices 
 is also one of the most authentic and indisputable. It is 
 furnished by Tacitus ;* and it is curious that the first clear 
 mention of the city should refer to a subject,, which is still, 
 after the lapse of more than eighteen centuries, one of interest 
 and importance. In the year 16 a.d. it was debated in the 
 Senate, the historian cited tells us, whether or no any steps 
 should be taken to prevent the calamitous inundations of 
 the Tiber by diverting some of the waters which it receives 
 in its course into other channels. It was proposed thus 
 to turn into the Arno the waters of the Chiana, then called 
 the Clanis, which are shut out from the valley of the former 
 river by only a singularly low water-shed. But any such 
 plan was strongly deprecated by deputies from several 
 municipalities, and colonies, which were heard by the Senate 
 in opposition to the plan. There were deputies from Terni, 
 Rieti, and other places present ; but those from Florence 
 were the spokesmen before the Senate. They urged that 
 their territories would be devastated by the excess of water 
 thus thrown into the Arno ; and added among other argu- 
 ments the curious one, that respect ought to be shown to 
 rivers, to which the inhabitants of their banks had dedi- 
 
 * Aunal. lib. i. sec. 79, edit. Gronov. 
 
16 HISTORY or THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 cated temples, and groves, and altars. And, says Tacitus, 
 whether it were that the entreaties of the colonists, or the 
 diiBculty of the proposed work, or superstition availed to 
 decide the question, the result was that nothing was done. 
 Long centuries afterwards, under the Medici, modifications 
 were introduced into the natural drainage of the district 
 in question, with a view to reclaim the swampy and pesti- 
 lential valley of the Chiana. And Plorence did suffer from 
 inundations, which were thought to have been caused or 
 aggravated by these works. At a still later period improved 
 science was brought to bear on the subject under the Dukes 
 of the Lorrain dynasty. And the Val di Chiana, no longer 
 pestilential, is now a vast and wonderfully fertile corn-field ; 
 and the discharge of its waters is so managed, it is said, 
 as to secure Florence and the lower valley of the Arno from 
 any danger of being flooded in the future. 
 
 It is a matter of historical certainty, therefore, that a 
 community called Plorentia existed on the spot now occu- 
 pied by Florence, sixteen years after the commencement 
 of our era; and that this community was not only of 
 sufficient importance to send a deputation which was 
 respectfully listened to by the Roman Senate, but was of 
 such eminence in Italy that its deputies, among those of 
 many other cities much nearer to the great centre of civili- 
 sation, were chosen to be the spokesmen for all the 
 petitioners. 
 
 An antiquity thus venerable, and a first appearance in 
 history thus respectable, were however by no means 
 sufficient to satisfy the patriotism of the earliest Florentine 
 historians. 
 
 The father of the long and illustrious line of these is the 
 venerable Ricordano Malispini. He was born probably in 
 the second decade of the thirteenth century. He died in 
 1285, and his chronicle ends in 1282, though brought down 
 four years later by his nephew. But it begins with Adam. 
 
THE HISTOiirAIf MALISPmr. 17 
 
 " From Adam till the time of King Ninus, who con- 
 quered the entire world in battle, and subjected it to his 
 power, at the time when Abraham was born, there were 
 2344 years." A brief mention of the three parts of the 
 world then follows, and a description of the boundaries of 
 Europe. " In which part thus bounded was one primal 
 lord, whose name was Atalan, or Jupiter. And his wife 
 was beautiful ; and her name was Electra. And with 
 them lived Apollonius, a great master of astrology 
 {Strolomia) ; and all their doings were ordered by his 
 advice. And they together with him chose and selected 
 out of all their realm a sovereign spot, where they founded 
 Fiesole, which was the first city built in the world after 
 the flood of the Ark of Noah. And this spot was chosen 
 by Apollonius as the most salubrious, that is, in respect of 
 its air and in respect of being under the influence of the 
 biggest and most auspicious planet that could be found." 
 
 It may be thought, perhaps, from this exordium, that 
 it would have been better to throw into the prse-historic 
 period all the space of time during which this " father of 
 Florentine history" is our main and well-nigh our only 
 guide. But the inference would be a very unjust one. 
 Strange as it may appear, the writer of the above and of 
 many pages of similar puerilities becomes a valuable and 
 trustworthy historian when he reaches the times near his 
 own ; and an eloquent and often deeply politic one when 
 he comes to the story of his own day. Style, treatment, 
 method is all changed. And yet there are abundant 
 grounds for certainty that the early chapters were written, 
 as we read them, by the historian's hand. I doubt, 
 however, if they were composed by him. For when we 
 come to the next * in that illustrious line of historians, 
 Giovanni Villani, who began to write in 1300, and brought 
 
 • The next but one, rather ; for the history of Dino Compagni runs from 
 12S0 to 1312. 
 
 VOL. I. ^' 
 
18 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 his history down to 1348, and whose work during that 
 period deserves, to a yet higher degree than that of Mahs- 
 pini, the character of sagacious political history, we find 
 not only that he begins his work with a similar farrago of 
 fables, mixing up scraps of sacred and profane history and 
 mythology with the most wonderful disregard of all chro- 
 nology or consistency ; but that the greater part of this 
 section of his work is copied word for word by whole pages 
 at a time from his predecessor, Malispini ! This remarkable 
 fact seems to me to point very clearly to the conclusion that 
 the early chapters of these ancient chroniclers were not the 
 composition of either of them. As Villani copied from 
 Malispini, so the latter copied what he found in the manu- 
 scripts of some previous writer. The real object with either 
 writer in taking his pen in hand was to chronicle the events 
 of his own time. All the preceding matter was taken as 
 found in preceding writings, and prefixed merely with a 
 view of giving what was thought to be a greater complete- 
 ness to the work. 
 
 Several of the fragments of ancient narratives thus intro- 
 duced by Malispini remind the reader irresistibly of those 
 lines in that well-known passage in which Dante contrasts 
 the " good old times " in Florence with his own. Speaking 
 of the Florentine dames, he says : — 
 
 " L' altra traendo alia rocca la ehioma 
 Favoleggiava con la sua faroiglia 
 De' Troiani, di Fiesole, e di Roma." * 
 
 They are exactly these old tales of Troy, of Fiesole, and 
 of Rome, mingled just as the poet mingles them in his 
 verse, which were current in the households of Florence, 
 and which the annahst took just as he found them. 
 
 * Paridiso, cant. 15, v. 124. 
 
 " Another, with her maidens drawing off 
 The tresses from the distaff, lectured them. 
 Old tales of Troy, and Fiesole, and Rome."— Caiiy, 
 
BAllLT LEGENDS. 19 
 
 One or two of the episodes thus introduced, without the 
 slightest attempt at any connection with what has gone 
 before or with what has to follow, would tempt me, were 
 they less prolix, to extract them as specimens of those old 
 tales which Dante remembered, and of the real character 
 of this early part of these old chronicles. One long story 
 especially, of a queen of whom Catiline was enamoured at 
 Piesole, and of her beautiful daughter, who was kept by a 
 centurion concealed in his palace in that city ; and of the 
 trick by means of which he contrived to carry the girl off 
 on the crupper of his horse, when at last her mother had 
 discovered her, is written so exactly in the style and 
 manner of the earliest romances, that the reader of it can 
 feel no doubt as to the nature of its origin. 
 
 Then we have, " How Julius Caesar besieged Fiesole 
 during eight years and a half ; and how he took it, and 
 Catiline fled, and was discomfited on the spot where 
 Pistoia now stands." On which it may be observed, that 
 there is ground for believing that the final defeat of Cati- 
 line did really take place on the banks of the Ombrone, 
 about three or four miles to the north of Pistoia ; — a cir- 
 cumstance to which is doubtless to be attributed the 
 prominent part assigned to Catiline in all these early 
 Florentine legends. Then we are told how those who 
 survived the battle in which Catiline was defeated, " re- 
 turned and built a city to which they gave the name of 
 Pistoia, because of the extraordinary great mortality and 
 pestilence (pistolenzia) which had been there ; and how 
 five hundred years afterwards a noble and powerful man, 
 whose name was Attila, Flagellum Dei, came with 20,000 
 men to rebuild the city of Fiesole, and to destroy Florence, 
 because of the injury which had been done to Catiline." 
 
 The fragmentary nature of these collected scraps of 
 ancient legends is still further shown by the way in which 
 the same ground is often gone over again in a subsequent 
 
 2 
 
20 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 chapter, without any apparent consciousness on the part of 
 the author that he is repeating himself. Thus, after a long 
 and minute account of the slaughter committed by Attila 
 at Florence, we are taken back once more to Catiline and 
 his son Hubert, who, " being suspected by the Emperor 
 Octavian, was sent by him into Saxony, where he became 
 the ancestor of the Othos." And then, after several 
 curious chapters, in which the first establishment of several 
 of the earhest of the great Florentine families is recorded, 
 we again go over all the story of the destruction of Florence 
 by Attila, who "was bald, and had ears like a dog, and 
 destroyed many castles and cities in Tuscany, and Lom- 
 bardy, and Romagna; and then, when he went out from 
 Fiesole, which he had rebuilt, he went into the Maremma, 
 and there died and ended his days." 
 
 Gradually the notices acquire a character of greater 
 authenticity and consistency ; and the account which the 
 author gives of the destruction of Fiesole by the Florentines 
 in 1010, has been very generally accepted as a narrative of 
 true facts, and admitted by subsequent historians. Never- 
 theless, there seems great reason to doubt whether the 
 record rests on any better ground than the tradition of 
 some very much less important quarrel between the two 
 cities, such as we may well beheve to have occurred inore 
 than once between such near neighbours. 
 
 Then we are told how Charlemagne came to Florence, 
 and made many knights there ; and there is a long account 
 of the families estabhshed in Florence after the destruction 
 of Fiesole, and of the exact situation of their dwellings in 
 the city, which is interesting to genealogical antiquaries, 
 and would be much more so, were it not certain that the 
 manuscript copies of the chronicle have been tampered 
 with by persons who were anxious to show that the ' 
 antiquity of their families was thus vouched for. 
 
 Coming down at length to the time of the " Groat 
 
THE COUNTESS MATILDA. 21 
 
 Countess" Matilda, we are landed on tolerably firm 
 ground. But the reader generally acquainted with the 
 annals of Europe, who has been accustomed to consider 
 the reign of the great Countess of Tuscany an important 
 epoch in mediaeval history, is surprised to find how little 
 she has to dp with the history of Florence. 
 
 " The said Henry — (the third Emperor of that name) — 
 had much war with the Countess Matilda, who was 
 devoted to the Holy Church, and defeated him." 
 
 " Henry IV., after much fighting with the Church, was 
 again conquered in battle by the Countess Matilda." 
 
 "In this year (1115) died the Countess Matilda." 
 
 This is the extent of all that Malispini, writing the 
 history of Florence, finds occasion to tell us of " the Great ■ 
 Countess." 
 
 Villani speaks of her not much more at length, 
 
 "In these days (1070) lived the powerful and wise 
 Countess Matilda, who reigned in Tuscany and Lombardy, 
 and was lady {donna) of nearly the whole of it. She did 
 many great things in her time for the Holy Church, so 
 that it seems reasonable and proper to speak of the be- 
 ginning of her power in this our treatise, since she is 
 much mixed up with the facts of our city of Florence, 
 by the consequences which followed from her deeds in 
 Tuscany." 
 
 The promised account of the Countess, however, turns 
 out to be a merely legendary story of her lineage, and the 
 marriage of her mother against the will of that mother's 
 father, the Emperor of Constantinople ; — of the foundation 
 of the castle of Canossa; — of Matilda's marriage with 
 Guelph* of Suabia, and her divorce, with a minute account 
 of the causes and manner of it ; of her general devotion to 
 the Church, and her death in 1115. And this is all that 
 Villani has to tell us of the Countess. 
 
 * It is curious that Yillani seems wholly ignorant oC her first marriage. 
 
22 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE, 
 
 No doubt the accounts of the two Florentine historians 
 are thus meagre, only because they had no access to the 
 authentic sources of information* which exist, and on 
 which subsequent historians have based their narratives. 
 But if Matilda had really exercised much immediate in- 
 fluence on the rising fortunes of Florence, information 
 respecting her would not have been so scarce and unat- 
 tainable in that city little more than a hundred years after 
 her death. And the fact really important to our history 
 is, that she had so little to do directly with the internal 
 affairs of the rapidly rising Commonwealth. She was 
 Countess of Tuscany; and exercised very considerable 
 influence on the history of Italy and of Europe as such. 
 And yet so little trace remains of any action exercised by 
 her on the city of Florence, that she can hardly be con- 
 sidered to have been the sovereign of that community in 
 any such^ sense as we now attach to the term. And this 
 position of things, so anomalous to our modern ideas, is an 
 apt illustration of that condition of society which rendered 
 the rise and rapid growth of the Communes possible. 
 
 Matilda was arming her vassals, marching hither and 
 thither, or shutting herself up in her fortresses, building 
 monasteries, and holding high counsel with monks and 
 popes, Avhile Florence was quietly growing, and learning to 
 manage its own affairs. In fact such memorials, material 
 or traditional, of the great Countess, as may be met with 
 in Italy, must be sought rather in the Modenese district 
 than within the present hmits of Tuscany. Between her 
 and Florence the connection must have been very small ; 
 and her immediate and direct influence on its fortunes can 
 have been but slight. 
 
 * The chief of these is the very curious life of Matilda, in Latin 
 hexameters, by the Benedictine monk, Donizo, who, there is reason to 
 belicTe, was her chaplain. It 16 printed in the 5th toI. of Muratori's 
 Script. Rerum Ital. 
 
HER HISTORIANS. 23 
 
 Her immediate and direct influence, I have said. For 
 the great work of her life, — the supporting and increasing 
 the power of the Papacy in opposition to that of the 
 Empire, — had, of course, as may be gathered from what 
 has been said in the earlier part of this chapter, as to the 
 shaping causes of the social condition under which the 
 Communes came into existence and throve, — a very im- 
 portant indirect bearing on the future destinies of the 
 greatest and most vigorous among them. 
 
 And in the enthusiasm for historical investigation, which 
 has within the last twenty years characterised in so marked 
 a manner the tendency of Itahan thought and culture, the 
 place held by the Countess Matilda in the history of Italy 
 and of Europe has by no means been neglected. It is for 
 the second time a Benedictine monk who has done the 
 most and the best for the great Countess. As the fullest 
 and most authentic account of the facts of her career is 
 furnished us by Donizo, the eleventh-century monk of 
 Canossa, so the best estimate of the significance of her life 
 is' supplied by the nineteenth-century monk, Father Tosti, 
 of Montecassino. 
 
 Duriag more than a thousand years in Europe the safest 
 and well-nigh the only path to a favourable position in the 
 opinion of posterity was to stand well with the Church. 
 And at the time when Matilda lived, to found a Bene- 
 dictine monastery was of all possible deeds that which 
 most securely assured a first-class niche in the temple of 
 history. So excellent an investment was it, that, as we 
 see, the virtue of it is not even yet quite spent. Father 
 Tosti, however, though every inch a monk, and a sufficiently 
 good churchman, it may be believed, to have merited the 
 approbation of Gregory VII., is yet so liberal a man as to 
 be in disgrace with the present court of Rome. Of course 
 some abatement must be made from a Benedictine monk's 
 estimate of the foundress of many monasteries and the 
 
24 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOllENCE. 
 
 great endower of the Church. But as regards the main 
 and most important mooted point respecting the scope 
 and work of Matilda and her great ally and coadjutor, 
 Hildebra,nd, I think that he is right. 
 
 The interesting question as to that strangely matched 
 pair of loving friends, is in fact this. Were they Italian 
 patriots ; or merely rulers intent on securing their own 
 position, and governing to as good purpose as they might 
 the populations subjected to them? Had Gregory and 
 Matilda conceived any idea of Italian unity, Italian great- 
 ness, and Italian regeneration? Pather Tosti thinks, 
 rightly, in my opinion, that they had not. Gregory, and 
 in Father Tosti's opinion, Matilda also, as a worthy help- 
 mate working with him, was humanitarian rather than 
 Italian. The world around him was out of joint. 
 
 " His soul was sick with every day's report 
 Of wrong and outrage, witli which earth was filled." 
 
 To Hildebrand's cosmic mind, disorder, material as well 
 as moral, was hateful. And he sought to bring order into 
 the chaos of moral and material evil around him, by the 
 only means which appeared available for the purpose, and 
 which it was by the conditions of the time and of his 
 education possible for him to conceive ; — ^by the establish- 
 ment, that is, of a universal, a vigorous, and a righteous 
 theocracy. Of course such personal motives, warpings, 
 and bias as, it may well be thought, humanity is never free 
 from, mingled in the woof of his conduct. But I believe 
 that Hildebrand conscientiously and, regard being had to 
 the conditions of the time, not wholly unreasonably, con- 
 sidered himself to be doing the true work of God's vicar 
 on earth towards humanity. 
 
 I am not, however, disposed to believe with Father 
 Tosti, that Matilda can claim the high position of Hilde- 
 brand's yoke-fellow, consciously striving with him for the 
 
MATILDA AND HILDEBRAND. 25 
 
 same great ends, and Avalking towards them in any degree 
 pari passu. She may be said to have* been born to an 
 inheritance of inevitable hostility towards the Emperor, 
 which in the then state of Europe, and in her position 
 especially, was equivalent to equally inevitable alliance 
 with the Church. It is extremely probable that she also 
 may have been painfully conscious of the deplorable con- 
 dition of the world around her, and of its wide divergence 
 from even such an ideal as the best minds of that time 
 were able to form for themselves ; and that she may have 
 been sincerely anxious to do all that lay in her power 
 towards forwarding it on the only path of improvement 
 which her lights made it possible for her to be able to 
 conceive. But bearing in mind all that is known of the 
 facts of her career, duly considering the nature and circum- 
 stances of her two remarkable marriages,* and drawing 
 thence conclusions for which our knowledge of woman's 
 nature must form the other premiss, and observing the 
 closeness of her intimacy with Churchmen during her 
 entire life, and in an especial degree with Hildebrand, I am 
 disposed to believe that Matilda was one of those women, 
 the defects as well as the good qualities of whose nature, 
 corresponding with curious infelicity to the defects as well 
 as to the good qualities of the ecclesiastical character, 
 render them the devoted pupils and docile instruments of 
 some priestly friend. 
 
 But whatever may be the judgment which we are led 
 to form of the character and motives of the great Countess, 
 
 * Her first marriage in 1069, when she was ia her twenty-third year, 
 was with the hunchback, Geoflfrey of Lorraine. The second was when she 
 was in her forty-third year, with Guelph of Bavaria, whom nature had dis- 
 qualified from forming any such tie. Much earlier in her widowhood she 
 had refused the hand of Robert of Normandy. Both these marriages were 
 evidently only political alliances, and were made under the tutelage of the 
 Popes. Of course no issue by either interfered with the legacy of her states 
 to the Church, made long previously to the second marriage. 
 
26 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE, 
 
 this at least is certain, that it was due to her favour and 
 devotion to the Holy See that the Church was enabled 
 to maintain the position it assumed in hostility to the 
 Emperors during her life, and due to her munificent be- 
 quest that it was strong enough to maintain the contest on 
 no unequal terms for many a generation after her death ; — 
 and that she must be therefore considered as one of the most 
 influential agents in producing that state of things in Italy 
 which rendered possible the rise and rapid growth of the 
 Comuni, and especially of that greatest among them, the 
 beginning of whose history as an independent self-sub- 
 sisting Commonwealth I have ventuired to fix a few years 
 before Matilda's death. 
 
BOOK I. 
 
 ♦ 
 FROM THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE COMMUNE, a.d. 1107, 
 
 10 
 
 THE BATTLE OF MONTAPEETI, a.b, 1260. 
 153 YEARS. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Dante's good old times — Mixture of races la Florence— No Tuscan nation 
 existed in medieval Italy— Dante's description of the simplicity of 
 manners in old Florence — Villani on the same subject — The first walls 
 — The second walls — Population of Florence in early times — G-overn- 
 ment of the city in the earliest period — Political constitution — Expe- 
 ditions of the Florentines against the feudal nobles of surrounding 
 country — Monte Orlando — Expedition against Prato — The Emperor 
 Henry IV. — Imperial Vicar at Sanminiato-— Vioar killed by the Flo- 
 rentines — Relations between Florence and the Empire — ^War between 
 Pisa and Lucca — Florentines guard Pisa — Porphyry columns given by 
 Pisa to Florence — Great fires in Florence — Scantiness of early Florentine 
 history — Pisan estimate of Florence in the twelfth century — Expedition 
 agdinst Monte Boni — Buonaparte family — War with the Counts Guidi 
 — ^with Arezzo — with Siena. 
 
 Dante, living in that envied thirteenth century* on 
 which subsequent generations in Florence looked back vfith 
 admiration and regret, deeming it the veritable golden age, 
 turns away his eyes from the miseries around him, and finds 
 that ever-shifting, never-nearing period, in the good old 
 time some two hundred years before his own. It is but a 
 poor spirit, which in any age yet known to man has been 
 so contented with the world around it, as to form no nobler 
 ideal of the condition of humanity. And the glory which 
 to every man in his declining years shines about the 
 bright morning time of his life, and the unreasoned remem- 
 brance of the impressions of greatness and grandeur made 
 on our childish minds by all around them,— impressions 
 
 • Born A.T). 1265, 
 
30 HISTOlir OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 by comparison with which our later experiences of much 
 greater things are dwarfed, — all tend to lead men into the 
 fallacy of looking for that nobler ideal in the past. It 
 Avould seem to be one of the latest teachings of human 
 experience, which bids us seek the reaUsation of our aspi- 
 rations rather in the future. 
 
 Instead of doubting not that — 
 
 " thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
 And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns," 
 
 Dante looks backward, and sees only degeneration, not 
 progress, in all that happened to his beloved Florence in the 
 two centuries preceding his birth. In 1078, it was found 
 necessary to enlarge the circuit of the city walls ; and the 
 Florentines appointed a committee of citizens* to superin- 
 tend the execution of the work. The fact is oiie among 
 several unmistakeably marking a state of progress and 
 prosperity.! But it was in Dante's opinion the beginning 
 and first root of those troubles which caused all the evil he 
 saw around him, and made the sorrow and misery of his 
 own life. 
 
 It was in that fondly fancied good old time, before the 
 size of the city had been thus increased, when — 
 
 " Tutti color' ch'a quel tempo eran ivi 
 Da portar arme, tra Marte e" 1 Batista 
 Erano '1 quinto di quel che son vivi,"J 
 
 * Marohionne di Coppo"" Stefani, Istoria Fiorentina, printed in the 
 " Delizie degli Eruditi Toscani," yoIs. vii. — xvii. See vol. vii. p. 52. 
 
 •f- This enlargement of the city is called hy the old chroniclers the second 
 circle of walls. But certain modern antiquarians, having with more or less 
 certainty discovered traces of an old wall of a yet earlier period than that 
 which the old historians considered the first, have chosen to call this 
 enlargement of 1078 the third wall. To prevent any confusion, it is suffi- 
 cient to observe that the enlargement of 1078 includes the church of St. 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 % "All those who were there, fit to hear arms, from the statue of Mars to 
 the church of St. John the Baptist, were only a fifth part of the population 
 now existing in the same space," — Paradise, cant. xvi. 
 
DANTE'S NOTION OF FOREIGNERS. 31 
 
 that the population was unmixed with those "foreign", 
 elements which, in the poet's opinion, were the cause of 
 the subsequent dissensions resulting in so much misery. 
 In those days, says the poet, 
 
 " La cittadinanza, ck' e' or mista 
 
 Di Campi, e di Certaldo, e di Figghine 
 
 Pura vedeasi neU' ultimo artista. 
 0, quanto fora meglio esser vioine 
 
 Quelle genti, oh' io dioo ; ed al Galluzzo 
 
 E a Trespiano aver confine, 
 Che averle dentro ! " * 
 
 The strangers, who are thus supposed by the mixture of 
 their blood with that of the original inhabitants of Florence 
 to have engendered the enmities which distracted the city 
 in subsequent centuries, were the inhabitants of townlets 
 some ten or twenty miles from Florence ; and the places at 
 which the poet would have wished to draw the frontier 
 line between his Florentines and foreigners, are villages 
 three or fom- miles from the city walls ! The opinion, that 
 the dissensions and party spirit which lacerated Florence 
 with a ferocity and bitterness unmatched by any other 
 community recorded by history, were to be traced to this 
 early mixing with the people of the neighbouring country, 
 especially those of Fiesole, was held also by Villani the 
 historianf, writing about the same time as Dante. But it 
 is impossible to accept such a circumstance as a sufficient 
 cause for the result attributed to it. A careful study of 
 the record of these civil discords discovers no traces of the 
 operation of any such cause ; but does discover abundance 
 of other perfectly intelligible causes for the result. Never- 
 theless, the existence of such an opinion or prejudice in the 
 
 * " The blood of the city population, which is now mixed with that of 
 Campi and Certaldo, and Figghine, was then seen pure even in the lowest 
 artisan. Oh! how much better it had been to have those people I have 
 named for our neighbours, with our boundaries at Galluzzo and Trespiano, 
 rather than to have them within our confines ! " — Paradiso, cant. x\ i. 
 
 -j- Giovanni Villani, book iv. ob. vii. 
 
32 HlSTOllY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOllENOE. 
 
 minds of such men as Dante and Villani, is a very remark- 
 able fact, curiously indicative, at all events, of the singular 
 narrowness of that old Italian patriotism, whose patria 
 was bounded by a city's walls. It may perhaps also be 
 accepted as showing that jealousies and hatreds between 
 family and family were wont to avail themselves of the so- 
 called purity of Florentine descent, or the reverse, as an 
 element capable of contributing, even at the opening of the 
 fourteenth century, an additional bitterness to enmities 
 mainly due to other motives. 
 
 This narrowness of patriotism, which made each citizen 
 of the old Italian communes feel that his "country" 
 extended at the utmost only to the limits of the territory 
 subject to his native city, and regard all the world beyond 
 as " foreign; " this manner of thinking and feeling, which 
 exercised so permanent an influence on the entire course of 
 Italian history, and which, beginning only now in our own 
 days to disappear before other and better teaching, may 
 still be traced in many a popular mode of speech, furnishes 
 another proof of the self-subsistent independence of the 
 communes from their first rise at the period under con- 
 sideration. It is clear that the series of Counts, Marquises, 
 and Dukes whose names industrious antiquaries have 
 gathered with difficulty out of ancient documents as rulers 
 over Tuscany during the centuries preceding the eleventh, 
 did not succeed in so welding the country they professed 
 to govern, into any social whole, as to make it in any sense 
 a country to the inhabitants of it. No man dreamed of 
 thinking or calhng himself a Tuscan. He was a Pisan, a 
 Lucchese, a Sienese, a Florentine, &c. The city was the 
 only social and political integer he knew. Nor can the 
 shghtest trace be found of any connection or common 
 interest or feeling between one city and another, arising 
 from the community of their allegiance to any of these 
 sovereigns. 
 
DANTE'S GOOD OLD TIME. 33 
 
 The well known and beautiful passage in which Dante 
 describes the simplicity of life in Florence at the period 
 immediately preceding the building of the second walls, 
 will assist us in forming a notion of the young community, 
 just getting strength enough to start on the eventful course 
 through which we are to follow it. 
 
 " Piorenza dentro alia ceroliia antioa,*' 
 
 Ond' ella toglie ancora e Terza e Noaa 
 
 Si stava in pace sobria e pudica : 
 Non avea oatenella, noa corona 
 
 Non donne contigiate, non cintura 
 
 Che fosse a veder piu che la persona : 
 Nop faceva nascendo ancor paura 
 
 La flglia al padre, che '1 tempo e la dote 
 
 Non fuggian quinci e quindi la misura : 
 Non avea case di famlglia vote : 
 
 Non v' era giunto ancor Sardaaapalo 
 
 A mostrar cio che 'n camera si puote : 
 Non era vinto ancora Montemalo 
 
 Dal vostro TJecellatoio, che com' & vinto 
 
 Nel montar su, cosi sara nel oalo. 
 
 * "Florence within her ancient circuit of walls, where still liangs the 
 bell that calls to morning and evening prayers, lived iu peace soberly and 
 modestly. There were in those days no golden chains nor coronets, nor 
 dames with ornamented sandalled stockings, nor girdles calculated to attract 
 more notice than the wearers of them ; not in those days did the birth of a 
 daughter terrify her father lest he should be called on for an unreasonably 
 large dower at an. unreasonably early time of his child's life. There were 
 no houses void of their ininates perished in civil broil. No Sardanapalus 
 had yet come among us, to show what excesses might be committed in the 
 privacy of citizens' homes. The hill of Montemalo, (from which a first sight 
 of Rome is caught in journeying southwards), was not yet surpassed in the 
 magnificence of its prospect by the IJcoellatoio which overlooks Florence, — 
 surpassed in the growing splendour of the city it looks down on, as it shall 
 also be in the greatness of the fall thereof. I have seen Bellincion Berti in 
 the streets with a leathern girdle fastened with a button of bone, and his 
 wife coming from the glass with no paint upon her face. I have seen too 
 the De Nerli and the Del Vecohio content to be clad in plain leather 
 uncovered with cloth, and their wives busy with the distaff and spindle. 
 Happy they ! and each woman was sure to lay her bones in her own land ; 
 and none went to a widowed bed because her lord was absent trafiicking in 
 France." — Paradiso, cant. xv. ver. 97 — 120. 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
3-1 HISTOEY OF THE COMMONWEALTB OF FI.OREiSCE. 
 
 Bellineion Berti vid' io andar cinto 
 
 Di ouoio e d' osso; e venir dallo specchio 
 La Donna sua sanza '1 viso dipinto : 
 
 E vidi quel de' Nerli, e quel del Veechio 
 Esser content! alia pelle sooverta 
 E le sue donne al fuse ed al penneccbio, 
 
 fortunate ! e ciascuna era certa 
 Dello sua sepoltura, ed ancor nulla 
 Era per Franoia nel letto deserta." 
 
 If we hesitate to receive the inference drawn by the poet 
 from this simphcity of manners, as to the degree of virtue 
 and happiness which must be held to have accompanied 
 them, we may still accept the picture as a faithful presenta- 
 tion of the social condition of Florence, when she was on 
 the point of starting on her career of power, wealth, and 
 prosperity. For the poet's account is confirmed with sin- 
 gular exactitude of agreement by the historian Villani, who, 
 however, has copied the passage almost word for word from 
 the 164th chapter of the work of Malispini. "In those 
 days," writes the former historian, " the citizens of Florence 
 lived soberly, and on coarse food, and at small cost ; and as 
 regards many of their modes of life, they were rude and 
 gross. They clothed themselves and their wives with coarse 
 cloth, and many wore skins uncovered by any cloth at all. 
 They used caps on their heads and leathern sandals* on their 
 feet, and the Florentine women wore stockings without 
 ornament ; and those of the highest rank contented them- 
 selves with a narrow petticoat of coarse Ypres scarlet, or of 
 
 * The word in the text is " usatti." The women did wear "nsatti;" 
 and did not wear, as Dante tells us, in the passage above quoted, " oontigie." 
 It would seem that the former were soles of leather fastened to the feet and 
 legs by leather straps, probably very similar to what may now be seen on 
 the feet of the peasants of the Abruzzi. The " oontigie" were leathern 
 soles sewn on the foot of the stocking, and surrounding the lower part of 
 the foot with a protection of stamped or otherwise ornamental leather, 
 which was no doubt a new fashion, deemed highly elegant, and stigmatised 
 of course by the censors of the day as immoral, and probably immodest 
 sybaritism. 
 
THE OLDEST CITY WALLS. 35 
 
 camlet bound round the waist with a girdle, after the ancient 
 fashion, and a mantle lined with minever, with a hood which 
 they wore over their heads. And the women of the people 
 were clothed in coarse green cloth of Cambrai, made after 
 the same fashion. A hundred lire * was an ordinary dower 
 for a wife. A dower of two or three hundred was in those 
 days considered enormous. Girls, for the most part had 
 completed their twentieth year before they were married. 
 Thus rude in dress and customs were the Florentines of 
 those days ; but they were loyal, and kept good faith, both 
 among each other and towards the Commonwealth. And 
 with their poverty and coarse mode of life, they did greater 
 things, and acted more virtuously, than we do with our 
 greater effeminacy and greater riches." 
 
 Those were the manners of the good old times before the 
 building of the second walls around the increased city. The 
 position of these walls, and the amount of space thus added 
 to the city, are very accurately known. The Hue taken by 
 the new circuit has been minutely recorded by Malispini,! 
 Villani,]: and Coppo Stefani.^ But it will be sufficient for 
 our purpose to indicate in a more general manner the 
 extent of the increase. 
 
 The old city, wholly confined to the northern bank of the 
 river, stretched along it from a point near the present Ponte 
 Santa Trinita, to another a little beyond the building of the 
 Uffizi. A line drawn northward from the foot of the Ponte 
 Santa Trinita, to the corner formed by the Via de' Rondi- 
 nelli and the Via de' Cerretani, and thence turning at a sharp 
 angle westward, proceeding then in a direct line to the Piazza 
 del Duomo, encircling the Cathedral, and then turning 
 southwards to rejoin the river by a line nearly correspond- 
 
 * The Tuscan lira is now equal to eightpence sterling. To find its 
 equivalent value at the time in question it must be multiplied by from ten 
 to fifteen. • 
 
 ■f Chap. Isi. X Book iv. chap. viii. § Book i. rubr. xxxiy. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 ing with the present Via del Proconsolo, the Piazza di San 
 Firenze, and the Via de Leoni, Avould very nearly mark 
 the position of the old wall. The new one, built in 1078, 
 enclosed an area much more than twice as large as the old 
 city. This new wall extended along the northern bank of 
 the river from the present Ponte alle Grazie to the Ponte 
 alia Carraia. A direct line drawn in north-western direction 
 from the foot of the latter, to the sharp corner made by the 
 Via delle Cantonelle, behind the Church of St. Lorenzo, 
 turning at that corner to follow in a south-easterly direction, 
 and nearly in a straight line, the course of the streets De 
 Gori, Calderai, De' Pucci, De' Cresci, and St. Egidio, to 
 the corner of the Via del Fosso, and there again turning to 
 the south-west, and striking towards the river in a direct 
 line by the streets Del Diliivio and De' Benci, to the foot 
 of the Ponte alle Grazie, would form the new boundary of 
 the city on the northern bank of the river. But the 
 suburbs which had been gradually formed on the southern 
 bank, were also now for the first time brought within the 
 walled city. This new " Oltrarno" quarter, "beyond the 
 Arno," comprising less than a quarter of the space now 
 occupied by the city on the southern bank, was bounded 
 by the river from the Ponte Santa Trinitd, nearly to the 
 Ponte alle Grazie, and by a line of wall which, starting 
 from the bank at the spot where the former of these 
 bridges now stands, followed the entire length of the 
 present Via Maggio, and then turning at an acute angle 
 back again towards the river, crossed the Piazza de' Pitti in 
 an oblique direction, so as to exclude the ground on which 
 the Pitti Palace now stands, pursued an irregular course 
 along the foot of the steep hill, which here leaves but a 
 narrow space between it and the Arno, till it rejoined that 
 river in the immediate neighbourhood of the Ponte alle 
 Grazie. , 
 It will be seen that this notable enlargement of the city, 
 
POPULATION OF THE CITY. 37 
 
 while more then doubling its former area, comprised a 
 space less than a fom-th of that contained within the 
 present wall, which third circuit was, in most respects as 
 it still remains, traced in the year 1285. 
 
 What was the population of Florence at the time of 
 which we are now speaking, the beginning of the twelfth 
 century, some five-and-twenty years after the building of 
 the second walls, when the history of the city, as an inde^ 
 pendent Commonwealth, M^as just beginning ? It were 
 much to be wished that a satisfactory answer could be 
 given to this question ; but we are absolutely without any 
 direct information on the point. More than two other 
 centuries must elapse before we reach any tolerably trust- 
 worthy facts on this subject. The absence of all attempt 
 to obtain any correct knowledge on a subject of such 
 paramount importance to the prosperity of their city, is a 
 singular trait in the character of those old fathers of the 
 Commonwealth ; more especially as the means of very 
 accurate information were in their hands. From the 
 earhest period every child born in Florence was baptised 
 at one and the same font, — that of the Baptistery, or 
 Church of San Giovanni. It seems almost inconceivable 
 that no register or enumeration of these baptisms should 
 have been kept. Yet such was the case till the year 1450, 
 from which time till the present, the registry is complete. 
 Villani,* however, supplies us with an estimate foimded 
 on reliable data about the year 1338. The population 
 within the walls, exclusive of foreigners, travellers, soldiers, 
 monks, and nuns, was estimated to be at that time ninety 
 thousand ; and the addition of the above excepted classes 
 Tv'ould probably bring up the total to a hundred thousand 
 souls. And though, as has been said, no register was ever 
 kept at the Baptistery till long afterwards, the historian 
 
 * Book .\i. chap. xoiv. 
 
38 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 found, he tells us, that about that same time the priest 
 of San Giovanni, being curious to know the number of 
 infants on whom he was required to perform his function, 
 was in the habit of putting into a vessel a black bean for 
 every boy and a white one for every girl he baptized ; and 
 that the number was thus ascertained to be from 5800 to 
 6000 yearly : the male births exceeding the female by about 
 400 — a curious and anomalous fact, confirmed by the re- 
 sults of recent more scientific observation in Tuscany. 
 With regard, however, to the proportion between the 
 births thus recorded by the priest of St. John's black and 
 white beans, and Villani's estimate of the population, it 
 may be remarked that in all probability the baptisms at 
 the Baptistery included a certain number belonging to 
 the suburban population. 
 
 To the facts thus estabhshed respecting an epoch about 
 two hundred and thirty years subsequent to our starting- 
 point at the beginning of the twelfth century, it may be 
 added, that from the building of the second walls in 1078, 
 the increase of the population is known to have been very 
 rapid. The whole space between the first and second 
 walls is recorded to have become thickly inhabited very 
 quickly J and about half a century before the date of 
 Villani's estimate it had become necessary, as we have 
 seen, to increase the city a second time. There is further 
 an assertion by Villani, that Plorence contained " twenty^ 
 two thousand fighting men, without counting the old men 
 and children," about the middle of the sixth * century ; 
 and modern statisticians have based on this statement an 
 estimate which would make the population of the city at 
 that period about sixty-one thousand.! There are reasons 
 too for beUeving that very little difference in the papula^ 
 
 * Villani, book ii. chap, i, 
 
 f Ricerche Statistiohe sul Gran Duoato di Tosoana, da Attilio Ziicca^ni. 
 
 Orlandini, vol. i. Florence, 1848. 
 
MODE OP ESTIMATINa IT. 39 
 
 tion took place during several centuries after that time.* 
 Then came the sudden increase arising from the destruc- 
 tion, more or less entire, of Fiesole, and the incorporation 
 of its inhabitants with those of the newer city, which led 
 to the building of the second walls. 
 
 There was therefore at the beginning of the twelfth 
 century a "large increase," on sixty-one thousand. ' Bat 
 subsequently to the twelfth century a further " very large 
 increase " led to the building of the third walls in 1285 ; 
 and brought the population up to a hundred thousand in 
 1338. We have, therefore, two large increases of the 
 population to bring it from the sixty-one to the hundred 
 thousand. And the beginning of the twelfth century 
 came after the first of these, and before the second, but 
 much nearer in time to the former epoch. We may 
 perhaps therefore, basing our guess on all these circum- 
 stances, consider that an estimate taking the inhabitants 
 of the city at something between seventy and eighty 
 thousand at the period respecting which we are inquiring 
 would in all probability be not very wide of the mark. 
 
 The government of the city was at that time lodged 
 in the hands of magistrates exercising both legislative 
 and administrative authority, called Consuls, assisted by 
 a senate composed of a hundred citizens of Avorth — 
 buoni uomini.\ These Consuls "guided everything, and 
 governed the city, and decided causes, and administered % 
 justice." They remained in office for one year. How 
 long this form of government had been established in 
 Florence is uncertain. It was not in existence in the year 
 89711; but it was in activity in 1102§. From 1138 we 
 
 * Orlandini, op. cit., v. v. i. p. 40i. 
 t Villani, book v. chap. ix. 
 % Ibid,, he, cit. 
 
 11 Lami, Memorab, Eoole3. Plorent, torn. i. p. 392. 
 
 § Ammirato, the younger. Additions to the first book of Ammirato, the 
 elder's, Florentine History. 
 
40 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 have a nearly complete roll of the names of the consuls for 
 each year down to 1219, from which it appears that the 
 number of these magistrates varied from four to twenty, 
 unless indeed some of the names given may be supposed to 
 be those of members of the Senate or Council. Villani * says 
 that when the city was divided into four " Quartieri," as 
 was the case previous to the enlargement of the walls in 
 1078, there were four Consuls ; and when subsequently to 
 that enlargement, a new division into six " Sestieri " was 
 adopted, six of those magistrates were created, one for 
 each ward of the city. "But," he adds, "our fathers 
 used not to make mention of all the names, but of some 
 one among them of the highest reputation and social 
 position, saying, 'in the time of such and such a Consul 
 and his colleagues.' " Such a practice of itself denotes 
 a degree of laxity and uncertainty which will be found 
 to characterise almost every Florentine institution to a 
 singular degree. Law and statutory provisions never seem 
 to have been strong and stiff enough to resist the over- 
 riding force of passion and strong individual will. That 
 law should find its ultimate and fundamental sanction in 
 the will of the society to be ruled by it, is well. But 
 there is danger in such a direct and immediate influence of 
 the masses of the society on the work of legislation as shall 
 breed in the mind of every man the habitual notion that 
 the setting aside of law is an easy, simple, and every-day 
 matter ; and that it is very competent to him to take steps 
 towards abrogating regulations of which he himself or his 
 father had had a large share in the making. The want of 
 stability arising from such habits of thought marks the 
 whole course of Florentine history ; and assuredly the tale 
 to be told will show that in such a constitution of society 
 there is danger. 
 
 No doubt the statement of Villain as to the number of 
 
 * Book r, chap, xxsn. 
 
EXPEDITION AGAINST MONTE ORLANDO. 41' 
 
 the Consuls represents accurately the normal state of the a.d. 
 matter ; and the exceptions to it were abnormal cases of 
 law being over-ridden. But these exceptional cases were 
 of such frequent occurrence, that the learned antiquary 
 Lami remarks * on the foregoing passage of Villani, that 
 " no faith is to be placed in his statement on the subject," 
 inasmuch as there were sometimes eight and sometimes as 
 many as eleven Consuls. f 
 
 The first recorded deeds of the young community thus 
 governed, and beginning to feel conscious and proud of its 
 increasing strength, were characteristic enough of the tone 
 of opinion and sentiment which prevailed within its walls, 
 and of the career on which it was entering. 
 
 "In the year 1107," says Malispini,! "the city of 
 Florence being much increased, the Morentines, wishing to 
 extend their territory, determined to make war against any 
 castle or fortress which would not be obedient to them. 
 And in that year they took by force Monte Orlando, which 
 belonged to certain gentlemen who would not be obedient 
 to the city. And they were defeated, and the castle was 
 destroyed." 
 
 These " gentlemen," so styled by the civic historian who 
 thus curtly records the destruction of their home, in con- 
 tradistinction to the citizens who by no means considered 
 themselves such, were the descendants or representatives 
 of those knights and captains, mostly of German . race, to 
 whom the Emperors had made grants of the soil according 
 to the feudal practice and system. They held directly of 
 the Empire, and in no wise owed allegiance or obedience 
 of any sort to the community of Florence. But they occu- 
 
 * Loc. cit. 
 
 t He might have said as many as twenty, according to the lists given in 
 Tadre Ildenfonso di San Luigi's illustrations to Coppo Stefani's history, 
 " Delizie degli Eruditi Tosoani," vol. vii. p. 139, 
 
 \ Chap. Ixv. 
 
42 HISTORY OF THE COMMOITWBALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 pied almost all the country around the rising city ; and the 
 ■ citizens " wanted to extend their territory." Besides, these 
 territorial lords were, as has been said, gentlemen, and 
 lived as such, stopping wayfarers on the highways, levying 
 tolls in the neighbourhood of their strongholds, and in 
 many Avays making themselves disagreeable neighbours to 
 peaceable folks. The lords of Monte Orlando, moreover, 
 who were certain Counts Cadolingi,* were established in a 
 spot which, above all others, the burghers of Florence could 
 not permit to remain in the hands of people with genteel 
 habits. Monte Orlando was situated close to the present 
 village of Signa, just at the spot, about seven miles from 
 Florence, where the Arno, quitting the wide basin in 
 which the city is situated, enters a rocky gorge in the hills, 
 through which it passes on its way to the lower Valdarno. 
 It was impossible for a gentleman of the twelfth century to 
 find a spot possessing more absolute adaptation to the 
 habitudes of .his class. The course of the navigable river, 
 and tliat of the high road to the great and wealthy city of 
 Pisa, — a town of far greater importance than Florence at 
 that period, — was in the hands of the owners of Monte 
 Orlando. It was true that the Counts Cadolingi held 
 their fief of the Emperor, and the Emperor held the 
 empire by the grace of God. The Florentines by no 
 means denied either proposition ; but they wanted room 
 to grow ; — and especially would not have the way to Pisa 
 stopped. So these men in the leathern jerkins, with bone- 
 buttoned girdles, and with sandals on their feet, obeyed 
 manifest destiny, and starting forth from their city one 
 fine morning, unhoused the noble Cadolingi, and knocked 
 their stronghold to ruins before they returned in the 
 evening. 
 
 The next incident on the record, however, would seem 
 
 * Uepetti, Dizionario Geografico, Fisiologico, Storico della Tosoana. vol 
 iii. p. 432. 
 
REBELLION OF PRATO. 43 
 
 to show that peaceful townsfolk as well as raarauding a.t- 
 nobles were liable to be overrun by the car ot manifest ^^^^* 
 destiny, if they came in the way of it. 
 
 " In the same year," says the curt old historian, " the 
 men of Prato rebelled against the Florentines ; wherefore 
 they went out in battle against it, and took it by siege and 
 destroyed it." 
 
 Prato rebelled against Florence ! It is a very singular 
 statement ; for there is not the shadow of a pretence put 
 forward, or the smallest ground for imagining that Florence 
 had or could have claimed any sort of suzerainty over 
 Prato, now a flourishing little city, twelve miles from the 
 capital on the way to Pistoia, but then a recently formed 
 settlement of a small community which had bought ^ their 
 independence "with their own money" from the counts 
 Guidi. These poor vassals of the Counts Guidi had lived 
 on their land in the immediate neighbourhood of Monte- 
 murlo, a spot about three or four miles from Prato ; but 
 having bought their freedom, came to the place where 
 that city now stands, because it Was " free territory ; " and 
 there they bought the meadow, which has given its name 
 to the town they built on it. It can hardly be but that 
 the " rebellion " of these poor people against Florence was 
 of the nature of the lamb's offence against the wolf. 
 
 The territorial nobles, however, who held castles in the 
 district around Florence were the principal objects of the 
 early prowess of the citizens ; and of course offence against 
 them was offence against the Emperor. And Henry IV* 
 having in the year 1111 succeeded to his father, and 
 partly by fraud and partly by force, caused himself to be 
 crowned in Rome by Pascal II. — a very different sort of 
 adversary to deal with from Gregory VII. — the imperial 
 power became for the nonce a somewhat more real and less 
 shadowy thing in Italy^ as was usually the case when the 
 Emperors crossed the Alps, and appeared in person among 
 
44 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OE FLORENCE. 
 
 *-D. their theoretically submissive southern subjects. In 1113, 
 ■ accordingly, we find an Imperial vicar residing in Tuscany 
 at St. Miniato ; not the convent-topped hill of that name 
 in the immediate neighbourhood of Florence, but a little 
 mountain city of the same name, overlooking the lower 
 Valdarno, about half way between Florence and Pisa. 
 This strong position was- the usual station of the Imperial 
 Vicars in Tuscany ; and from that circumstance the city is 
 called to the present day San Miniato al Tedesco, — San 
 Miniato of the Germans. It stands high on the crest of 
 its hill, in a very imperial sort of position, and still attracts 
 the attention of travellers, who are whirled along at the 
 base of the mountain on the railway from Leghorn to 
 Ilorence, by the tall slender brick tower, sole remaining 
 fragment of the castle built there by Frederick II. Several 
 of the Emperors when in Italy resided and dated diplomas 
 from this German San Miniato. And there the Imperial 
 Vicars perched themselves hawk-like, with their Imperial 
 troops, and swooped down from time to time to chastise 
 and bring back such cities of the plain as too audaciously 
 set at naught the authority of the Emperor. 
 
 And really these upstart Florentines were taking the bit 
 between their teeth, and going on in a way that no 
 Imperial Vicar could tolerate ; especially when his master 
 had just been crowned at Rome, and had by hook or by 
 crook patched up for the nonce a peace with the Holy 
 Father. So the indignant cry of the harried Counts 
 Cadolingi, and of several other nobles holding of the 
 Empire, whose houses had l3een burned over their heads 
 by these audacious citizens, went up to the ears of 
 ".Messer Ruberto," the Vicar, in San Miniato. Where- 
 upon that noble knight, indignant at the wrong done to 
 his fellow nobles, as well as at the offence against the 
 authority of his master the Emperor, forthwith put lance 
 in rest, called out his men, and descended from his 
 
IMPERIAL VICAR KILLED. . 45 
 
 mountain fortress to take . summary vengeance on the a.b. 
 audacious city. On his way thither he had to pass through ^^^^" 
 that very gorge where the castle of Monte Orlando had 
 stood, and under the ruins of the house from which the 
 noble vassals of the Empire had been harried. The spot 
 is not quite half way from Florence to San Miniato ; but 
 the Florentines were minded to save the Imperial Vicar 
 and his troops the rest of their march. There were the 
 leathern-jerkined citizens on the very scene of their late 
 misdeed, come out to oppose the further progress of the 
 Emperor's Vicar and his soldiers. And there, as the 
 historian writes, with curiously impassible brevity, " the 
 said Messer Ruberto was discomfited and killed." * And 
 nothing further is heard of him, or of any after conse- 
 quences resulting from the deed. 
 
 Learned legal antiquaries insist much on the fact, that 
 the independence of Florence and the other Communes 
 was never " recognised" by the Emperors ; and they are no 
 doubt perfectly accurate in saying so. One would think, 
 however, that that unlucky Vicar of theirs, Messer Ruberto, 
 must have "recognised" the fact, though somewhat 
 tardily. As for the old historians of the city, they content 
 themselves with very simply narrating such circumstances 
 as the above, appearing to consider them quite sufficiently 
 accounted for by such phrases as, " the Florentines being 
 desirous of extending their boundaries ; " or " the citizens 
 being minded to exercise lordship over the country around 
 them ; " or " the city finding that such and such nobles of 
 the Empire would not be obedient ; " or the hke ; writing 
 their de facto chronicles with an innocent disregard of any 
 de jure considerations, which might well excite the indigna- 
 tion of feudal jurists. 
 
 It was in the year 1113 that this defeat of the Imperial 
 
 • Malispini, chap. Ixix. ; Villani, book ir. chap, xxix, ; Coppo Stefani, 
 book i. rubr. xxxix. 
 
46 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE, 
 
 A.B. forces by the citizens took place ; and the following year 
 was marked by an event yet more significant of the 
 absolute practical independence of the larger Communes. 
 
 The earliest notices we have of wars waged by one city 
 against another, date from more than one hundred years 
 previous to the time of which we are speaking ; the earliest 
 case on record* being that of a war between Pisa and 
 Lucca, both considerably older cities than Plorence, in 
 1004. It is impossible to imagine any act of a community 
 more decisively proving its sovereignty and independence,, 
 than that of declaring war and making peace with other 
 social bodies. And from this time forth the history of Italy 
 mainly consists of the accounts of warfare between one 
 commune and another. War between Lucca and Pisa had, 
 as has been seen, long preceded the year 1114. In that 
 year the Pisans undertook an expedition against the 
 Balearic Isles, then held by the Saracens. They had made 
 great preparations ; and were on the point of embarking 
 on board their fleet, when they heard that the Lucchese 
 were planning an attack on their city as soon as the Pisan 
 forces should have fairly started on their expedition. The 
 Pisans, in this difficulty, being extremely imwilling to 
 relinquish the enterprise, for which they had made such 
 preparation, hit on the expedient of asking the Ploren tines, 
 with whom they had always. hitherto been on good terms, 
 to come and guard their city for them while they were 
 absent on the expedition against the Saracens. 
 
 The Florentines at once consented ; and sent an army to 
 mount guard over Pisa, which seems to have proved a per- 
 fectly sufEcient protection ; for nothing farther is heard of 
 any attack by the Lucchese. But an anecdote has been 
 preserved in connection with this friendly service, which, 
 illustrates curiously the manners and sentiments of the 
 
 * Pignotti, Storia della Tosoana, book iii. chap. i. 
 
FLORENTINES AT PISA. 47 
 
 period. All the fighting men having gone on the expedi- a.d. 
 tion against the Saracens, Pisa remained with no inhabitants 
 save the old men, women, and children. Under these 
 circumstances, the Florentines felt that it would be more 
 delicate on their part, and more considerate towards the 
 reputation of the Pisan ladies, if they abstained from 
 entering the city. They mounted guard accordingly, 
 camped outside the walls ; and strictly forbade any one of 
 their people from entering the city gate. It so happened, 
 however, that one Florentine, " peeping Tom," was caught 
 — on what errand is not stated — inside the city, and was 
 thereupon summarily condemned to be hung. The Pisans, 
 however — the Pisan ladies we must suppose — warmly 
 interceded with the Florentine commander for his pardon, 
 but all in vain. Wherefore, with a view of saving the 
 poor fellow, the city of Pisa formally forbade any execution 
 taking place on their territory. But the Florentine general 
 was determined to maintain the strict discipline of his 
 army. In order, therefore, to do so without infringing 
 the above-mentioned decree of the Pisans, he bargained 
 with the peasant OAvner of a field near the city (who was 
 ignorant of the purpose for which it was desired) for the 
 purchase of a plot of ground sufficient to erect a gibbet on, 
 and there hung the prisoner; a plan from which the 
 strange inference would seem to follow, that, according to 
 the notions of that day, the private purchase of a piece of 
 ground by one individual from another, might have the 
 effect of withdrawing the land so bought and sold from the 
 dominion of one government, and transferring it to that of 
 another, sovereign ; a principle which it is impossible to 
 suppose can have been admitted. 
 
 The Pisans, however, we are told, were so much pleased 
 with the entire conduct of the Florentines in this matter, 
 that on their victorious return from their expedition, they 
 offered to present to Florence whichever of the two most 
 
48 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.i). notable objects among the spoil taken by them that city 
 '■ might select : a pair of metal gates, or a couple of porphyry 
 columns. The Florentines chose the latter ; and the 
 pillars were forthwith despatched to Florence "covered 
 with scarlet," and were placed on each side of the western- 
 door of the Baptistery, where they may be seen to this 
 day.* 
 
 The years 1115 and 1117 were marked by two great 
 and very disastrous fires in Florence. Nearly all, say the 
 historians, which Avas not burned in the first perished in 
 the second conflagration. And both Malispini and Villani 
 specially deplore the destruction of a vast quantity of 
 private and public archives ; " so that a great part of what 
 has been hereinbefore narrated has necessarily been gathered 
 from the annals of other cities," says Villani. It may be 
 observed, however, that no remarkable improvement is to 
 be found in the pages of either Malispini, Villani, or Coppo 
 Stefani immediately after the date of these calamities. The 
 disjointed notices continue to be as meagre, curt, and scanty 
 as before ; and we have to proceed a long way yet, before 
 the narrative of either of these writers assumes anything 
 like the consistency of history. It may be remarked, also, 
 that such notices as they give of the history of the Popes 
 and Emperors are far more complete, detailed, and satis- 
 factory, than those relating to the proper story°of their own 
 community. And this circumstance must be felt to be 
 evidence of the very rude and embryo condition of the 
 Florentine civiUzation in that twelfth century, to which 
 Dante looked back as the golden age of his country. 
 Those men Avith the leathern jerkins and the bone buttons 
 
 * Malispini, chap. Ixxi. ; Villani, book iv. chap. x.xxi. ; Coppo Stefani, 
 book i. rubr. xli. All these historians speak of the alternative offered to 
 the Florentines as "the metal doors," without further explanation. No 
 doubt these doors or gates were well known to everybody when those 
 authors wrote. 
 
EARLY PROGRESS. 49 
 
 no doubt lived frugally ; aud their wives may have rocked a.d. 
 the cradle, and been diligent with their distaffs': but I '" 
 do not think that they talked so much of Troy, and Rome, 
 and Fiesole as the poet imagined. The generations which 
 occupy themselves much with the history of their ancestors, 
 are generally diUgent recorders of their own. And the 
 leathern-jerkined Florentines were more busied in making 
 history, or at least in the preparation for it, than in 
 writing it. The sentiment of an intense civic patriotism 
 was growing strong among them, in obedience to those 
 same laws of human nature which bind to each other and 
 to their ship the crew which has struggled together in 
 battle and in tempest. In the midst of that troublous 
 anarchic world, they, within their city wall there, were 
 determined to depend on no one but themselves, but to 
 .hold their own — and something more — ^by the might of 
 their own right arms ; and with strong instincts towards a 
 better, more rational, and more orderly life than that pre- 
 vailing in the world around them, were groping their way 
 toward civilization, bent on realising, upholding, and 
 fostering that " civile vivere," that municipal organization 
 of society which they traditionally held to be not only the 
 best, but the only form of fruitful, orderly, and progressive 
 social life. But the high degree of civilization which was 
 to spring so soon and with such wonderful quickness of 
 growth from the foundations which those rough men were 
 preparing for it, can hardly be said to have made its 
 appearance in the world till the institution of the industrial 
 guilds — perhaps the most powerfully organising form of 
 civil arrangement ever yet invented by man — came on the 
 scene to shape the social course in that direction, which 
 decided all its future fortunes. 
 
 Some merchants of Pisa, which had already reached a 
 pitch of civilization not attained by Florence for another 
 luHidred years to come, trading to Tunis, were asked by 
 
 VOL. I. ^ 
 
50 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.D. their correspondents there, who and what were a people 
 ^^^°" calling themselves Florentines, of whom they had heard 
 mention recently : " Oh ! " said the Pisans, " they are our 
 Arabs of the interior." And the reply conveys a very 
 sufficient idea of the place held by the young community 
 in the estimation of their wealthy neighbours. 
 
 These " Arabs of the interior," meanwhile, in the 
 comparative obscurity of their valley at the foot of the 
 Apennines, were steadily pursuing their upward path, 
 growing unceasingly in size, power, and importance. 
 Already they had pushed the continually receding frontier 
 of their little territory to a much greater distance from 
 their city walls than that to which their great poet, writing 
 some two hundred and fifty years later, would have wished 
 to limit them. And still the work of extension and con- 
 sohdation went on ; and one after another the strongholds 
 of the old territorial aristocracy were ' by might rather 
 than by right, as the historian Villani admits, swept out of 
 the way of their progress. 
 
 One case of the kind, specially recorded as having 
 occurred in the year 1135,* merits that special record for 
 a reason which the historians who have narrated it could 
 little have foreseen or imagined. 
 
 About four miles to the south of Florence, on an 
 eminence overlooking the valley of the little river Greve, 
 and the then bridle-path leading towards Siena and Rome, 
 there was a very strong castle, called Monte Boni, Mons 
 Boni, as it is styled in sundry deeds of gift executed within 
 its walls in the years 1041, 1085, and 1100, by which 
 its lords made their peace with the Church, in the usual 
 way, by sharing with churchmen the proceeds of a course 
 of life such as needed a whitewashing stroke of the Church's 
 office. A strong castle on the road to Rome, and just at 
 
 * Malispini, chap. Ixxiii.; Villani, bookiv. chap, xxxvi. ; Coppo Stefani,, 
 book i. rubr. xlii. 
 
THE BTJONI DEL MONTE. SI 
 
 a point where tlie path ascended a steep hill, offered a.i). 
 advantages and temptations not to be resisted; and the^^^^* 
 lords of Monte Boni " took toll " of passengers. But, as 
 Villani very naively says, " the Florentines could not endure 
 that another should do what they abstained from doing." 
 So as usual they sallied forth from their gates one fine 
 morning, attacked the strong fortress, and razed it to the 
 ground. 
 
 All this was, as we have seen, an ordinary occurrence 
 enough in the history of young Plorence. This was a way 
 the burghers had. They were clearing their land of these 
 vestiges of feudalism, much as an American settler clears 
 his ground of the' stumps remaining from the primeval 
 forest. But a special interest will be admitted to belong 
 to this instance of the clearing process, when we discover 
 who those noble old freebooters of Monte Boni were. 
 
 The lords of Monte Boni were called, by an easy, but it 
 might be fancied ironical, derivation from the name of 
 their castle, " Buoni del Monte," — the Good Men of the 
 Mountain ; — and by abbreviation, Buondelmonte, a name 
 which we shall hear more of anon in the pages of this history. 
 But when, after the destruction of their fortress, these 
 Good Men of the Mountain became Plorentine citizens, 
 they increased and multiphed ; and in the next generation, 
 dividing ofi" into two branches, they assumed, as was the 
 frequent practice, two distinctive appellations ; the one 
 branch remaining Buondelmonti, and the other calling 
 themselves Buonaparte. This latter branch shortly after- 
 wards again divided itself into two, of which one settled at 
 San Miniato al Tedesco, and became extinct there in the 
 person of an aged canon of the name within this century ; 
 while the other first established itself at Sarzana, a little 
 town on the coast about half-way between Florence and 
 Genoa, and from thence at a later period transplanted 
 ■ itself to Corsica ; and has since been heard of. 
 
52 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. In the twelfth century too, it would seem, that the 
 ^^^^" family produced men who had the gift of comprehending 
 the spirit of their time. For as has been said, the Buon- 
 delmonti submitted to the destruction of their castle with 
 a good grace, entered Florence as citizens, and thus suc- 
 ceeded in preserving much of their property. 
 
 Many others of the old feudal famihes submitted to a 
 similar transformation ; and some became leading citizens 
 in their new home. The Florentines asked no more of 
 them than this ; and having destroyed the strongholds 
 which were the material causes of the evils they were 
 determined to put down, they were always ready to open 
 their gates to those who would come and live within them, 
 submit to law, and make themselves citizens ; — a wise 
 moderation, which reminds us of the analogous policy on a 
 larger scale of old Rome. 
 
 Nearly, but not quite always, the citizens seem to have 
 been successful in these raids against the castles of the 
 nobles. The first recorded check to the success of their 
 arms occurred in the year 1146; and in fact the young 
 community, in its increasing pride and audacity, con- 
 tinually flew at higher and higher game, and in that year 
 measured its strength against a more powerful adversary 
 than it had hitherto ventured to attack. 
 
 Of all the feudatories of the Empire, the Counts Guidi 
 were by far the most powerful in Central Italy. Coming 
 originally from Germany, like almost all the territorial 
 nobles, who at the first glimmering of historical light after 
 the great darkness of the barbarian invasions, are found in 
 possession of the soil of Italy, they seem to have been 
 settled in this part of the peninsula before the year 960.* 
 
 * A document, bearing date the Hth April in that year, directed by the 
 Marchese Oberto to "his faithful Guide," respecting lands in the immediate 
 
 vicinity of the castle now attacked by the Florentines, has been preserved. 
 
 Repetti, vol. iii. p. 376. 
 
THE CONTI GUIDI. 53 
 
 The first seat of their power was the lordship of Modig- ^■^; 
 liana, in Tuscan Romagna, where they waxed powerful, 
 and held sway as sovereign princes, till their tyranny and 
 crimes caused their subjects to rise against them, and put 
 to death the whole family, with the exception of one infant. 
 From this child sprung a hew race of Guidi, who became 
 possessed of very large and wide-spread estates in Tuscany ; 
 although it would seem, from the document cited in the 
 last note, that the family had also previously possessed 
 estates in this part of Italy. At a later period, the family, 
 having ramified itself into several branches, took different 
 sides in the great party quarrels which separated all Italy 
 into two hostile camps. But although connecting itself 
 with Florentine citizens by marriage, it did not, like the 
 Buondelmonti, become absorbed by the strong assimilating 
 power of the rising Commonwealth. 
 
 One of, the principal strongholds of this powerful family 
 was Monte Croce, a castle situated about nine miles from 
 Florence, in the direction of Ponte a Sieve, now a small 
 town on the road to Arezzo. This strong position " seemed 
 to the Florentines," says Villani, "to be much too near 
 their city." No other pretext of quarrel was sought for or 
 pretended : that was deemed a sufficient ground of offence. 
 The feudal jurisdiction of the Count, holding of the 
 Emperor, was in the way of the townsmen ; and so they 
 forthwith proceeded to clear the way. But the Guidi 
 were assisted in their defence by all the power of the men 
 of Arezzo, where Imperial sympathies were prevalent. 
 And the Florentines got their first beating.* 
 
 The lesson was probably a severe one, for the citizens 
 remained quietly within their walls for the next eight 
 years. Not that it is to be supposed that there existed at 
 Florence the slightest idea of abandoning their object, but 
 
 * Malispini, chap. Ixxii. ; Villaui, book iv. chap. xx.\vii. ; Coppo Stefani, 
 book i. rubr. xliii. 
 
54 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.n. that in all probability the city needed a breathing space to 
 "°*" recruit its strength. In 1154, after an interval of eight 
 years, the city forces again marched out against Monte 
 Croce ; and this time, after a severe struggle, they took it ; 
 and so destroyed it, says Villani, as not to leave one stone 
 upon another. 
 
 Thus far the vi^ars of the new Commonwealth have been 
 with their nearest neighbours only, the territorial nobles 
 holding castles and exercising feudal jurisdiction in the dis- 
 trict immediately around the city. It seems strange that 
 these chieftains, whose interests were evidently identical, and 
 whose sympathies and sentiments must have been similar, 
 should have suffered themselves to be thus destroyed in 
 detail by the Florentines, without making any attempt to 
 unite for mutual support against an enemy so manifestly 
 bent on exterminating the whole of them. There is, how- 
 ever, no trace of any such attempt having been made. 
 
 But now the course of progressive aggrandizement 
 began to bring the Florentines into collision with other 
 social bodies of their own kind ;"and we have reached the 
 period of the first of those wars with neighbouring cities, 
 which make so large a part of all the subsequent history 
 of Florence. Angered by the support which the Arezzo 
 people had given to Count Guidi, "without any valid 
 reason," as one of the historians* says, the Florentines 
 marched against them; and having discomfited themj 
 made peace with them, on promise of future friendly 
 behaviour. 
 
 A few years later, in the year 1177, Florence was at war 
 for the first time with Siena. Once more the Common- 
 wealth " wished to extend itself," and so came to have dis^ 
 putes with the Sienese about some frontier fortresses in the 
 Chianti, a hilly district to the south-west of Florence, at a 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, book i. rubr. xlr. 
 
FLORENTINES AT MONTEPULCIANO. 55 
 
 later period much celebrated for its wines, as readers of 
 Redi will remember. So an opportunity having been 
 offered by a war between Siena and Montepulciano, the 
 Florentines went to the assistance of the latter city, re- 
 lieved it, and then in a pitched battle with the Sienese 
 forces defeated them in this first fight between the two 
 proud cities, with great loss. 
 
 These events mark the commencement of a new phase 
 in the progress of Florentine aggrandizement; and the 
 practice of internecine wars with the neighbouring cities 
 thus inaugurated, makes, as has been said, a large part of 
 the future history of Florence. But it is noteworthy that 
 this same epoch is marked by the first appearance of 
 another feature in Florentine story, which, during the 
 whole remainder of it, plays a still more prominent, and 
 by far more fatally mischievous part, than the wars with 
 other Communes. 
 
 In the next chapter we must speak for the first time of 
 civil dissension within the walls. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1177. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Feudal nobles come into the city— Retain the hope of recovering their 
 original position — Overbearing violence of the nobles — The Uberti 
 Their locality in the city— Civil war between the nobles and the 
 citizens— Great conflagrations in the city— Disastrous floods— Treaty 
 with Lucca— Capitulation with the Albeiti— City nobles do not sup- 
 port the territorial nobles— Expeditions against castles in the Valdelsa 
 —Foundation of Poggibonzi— Of CoUe— Frederick Barbarossa in Italy 
 — His dealings with Florence— Tuscan league under the protection of 
 the Pope^ Florentine ambition — War with Semifonte — Albert of Semi- 
 fonte— Constitutions granted by feudal nobles — Statute of Valdambra 
 — Remarks on this constitution, by Professor Giudioi — These efibrts of 
 the feudal nobles unsuccessful. 
 
 It was the policy and practice of Florence, as has been 
 seen, to make war on the castles of the nobles settled in 
 the territory around them, rather than on their persons. 
 When the stronghold had been razed to the ground, the 
 owners were permitted, and indeed in some instances 
 compelled, to come and reside within the city walls, and 
 change themselves into citizens. They were for the most 
 part left in possession of their lands, though not of the 
 feudal rights and jurisdiction attached to them. And 
 thus, on becoming members of the city community, being 
 rich, they naturally became leading and powerful citizens 
 in it. 
 
 The policy thus pursued by the Florentines was mode- 
 rate and conciliatory ; but it may be doubted whether the 
 results of it did not contribute to those irreconcilable 
 divisions which so often brought the Commonwealth to 
 the brink of ruin. For it was scarcely to be expected that 
 
NOBLES TURNED CITIZENS: 67 
 
 those disrated nobles should become really amalgamated 
 with the citizens among whom they were forced to dwell, 
 or could adopt their feelings, views, and prejudices. They 
 were men, it must be remembered, of a different race, as 
 well as of a different caste, and educated in traditional 
 contempt of the class to which it was now sought to 
 reduce them. 
 
 They did come into the city, these houseless though in 
 many cases still wealthy nobles; but it may well be 
 doubted if they came with either the intention or the 
 capabihty of becoming well-affected, loyal, and useful 
 members of the Commonwealth. There is a remarkable 
 fact which I do not think has ever been noticed, as bear- 
 ing upon this point, but which appears to me to indicate 
 in a curious manner a reserved hope on the part of these 
 citizenized barons, analogous to that of those peasant fami- 
 lies in Ireland who, it is said, carefully preserve the old 
 title-deeds and charters which prove them to have once 
 been possessors of the soil. When Count Guidi was de- 
 feated at Monte Croce, and his castle razed, he sold to the 
 Bishop of Morence all his rights over the lands which had 
 been attached to it. The sale was not definitively con- 
 cluded, it would seem, till the year 1226 ; and the deed 
 recording it is still extant, bearing that date. It is some- 
 what surprising, therefore, to find another deed, dated 
 Cremona, 1247 — twenty years subsequent, that is, to the 
 date of the preceding document, — by which the Emperor 
 Frederick 11. confirms the Counts Guidi in all their pos- 
 sessions and rights at Monte Croce, which they had long 
 before lost by conquest and by sale, without making any 
 reference whatever to those circumstances. On which 
 Repetti,* who had probably examined a greater number of 
 documents belonging to the centuries and countries in 
 
 * Dizionario, vol. iii. p. 376. 
 
 A.B 
 
 1177. 
 
68 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A-^' question than any man living, remarks, that nothing is 
 ' more common than to find Imperial diplomas rehearsing 
 the feuds once possessed by noble families, just as if they 
 were still the possessors of them, many generations after 
 they had been alienated to the various republics, or other- 
 wise definitively lost; and professing to confirm the 
 ancient holders in the possession of them. The meaning 
 and object of so singular a practice can hardly be mis- 
 taken, any more than the significance of it as evidence of 
 the degree of genuineness to be attributed to their ac- 
 ceptance of their new status by the Imperial nobles. 
 
 Meantime, while waiting for the return of better days, 
 the nobles sought within the city walls to place themselves 
 in that relation towards the citizens, which all their feelings, 
 prejudices, and traditional opinions led them to consider 
 as the only proper or " natural " one. They could not yet 
 tolerate the notion of equahty between themselves and 
 Such as those who now, with new-fangled audacity, full of 
 danger (of course) to the best interests of society, called 
 themselves their fellow-citizens. 
 
 The city to be ruled' by consuls, and those to be chosen 
 by the citizens ! The arrangement might be tolerated as 
 a means of keeping the rabble quiet, as long as the latter 
 would give their votes as they were bidden. Otherwise, 
 it might happen that they would take it into their heads 
 to choose some man of their own class, Avhom the men of 
 the old feudal nobility would be called on to obey ! a con- 
 summation manifestly impossible to be submitted to ! 
 
 For many years, it would seem that the people had been 
 docile in this matter.* The consuls that had been elected 
 were in fact the nominees of the leading nobles in the city, 
 and specially of the Uberti. This great and powerful 
 family stands at the head of the roll given by Mahspini,t 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, book i. rubr. xlix. ■]• Chap.Ul 
 
THE UBEE.TI. 59 
 
 of the most ancient and noble families who were settled in A.p. 
 Ploreiice before the building of the second city wall. The ^^'^" 
 historian recounts a legend which represents the family to 
 have descended from Catiline.* But this was doubtless 
 the invention of a later day, when it had come to be a 
 more acceptable flattery to be deemed of Roman and pure 
 Italian race, than of barbarian origin, even though the 
 latter implied descent from the loins of nobles and con- 
 querors, who had once in their knightly pride looked down 
 with sovereign contempt on the conquered inhabitants of 
 the lands they overran. The Uberti are again mentioned 
 by the same historian, among those who possessed feudal 
 tenures in the neighbourhood of Morence. " Many and 
 many a stronghold they possessed around Scandicci f and 
 elsewhere, which were all destroyed by the Commune." 
 They belonged, therefore, to the class of Imperial nobles, 
 and were, there can be little doubt, notwithstanding the 
 early date of their citizenship in Florence, of German 
 extraction, and descended from some knightly Hubert. 
 
 MaHspini minutely records the position in the city of 
 the mansions of most of the old families whom he men- 
 tions as having been settled in Florence at that early 
 period. And in many instances their names, still house- 
 hold words in Florence, bear testimony to the whereabouts 
 of their former local habitation; and in some cases the 
 same spot of ground is still owned and inhabited by the 
 same families to the present day. But the site of the 
 Uberti houses and towers, though neither their name nor 
 vestige of one stone upon another marks the spot, is better 
 known in Florence than that of any other family. Their 
 mansions are more conspicuous by their absence in Flo- 
 rence than the still extant walls, however lofty, of any of 
 their contemporaries. There is not a stone to show that a 
 
 * MaHspini, ehap. xxx. 
 
 ■f A village in Val di &reve, about four or five miles from Florence. 
 
60 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OP PLORENCB. 
 
 A-B- city fortalice once stood in what is now the Piazza della 
 
 1177. '' " • J V, 
 
 Signoria, as nearly as possible on the spot now occupied oy 
 the beautiful fountain and colossal Neptune of Ammanati, 
 But there is the oblique and strangely distorted wall of 
 the Palazzo Pubblico. And who in Florence does not 
 know, or what stranger does not ask, the cause of that 
 extraordinary deformity? The Florentine people chose 
 that the palace symbolizing the majesty of their Common- 
 wealth should be forced out of its fair symmetry, rather 
 than that any portion of it should stand on the ground 
 banned far ever as having been polluted by the residence 
 of those XJberti whose home had been razed to the ground 
 as that of traitors to their country. 
 
 This strangely characteristic anecdote belongs to a 
 period still far in the future at the time our story has 
 reached. But it may assist us in forming an idea of the 
 relationship in which this overbearing family stood towards 
 the people, and in picturing to ourselves some of the scenes 
 in the struggle that now ensued. 
 
 These Uberti had "pretty well always," says the his- 
 torian,* " caused the consuls to be elected as they chose, 
 because they were the most powerful men in the city." 
 But at last, in the year 1177, the city elected consuls 
 really of their own choosing. The Uberti at once refused 
 to accept or submit to the election. The popular party, 
 supported by some of the nobles, replied that the election 
 had been legally made, and that they intended to maintain 
 it. Thereupon there was, for the first time, civil strife in 
 the streets of Florence. But the match having been once 
 lighted, all Florence was in a moment in a conflagration. 
 The whole city flew to arms at the first sound of quarrel. 
 And the suddenness with which the entire population 
 enlisted itself on one or the other side, and the rapidity 
 
 * Malispini, he. cit. 
 
CIVIL WAR IN FLORENCE. 61 
 
 with which the fight became general, would seem to imply \.d. 
 that much bad blood must have already existed, and a ^^'^' 
 strong partizan feeling have already developed itself.* 
 
 The first result of the struggle seems to have been that 
 the people got the upper handj for they carried their 
 point, and the elected consuls remained in office. But the 
 Uberti, though they perceived that they "had lost the 
 fight for this time," by no means intended to abandon 
 their pretensions, or give up the struggle. They perceived, 
 says the historian,! that if they were beaten, it would 
 always be so for the future; and their opponents were 
 equally persuaded that no free election was to be hoped for 
 without an annual fight for it, unless the power of the 
 Uberti were checked. 
 
 So the struggle was continued ; and the streets of Flo- 
 rence became a battle field for the next four years. Very 
 curious is the account, curt and brief though it is, which 
 the three historians cited give of the state of the city 
 during these four years. And unless some considerable 
 allowance be made for exaggeration, it seems to modern 
 ideas impossible that civic life should have been carried on 
 for such a length of time under such circumstances ; or 
 that society should have survived such a four years' course 
 of anarchy and violence. 
 
 The earliest step taken on the first breaking out of the 
 quarrel, seems to have been to convert the city into a col- 
 lection of isolated fortresses. Most of the mansions of the 
 nobles had one or more high towers attached to them, " a 
 hundred, or a hundred and twenty braccia high ; " — from 
 two hundred to two hundred and forty feet. The posses- 
 sion of such an appendage was the especial mark and 
 privilege of a noble residence.- It also happened very 
 
 * Malispini, chap. Ixxvi. ; Villani, book v. chap, ix.; Coppo Sfcefani, 
 book i. rubr. xlix. 
 t Coppo Stefani, loc, cit. 
 
62 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. generally that the houses of three or four families con- 
 ' nected with each other by common descent, or by inter- 
 marriage, stood together in the same neighbourhood. Then 
 the plan adopted was to unite such a knot of buildings 
 into one isolated and self-contained fortress, by means of 
 barricades below, and galleries thrown from one to the 
 other above. The fortresses thus constructed assailed each 
 other, specially from the vantage points of their respective 
 towers, with missiles and stones thrown from " manganelle," 
 which may mean either cross-bows, or instruments made 
 for throwing large masses of stones, after the manner of 
 the ancient catapults. So universal was this fighting in 
 every part of the city, that those few nobles who possessed 
 no towers to their houses forthwith built them. The entire 
 city was converted into a series of besieged strongholds, 
 whence sallies were made by night and by day ; and con- 
 tinual fighting was going on in the streets. Every thorough- 
 fare was crossed by barricades, and " they fought with 
 boar spears, laying in ambush for men as if they were at a 
 boar hunt." * In pitched battles, as the historian remarks, 
 the combatants have to fear the terrible shock of the 
 adversary, but nothing else. But in this street warfare 
 it was far worse. It was as if a continual rain of rocks 
 and stones was falling from the heavens. Men who lived 
 through those times used to tell how, at every hour of the 
 night and day, life was equally insecure; — how it was 
 doubtful whether it were more necessary to guard your 
 door, or your windows and roof; — how every man sus- 
 pected an enemy to be hidden behind the curtains of his 
 bed, or even within it.* At last, say the historians, the 
 citizens became so habituated to this life of perpetual 
 warfare, and the excitement of it, that they would, in very- 
 wantonness, fight one day and eat and drink together the 
 
 * Ammirato, book i. ad. aa, 1177. 
 
CALAMITIES BY FIRE AND FLOOD. 63 
 
 next, recounting and boasting over their deeds of prowess. 
 And thus they continued, till from mere weariness and 
 satiety of excitement, this chronic state of civil warfare 
 died out, rather than came to any definite end ; and there 
 was once more peace in the city. " But none the less," 
 says Villani, " did these quarrels beget the accursed party 
 spirit which afterwards infested Florence." 
 
 Other misfortunes befell the Commonwealth during these 
 years of anarchy and violence. Twice during the month 
 of August there occurred conflagrations, which threatened 
 to compel peace between the citizens, by reducing their 
 city to a heap of ashes. After the first of these misfortunes 
 there was not a house left standing from the Ponte Vecchio 
 to the old market-place, we are told."'^ And the second 
 fire is declared to have been yet more extensive. 
 
 As with regard to the extent and duration of the fighting 
 in the city, so as to the accounts of these misfortunes, it is 
 probable that some allowance must be made for that ex- 
 aggeration in relating anything that excites the feelings 
 and imagination of the narrator, which is to the present 
 day so marked a characteristic in the idiosyncrasy of the 
 people. 
 
 Scarcely were the calamities by fire over, before others 
 almost equally disastrous came upon the Florentines by 
 water. In the month of October of the same yearf a 
 terrible flood in the Arno carried away the Ponte Vecchio, 
 and did much other damage. 
 
 It was quite a matter of course that the foremost minds 
 of that age should see, as the hindmost minds of our own 
 days still continue to see, in such calamities special judg- 
 ments of God on the sins of the nation. Even VUIani, 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, book i. rubr. xlvii. 
 
 t There is some confusion in the chronology of these events. Villani 
 gives 1177 as the year of those fires, Coppo Stefani leaves a blank for the 
 date. The probability is that the real date was a year or two later. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1177. 
 
64 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. who appears to have emancipated himself from some of the 
 ' superstitions of his time, as may be judged from his hint- 
 ing occasionally that the explanation of events is rather to 
 be sought in natural than in those supernatural causes to 
 which it vi^as the habit of his contemporaries to refer any 
 unusual occurrence, — even Villani himself does not venture 
 to question the opinion, that these disasters by flood and 
 fire were the merited punishment of the " too great pride 
 of the city, and the ingratitude of the citizens towards 
 God ; " which, of course, means their insufficient attention 
 to the ceremonies and the ministers of religion. It is remark- 
 able enough, that though these things happened while the 
 citizens were engaged in the hottest of their internecine 
 quarrels, it does not occur to the expounders of Heaven's 
 judgments to attribute them in any degree to the wicked- 
 ness of such fratricidal discord. 
 
 One of the first results of the cessation of these broils, 
 was the stipulation of a league and treaty with the Com- 
 mune of Lucca.* The details of the provisions made by 
 this instrument have been preserved, and are worthy of 
 attention, as illustrative of the sort of relationship in which 
 these political bodies stood towards each other at that 
 period, and of the kind of good offices which the public 
 opinion of the time expected from a friendly community. 
 
 The treaty was signed and sworn to by the advocate 
 Tignoso, of Montecatini, who was at that time consul of 
 Lucca, in the church of Pucheole, situated in the Lucchese 
 territory. 
 
 The Lucchese undertake to defend the lives and pro- 
 perty of Florentines in all places subject to their juris- 
 diction. No Florentine shall be sued for debt to a Luc- 
 chese without two months' notice having been given to the 
 
 * Ammirato, the younger, wlio lias given the substance of this treaty in 
 his supplementary additions to the first book of the elder Ammirato's his- 
 tory, names the 21st of July, 1184, as the date of the ratification of it. 
 
CONVENTION WITH LUCCA. 65 
 
 consuls of Florence ; and if it shall become necessary to 
 arrest any such debtor, it shall be done in such sort as to 
 avoid as far as possible any scandal or shame to the person 
 arrested. 
 
 Por twenty years Lucca engages to assist Florence in 
 any war within the dioceses of Florence or Fiesole, to the 
 extent of taking the field for a space of twenty days ; and 
 specially if such war be against Pistoia. And in any 
 other war, on the request of the consuls, podesta, or other 
 rulers of Florence, the Lucchese shall go to their assistance 
 with one hundred and fifty cavaby, and at least five 
 hundred infantry and bowmen, to be armed, however, 
 at the expense of the Florentines ; and in any such war 
 the Lucchese shall not make peace without the assent of 
 Florence. 
 
 Lucca shall afibrd no aid, not even by counsel, towards 
 the rebuilding or restoration of any castle within the 
 diocese or territory of Florence, and particularly in the 
 district between the river Elsa and the city of Florence ; 
 and within the said district the Lucchese shall make no 
 acquisitions, but shall relinquish any that they may have 
 already made there, even if such aisquisition shall have 
 become the property of the church of Lucca. 
 
 No impediment shall be thrown in the way of any 
 foreigner wishing to proceed from Lucca to Florence, 
 unless such person shall be an enemy to the city of 
 Lucca. 
 
 It is further engaged that the above conditions shall 
 be sworn to by six hundred citizens of Lucca, and that 
 such oath shall be renewed at the expiration of every five 
 years. ' • 
 
 It is to be understood, however^ that from the provi- 
 sions of this treaty shall be excepted whatever might have 
 the efiect of breaking the peace between Pisa and Lucca ; 
 as also whatever would involve hostility to the Emperor, 
 
66 HISTORY OF, THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE, 
 
 or to his son Henry, king of the Romans ; or further, 
 whatever might involve v^ar with the Genoese, the lords of 
 Corvaria, of Porcari, of Montemagno, of Garfagnana, and 
 certain other specified communities. 
 
 Such were the stipulations of a treaty made with the 
 free and independent community of a rival city. It is 
 interesting to compare with them the provisions of a capi- 
 tulation made in the same year by Florence with the feudal 
 lord and his vassals of Mangone, a castello belonging to 
 the family of the Counts Alberti of Vernio, which the 
 Florentines had taken by force and dismantled. 
 
 These Counts Alberti, had large possessions in Val 
 d'Elsa ; and Florence was engaged in gradually abolishing 
 them. This is the explanation of those special stipulations 
 in the treaty with Lucca with regard to the district be- 
 tween Florence and the Elsa. 
 
 The Commune of Mangone, says the instrument, shall 
 be held to make war and peace at the pleasure of the 
 Commune of Florence. 
 
 The people of Mangone shall admit that all that they 
 possess, within or without their walls, is held of the 
 Commune of Florence, to which they shall pay every year 
 a quit rent of one pound of pure silver, and offer a wax 
 candle in the church of St. John the Baptist. 
 
 They are bound to furnish on demand lodging to the 
 Florentine consuls to the number of twelve. 
 
 The Count Alberto, his Countess Tabernaria, and their 
 sons Guido and Mainardo, promise by the next April to 
 have razed to the ground their castle of Pogna, to have 
 destroyed all the towers of Certaldo, and never rebuild 
 them, and to give up into the hands of the Florentine 
 consuls one of the towers of Capraia, at the choice of the 
 said consuls, either to hold it or destroy it at their 
 pleasure. 
 
 The above mentioned lords agree further, that the 
 
THE ALBEETI OF VEENIO. 67 
 
 Florentines shall impose a duty on the inhabitants of all 
 their territory, and all the castles and towns held by them 
 between the river Elsa and Florence, the half of such tax 
 to go to the Commune of Florence, and the other half to 
 the said Counts. 
 
 The said Counts also agree to pay to the Commune, 
 before the end of next March, four hundred lire of good 
 money of Pisa. 
 
 Lastly, they promise never to make either war or peace 
 except at the will of Florence, and always to reside in that 
 city two months in the year in time of war, and one month 
 in time of peace.* 
 
 These Counts Alberti of Vernio were a very great and 
 powerful family ; and hard as the conditions of the above 
 capitulation are, they have more of the appearance of an 
 agreement with a sovereign prince, than marked the 
 dealing of the citizens with most of the smaller tyrants, 
 who were simply dispossessed and turned into private 
 citizens at once. But the Florentines had not yet done 
 with the Counts of Vernio, as we shall very soon see ; and 
 the upshot was, at the end of a somewhat longer process, 
 the sanae in their case as in that of all the rest of their 
 peers. 
 
 It is remarkable that the nobles within the walls, those 
 who had been discomfited by the Commune, had seen their 
 castles destroyed, and who though submitting to becqme 
 citizens, still felt as nobles, however much they were disposed 
 in their new city home to make common cause against 
 their plebeian fellow citizens, yet do not appear to have 
 ever felt any disposition to aid their as yet undispossessed 
 fellows in their struggles to hold their own against the 
 forces of the Commune, It is difficult to suppose that 
 they should not have been able to do so. They were able, 
 
 * Ammirato, he. cit. 
 
 f 2 
 
68 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. as we have just seen, to rouse and maintain a civil war 
 ^^^^' within the gates of Florence j and yet they either could 
 not or would not, at all events did not, prevent the citizens 
 from going forth on new expeditions against the feudal 
 nobles of the neighbourhood, as soon as ever they left off 
 fighting among themselves. It is impossible to avoid 
 feeling that these citizenized nobles seem to have acted 
 very much after the manner of the fox in the fable, who, 
 having lost his own tail, was well pleased that all the other 
 foxes should be reduced to the same condition. 
 
 The new expeditions of the Florentines were against 
 Monte Grossoli, a castle among the Chianti hiUs, and 
 Pogna, a fortress in the Valdelsa, both held by " gentle- 
 men who would not obey the Commune" of Florence, 
 and both, as usual, destroyed. The Valdelsa, or valley of 
 the Elsa, is an extremely pleasant district, watered by a 
 river of that name, which, coming from the direction of 
 Siena,, falls into the Arno near Empoli, a little town 
 eighteen miles from Florence, and nearly at the foot of the 
 mountain on whose crest is situated that residence of the 
 Imperial Vicars, San Miniato al Tedesco, the position of 
 which has aheady been described. It will be observed, 
 therefore, that the Commune continues to push back its 
 frontiers, and that, its castle-exterminating expeditions 
 extend already to a far greater distance from the city 
 than those earliest exploits narrated in the last chapter. 
 
 A little before this the Commonwealth had taken the 
 first step in another course of policy, which indicates that 
 the view of the citizens grew with the growth of their 
 prosperous fortunes, and became rapidly wider and more 
 ambitious. No longer contented with merely sweeping 
 away the feudal tenants and their castles, they now began, 
 at a distance of twenty miles from their own walls, to 
 found other Communes, destined to become humble allies 
 and dependents, and supporters of the Florentine power in 
 
FOUNDATION OF POGGIBONZI. 69 
 
 A.T). 
 
 that debateable land on the frontier betweem them and the 
 great rival Commonwealth of Siena. ^^^^ 
 
 When the Florentine army was returning from the expe- 
 dition against that city, mentioned at the end of the last 
 chapter, some offence committed against the inhabitants of 
 some scattered villages, about half-way between Florence 
 and Siena, — about twenty miles, that is to say, from either 
 city, — led those people to gather themselves together on a 
 favourably situated spot, for the purpose of mutual support 
 and protection. They surrounded their new settlement 
 with a well-built stone wall, and called the place, which 
 increased and throve with extraordinary rapidity, Poggi- 
 bonzi, from the name of the individual who had owned the 
 hill — " Poggio " — on which the new town was built. And 
 as the first object which had led to the foundation of the 
 place, had been security from Florentine wrong-doing, 
 Poggibonzi naturally allied- itself with Siena. The new 
 town grew strong: and the Florentines, as Villani says, 
 were " exceedingly vexed " by its existence. In order to 
 counterbalance the evil, therefore, they determined to found 
 an opposition town in the immediate neighbourhood. So 
 they gathered together the people of several other scattered 
 hamlets in the upper part of the valley of the Elsa ; they 
 selected .a very favourably-placed hill about three miles to 
 the south of Poggibonzi, and there founded Colie, now a 
 city, and one of the most thriving industrial towns in 
 Tuscany. Commissaries were sent from Florence to super- 
 intend the building of the walls, and the first stone of 
 them was laid in mortar made with the blood drawn in 
 equal portions from the arms of the men of Colle and 
 those of Florence, in token of everlasting amity and 
 aUiance ; " and certain it is," adds Villani, " that the 
 Commune of Colle has ever been as a daughter to that of 
 Florence." 
 
 But while the Florentines were thus busy, according to 
 
70 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. the law of their nature, in putting down feudal castles and 
 * putting up burgher-ruled Communes, there was a little 
 check in store for them, just to remind them that they and 
 their city, and their political principles and practices, were 
 looked on with no favourable eye by the great ones of the 
 earth ; and that if they were to hold the position they had 
 assumed, they must expect to owe their political existence 
 to the strength of their own walls, and the prowess of their 
 own right arms. 
 
 Suddenly over the tops of the Apennines appears the 
 figure of the Emperor, and that Emperor no other than 
 Erederick Barbarossa ! The boys were in the midst of 
 their forbidden play when the schoolmaster suddenly made 
 his appearance among them. 
 
 Frederick arrived in Elorence on the 31st of July, in the 
 year 1184.* He had crossed the Alps for the fourth time. 
 He was in his sixty-third year ; and he was a wiser and 
 more moderate man than when, furious in his hot youth at 
 the opposition of the Lombard cities to his prerogative, he 
 had laid Milan in ruins. His life had been a struggle with 
 the necessities of a position which constantly required him 
 to be in two places at once. Germany and Italy had 
 equally needed his presence, and he had been uninter- 
 mittingly hurrying from one to the other. He h,ad been 
 fighting a long and ever-losing battle with the Popes, 
 whose spiritual arms were as yet irresistible. He had 
 been thoroughly beaten at Corno by those Lombard cities 
 which he had so entirely despised, and he had been fain to 
 make a peace, which yielded fully ail they wanted of him, 
 at Constance. A Tuscan league had also been formed 
 against him, including in it all the leading Tuscan cities, 
 save Pisa and Pistoia. But the Tuscan cities rose into 
 power and importance at a later date than those of Lom- 
 
 * Yillani, book t. chap. xii. 
 
BARBAEOSSA AT FLORENCE. 71 
 
 bardy ; with the exception indeed of Pisa, which remained 
 as- ever, Imperialist in her sympathies ; and their league 
 was of far less importance at the time, and less celebrity 
 in history. 
 
 Frederick had, however, now at last reconciled himself 
 with the Church, and was about to wipe off all scores, and 
 atone for all the shortcomings and misdeeds of a long life, 
 by leading a Crusade against the Saracens. Under these 
 circumstances, he was, notwithstanding all past reverses 
 and miscarriages in his attempts to assert the supremacy 
 of the Imperial authority over the Italian cities, able to 
 appear at Florence with a fair show of Csesarian majesty, 
 and vsdth the dignity and bearing of an arbiter and 
 judge. 
 
 And there was a long bill of indictment to be preferred 
 against Florence before the Imperial tribunal. Florence 
 had been long living as if there had been no such thing as 
 an Emperor in the world. She had oppressed and harried 
 the Imperial vassals ; she had routed the Imperial troops ; 
 and slain the Imperial vicar. She had grown fat and 
 proud ; had refused to submit to the dictation of nobles 
 within her walls ; and was already beginning to exhibit 
 symptoms of that spirit which, when grown to its full 
 strength, was to make her for many generations a thorn in 
 the side of all principalities, powers, and legitimacies. 
 
 It certainly was not to be expected that any Caesar 
 would look with loving eyes on those stout and turbulent 
 burghers, beginning now too, it may be believed, to appear 
 less commonly in those virtuous bone-buttoned leathern 
 jerkins, and more frequently in decorous cloth, while every 
 young man was learning to think his senior's robe coarse 
 in texture and in colour, and clad his own limbs in an 
 improved material. Thriving traders, as ready with their 
 pikes and crowbars, as with their pens and ledgers, who 
 had more reverence for an Italian Pope than for a German 
 
 A.D. 
 1184. 
 
72 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.B. Emperor, and very far more for their own Commune than 
 ^^ ' for either, who forced noble gentlemen to the degradation 
 of becoming citizens, who would not even be ruled by 
 them when they had become such, who would elect their 
 own consuls, and prate about their own civil regulations as 
 sovereign law ; — such a community assuredly could be no 
 agreeable subject of contemplation to an Emperor by right 
 divine. 
 
 But Frederick was no longer that terrible Barbarossa 
 who had sown with salt the site of ruined Milan. There 
 was many a silver streak now in that fiery auburn beard ; 
 and many a severe lesson had moderated the Ught in that 
 bold blue eye. The Emperor, about to assume the cross, 
 was disposed to be moderate ; and Florence, it may well be 
 supposed, was too much exhausted by her recent intestinal 
 quarrels to be in the humour for open rebellion. Besides, 
 the Emperor was reconciled with the Pope. 
 
 An ominous conjunction that ; boding nothing but evil 
 to Florence and mankind. It is curious to reflect, that as 
 this temporary and passing reconciliation of the temporal 
 with the spiritual despotism presided over the first re- 
 pression of Florentine freedom, so its ultimate destruction 
 was efiected only by the closer and more permanent 
 aUiance of the two great enemies of mankind. 
 
 On the present occasion Florence made no resistance, 
 but sullenly held out her palm to receive the chastisement 
 awarded by her Imperial pedagogue. On the formal 
 complaint of the dispossessed nobles, the Emperor declared 
 Florence to be deprived of all jurisdictipn over the sur- 
 rounding territory. Her authority was henceforth to be 
 bounded by her city walls.* 
 
 It can hardly be supposed that so experienced and able 
 a man as Frederick imagined that this arrangement would 
 
 * Villani, book y. chap, xii. ; Coppo Stefaai, book i. rubr. lii. 
 
DEATH OF FREDERICK BARBAROSSA. 73 
 
 last very much longer than till his back was turned. But a.d. 
 the nobles may have flattered themselves that the good old 
 times were coming back again, and there was an end of 
 the violent upstart city which had bearded them ; and 
 they must have been not a little indignant and disgusted 
 when, very shortly afterwards, the Emperor himself par- 
 tially restored their jurisdiction to the Florentines as a 
 reward for the conspicuous valour of a body of Plorentine 
 crusaders at the taking of Damiata. The jurisdiction was 
 restored to them within a radius of ten miles from the 
 city walls. 
 
 But Frederick met his death, as most readers will 
 remember, by bathing in that same Cydnus which was so 
 nearly fatal to Macedonian Alexander ; and his son Henry 
 V. succeeded to the Imperial throne in 1191. During the 
 first few years of his reign he continued on good terms 
 with Pope Celestine, aind was able to restore in some 
 degree the authority of the Empire in most parts of Italy. 
 But in 1198, Innocent III., a very difl'erent Pope from 
 the irresolute Celestine, ascended the throne of St. Peter, 
 and, as might have been anticipated from the nature of 
 the man, very soon quarrelled with the Emperor and 
 excommunicated him without hesitation. As usual, there 
 was once again an end to the re-invigorated power of the 
 Empire in Italy ; a new Tuscan league was formed, under 
 the protection of the Pope — to the exclusion, as before, of 
 Pisa, which held firm to the Emperor ; and Florence fell 
 at once again into its former course of progressive ag- 
 grandizement and enlargement of its boundaries. 
 
 And its expeditions against the castles of the feudal 
 nobiUty were continually extended to greater and greater 
 distances from* the city. So persevering, so systematic 
 was their war against the holders of these ancient fiefs, 
 that it is impossible to doubt that the Florentines had, 
 from a very early date, conceived the ambition and formed 
 
A.D. 
 1191, 
 
 74 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 the determination to become a powerful sovereign state. 
 That the citizens of a free town, even supposing Florence 
 to have been theoretically and legally as well as practically 
 free^ should have conceived such an ambition, is a remark- 
 able fact, and marks a wide difference between the ideas 
 and social theories of the rising cities in the great feudal 
 monarchies of England and France, and those of Italy. 
 The English and French cities, as they became rich and 
 influential, struggled vigorously and successfully for en- 
 franchisement, privileges, and a certain amount of inde- 
 pendence and self-government within their own walls. 
 But it never entered into the imagination of the most 
 powerful among them to dream of sallying forth thence 
 for the purpose of extending their power at the expense of 
 the neighbouring territorial nobility. It is clear that their 
 whole theory of social existence was a radically different 
 one ; and the difference must be attributed to that inherit- 
 ance of old Roman ideas, grown by transmission through 
 many generations into the nature almost of instincts, 
 which, surviving all the dissolving power of the barbarian 
 invasions, made it natural to those descendants of Roman 
 colonists to think of a city as the only civilized social 
 integer, and the natural centre of a larger or smaller 
 dominion. 
 
 From those earliest expeditions against the nearest 
 nobles — which, as we have seen, were undertaken almost 
 as soon as the young Commune had a distinct conscious- 
 ness of its own existence,^ — the citizens steadily pursued 
 their object of replacing feudal jurisdiction by civic rule 
 throughout the entire country which lay between their own 
 walls and the frontier of the neighbouring cities. In 1 193 
 we find recorded the solemn fixing of their limits by 
 Imperial sanction, as has been stated, at a distance of ten 
 miles from their walls. But without the smallest trace of 
 any act rescinding that ordinance, or hint of its ceasing in 
 
WAR AGAINST SEMIFONTE. 75 
 
 any way or for any reason to be in vigour, we find tlie a.b, 
 irrepressible Commune marching out ■ to put down and ^^^^' 
 sweep away other castles during the latter years of the 
 twelfth, century ; and in 1202 we have the record of the 
 destruction of the important stronghold of Combiata in the 
 MugeUo, to the northward of Prato, at a distance of some 
 twenty miles from- the city on one side ; and the taking in 
 the same year, after a three years' siege, of the still more 
 important castle and town of Semifonte, situated at an 
 equal distance in the opposite direction.* 
 
 This war against Semifonte — for the greatness of the 
 effort would appear to have merited that name, — this 
 three years' siege, seems to have been the most important 
 contest in which the Commune had yet engaged, A 
 special tax was imposed on all the inhabitants of the 
 Florentine territory to meet the expenses of the expe- 
 dition ; a special tax, be it observed, levied on nobles and 
 plebeians alike, for the destruction of a noble family, and 
 for accomplishing that which was an act of audacious 
 defiance of the Imperial authority, and in direct contra- 
 vention of the decree of the Emperor so recently assigning 
 the limits of the city jurisdiction. 
 
 Semifonte, though frequently called a " Castello," was 
 unquestionably much more than a castle. And indeed, 
 in general the English word is a very imperfect rendering 
 of the term " castello " in the pages of the Italian histo- 
 
 * Malispini, chap. xoii. ; Villani, book v. chap. xxx. ; Coppo Stefani, 
 book i. rubr. Ivii. The work of subjugating and destroying Semifonte, 
 spoken of in the text as a continuous effort of three years' duration, is con- 
 sidered by some chroniclers to have consisted of two separate expeditions, 
 with an interval between them. There is a chronicle of this war, purport- 
 ing to be by one Pace da Certaldo, which gives a very minute and detailed 
 description of the town and fortifications of Semifonte, and of the incidents 
 of the siege, even to the words used in a debate on the question of surren- 
 der. But the best modern authorities have judged this to be apocryphal, 
 a romance rather than a history, and a production of a much later period. 
 And indeed it bears on the face of it the strongest evidence of being so. 
 
76 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.D. rians. A large city would hardly be called so. But any 
 ^^'^^' fortified habitation, or collection of habitations less than 
 this, often the whole of a considerable town, is spoken of 
 as a "castello" by the writers of those centuries; and a 
 doggrel distich, which remained a proverbial saying in 
 Elorence for generations afterwards, is a proof both of the 
 importance of the place, of the animus which impelled the 
 Florentines to destroy it at all cost, and of the permanent 
 remembrance left among the citizens of the greatness of 
 the effort it had required. 
 
 " Fiorenza fatti in la ! 
 Che Semifonte si fa cittd." 
 
 " Back, Florence, back! by the way that you came ; 
 Semifonte the rank of a city would claim ! " 
 
 The rhyme was sneeringly chanted in the streets of 
 Florence, in days when scarcely a stone was left to mark 
 the site of Semifonte ; and it is very easy to comprehend 
 the feeling expressed by this persevering recurrence to the 
 recollection of the exploit. " What ! the feudal grandees 
 would take a leaf out of our book, would they ? They 
 can grow into cities, too — and think to establish one 
 which is to check the progress and bar the further ad- 
 vance of Florence ! A very likely thing ! " This, I think, 
 is the sentiment, which remained fresh in the minds of the 
 Florentine populace so many years after the destruction of 
 their enemy. 
 
 For Semifonte, though the buildings gathered around 
 the castle properly so called, amounted to a town which 
 might be supposed capable of the ambition of growing to 
 be a city, was in fact the property and feudal tenure of 
 the great and powerful family of those same Counts 
 Alberti, of Vernio, with whom Florence had already had 
 dealings. Semifonte had been held by them from of old, 
 and was confirmed to them by special diploma of Frede- 
 
ALBERT OP SEMIFONTE, 77 
 
 rick Barbarossa, bearing date 1164; and the signature of x.v 
 the possessor at that date, " Conte Alberto di Seraifonte," ^^°^' 
 is found at the foot of many imperial documents and de- 
 crees.* But the researches of the learned writer cited at 
 the foot of the page, have brought to light two or three 
 other documents which illustrate in so curious a manner 
 the character and conduct of this magnificent Albert of 
 Semifonte, that they are worth citing as characteristic of 
 the class which the citizens of Florence were determined 
 to extirpate from the soil of Tuscany. 
 
 Who would have guessed, that while the noble " Albert 
 of Semifonte" was thus grandiloquently swaggering in 
 Imperial diplomas and courtly instruments, he had already 
 sold to the Commune of Florence all his right to the lord- 
 ship of Semifonte for four hundred f lire ; and that he had, 
 while his vassals were bravely withstanding a three years' 
 siege in defence of their homes and, as they supposed, of 
 his rights and property, engaged by deed dated 1199 J not 
 to assist them in any way in their war against Florence. 
 And after this, when all was over, when of his castle 
 and of his vassals' houses not one stone remained upon 
 another, and the victorious Florentines had made a solemn 
 decree that no building should ever again be raised on 
 that spot, we find the sons of this Albert, in a deed dated 
 1209, reserving their right over the town and castle of 
 Semifonte. This practice of the dispossessed nobles, of 
 continuing to claim in all documents, rights, titles and 
 possessions long since lost and forfeited, has been already 
 noticed. But this instance of a double treason— ^of in- 
 credibly base treason, first to his own unhappy and be- 
 trayed vassals, and of attempted swindling as regards the 
 Commune to which he had sold the rights he afterwards 
 lays claim to, — on the part of one of the proudest and 
 
 * Repetti, lac. cit. 
 f Document dated 1180, cited by Repetti, loc. cit. % Cited, ih, 
 
78 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP ELOEENCEr 
 
 A.D- most powerful of the great families of that period, is 
 worthy of being preserved. 
 
 ■ It is unnecessary to record in detail all the similar but 
 less important enterprises of the same sort, by which the 
 Florentines responded to the Imperial decision shutting 
 them within a circuit drawn at ten miles' distance from 
 their city wall. The object in all these raids is exactly 
 similar ; and the upshot is always the same, except that 
 the "castle," including a larger or smaller number of 
 habitations gathered round it, was in some cases razed to 
 the ground, while in others the Commune contented itself 
 with compelling the feudal lords to reside in the city, and 
 subjecting the vassals to > their own jurisdiction. The 
 main thing of interest is to observe that these expeditions 
 became gradually more and more distant from the city ; 
 and that the extent of its territory was thus continually on 
 the increase. 
 
 It is necessary, however, to mention more particularly a 
 policy of another and a very different kind, by means of 
 which the nobles about this time sought to stem the 
 advancing tide of' Florentine and civic — i.e., anti-feudal — 
 supremacy. This was nothing less than an atteiiipt by 
 some of the larger holders of Imperial feuds, to bid for the 
 loyalty and affection of their subjects against the encroach- 
 ing democratic Communes, by offering them such a mea- 
 sure of freedom and self-government as should convince 
 them that they had nothing :to gain by becoming the 
 subjects of the latter. The homage thus paid to the irre- 
 sistibly rising spirit of liberty and self-government, is one 
 of the most significant and interesting evidences of the 
 social condition and state of opinion at that time in Cen- 
 tral Italy which history has preserved for us. And the 
 contrast between such a policy on the part of a feudal 
 chieftain, as that which I am about to cite, and the deal- 
 ings of the great feudatories on the northern side of the 
 
COUNT GUIDO GUERRA. 79 
 
 Alps, sets in a very strong light the great start in the van a.b. 
 of civilization which Italy had already gained :at the begin- 
 ning of the thirteenth century. . : 
 
 Those same counts Guidi of Modigliana who have been 
 
 already mentioned as perhaps the most wealthy and 
 
 powerful of .the holders of Imperial feuds in Central Italy, 
 
 and who were, driven, as we have seen, from their castle 
 
 and town of Monte Croce in 1154, were also lords of a 
 
 small county, composed of five or six villages, in the valley 
 
 of the Ambra. That river, flowing from the south out of the 
 
 Chianti hUls, falls into the Arno not far from the little town of 
 
 Montevarchi, about half way between Florence and Arezzo. 
 
 Shut up in the recesses of their pleasant and obscure 
 
 valley, among the. then roadless Chianti hills, it might 
 
 have been supposed that the villagers of the Valdambra 
 
 would have been content to be ruled by their native lords, 
 
 as their fathers had been before them. And doubtless 
 
 they would have been so content, had not the contagion of 
 
 Florentine Hberalism come near them. But Florence had 
 
 already acquired territory at a greater distance from her 
 
 walls than Valdambra; the Counts Guidi had already 
 
 experienced the dangers to be feared from their proximity, 
 
 and they determined to try what might be done by an 
 
 attempt to attach their people to their own rule. For 
 
 such a purpose, with democratic Florence within hail, it 
 
 was necessary to bid high. And the reader will probably 
 
 be surprised to see how high their bidding in fact was. 
 
 In 1208 Count Guido, surnamed Guerra, the third of 
 that name, who had married a Florentine lady, the daughter 
 of that great citizen, Bellincione Berti, whom Dante, it will 
 be remembered, names as one of those who walked the 
 streets in plain leathern jerkin in the good old days of 
 Florence, — this Guido Guerra, mayhap having imbibed 
 some more advanced notions from his citizen wife than fell 
 ordinarily to the lot of thenobles of those days, ordered 
 
80 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 AB. that a body of statutes should be drawn up for the govern- 
 • ment of his Viscontado of Valdambra, as the Plorentme 
 historians generally call it. And not content with this 
 singular innovation, he actually went to the length of 
 directing that this should be done by twelve men of the 
 various villages named by their fellow villagers. In a word, 
 he granted a " constitution " to his subjects. 
 
 The remarkable document produced in consequence of 
 this order has been preserved ; and some of its provisions 
 are well worthy of our attention. 
 
 The principle of self-government was conceded by the 
 fact abeady stated ; and it was guaranteed by the right of 
 electing a Council to assist the head of the state, and by 
 the yet more important right of public meeting and pubHc 
 debate. The chief magistrate was to be a Viscount or 
 Podesta named by the Count. He was bound to go on 
 circuit round the various villages of the state during twelve 
 days of every month for the administration of justice. In 
 certain specified cases he could not give judgment without 
 the assent of the Council named by the inhabitants. Every 
 male inhabitant from eighteen to seventy years of age was 
 bound to swear fidelity and obedience to the Podesta and 
 to the Commune, under pain of a fine and outlawry. Every 
 inhabitant from eighteen to forty who did not attend Par- 
 liament when it was convoked by the Podesta, was subject 
 to fine. It is to be understood, however, that they ap- 
 peared there, not as sharers in political power, but as coun- 
 sellors only. In some cases, however, specially in that of 
 any proposed change in the statute, the Podesta could not 
 proceed without the assent of the inhabitants assembled in 
 ParUament. The public funds were kept by a treasurer, 
 who submitted his accounts every two months to the 
 Podesta and the Council. The taxes were imposed equally 
 on every hearth or family ; and the redevance of certain 
 feudal services to the lord was maintained. The Podesta 
 
STATUTES OF VALDAMBRA. 81 
 
 was punished by fine if he neglected to administer justice a.b. 
 promptly when called on by any plaintifi" to do so. It was ^^°^" 
 forbidden him to delay in pronouncing his sentence more 
 than two months. All fines were to be paid within one 
 month. In all cases of offence committed against a woman, 
 or by a woman, the fine imposed was half that assigned by 
 the law to a similar crime committed by or against a man. 
 In cases of offences unforeseen by the law, the fine was 
 to be assessed by the Podesta and the Council. The lord 
 of the territory was not to interfere with the administration 
 of justice, except that in cases where two different punish- 
 ments were assigned by the law to any offence, it was 
 competent to the Count to choose between them. Offences 
 against any envoy or representative of the Count were to 
 be punished as if committed against himself ; and in such 
 cases he was the arbiter of the punishment. If he chose to 
 inflict a fine, non-payment within ten days was to be pun- 
 ished by the amputation of a foot or a hand, banishment, 
 and confiscation of goods. Heavy penalties were enacted 
 against incendiaries. Homicide was punished by a fine of 
 a hundred lire (equal perhaps to the present value of 50^.), 
 without regard to the quality of the person slain. If the 
 murderer was contumacious, he was sentenced to perpetual 
 exile, and the destruction of all his possessions. Thieves 
 were punished by fine and flogging ; and if the fine was 
 not paid within ten days, the thief was to lose a foot or a 
 hand. Each of the villages was liable to claims for com- 
 pensation for wrongs done by any one of its inhabitants, 
 the plaintiff being required to swear that he was acting in 
 good faith, and had used in vain every effort to discover 
 the offender. The whole criminal jurisprudence is based 
 entirely on the theory that every wrong done may be com- 
 pensated by a money payment. Death or other corporal 
 punishment is resorted to merely as subsidiary, and to 
 avoid the defeat of justice by a non-payment of fines. 
 
82 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.D. The Latin text of this body of law was published for the 
 ^^°^" first time a few years ago by Professor Bonaini, the Director 
 of the Archives at Florence. But Professor Giudici h'as 
 been the first* to assign to the document its veritable his- 
 torical significance, as an evidence of the efi'orts made by 
 the rulers of the old society, as it had been previously con- 
 stituted, to stem the rising tide of the new system, which 
 was overwhelming them. The Professor makes the follow- 
 ing remarks on this curious little thirteenth-century code, 
 and his words are well worth quoting : — 
 
 " If we compare this political constitution of the people 
 of the Valdambra with that, for instance, of the inhabi- 
 tants of Susa, to whom Thomas of Savoy gave, in 1198, 
 privileges probably more ample than those previously 
 granted by his grandfather Amadeus III., we shall see very 
 clearly the progress which civilization had made in these 
 parts of Italy (Tuscany, the author means), which had been 
 less affected by the rule of the barbarians, and by the ad- 
 mixture of their race. Nevertheless, both one and the 
 other example will serve to prove how the feudal system, 
 which, beyond the Alps, has been termed a perpetual 
 tyranny broken up into bits, and for that reason more 
 ferocious and cruel, suffered itself in Italy to be dragged 
 along by the rapid and ever-increasing progress of civilisa- 
 tion. Nor was it the secular feudatories only who made 
 large concessions of privileges and statutes to their vassals. 
 The ecclesiastics also not only obeyed the inevitable influ- 
 ence of social progress, but in some instances they made 
 the condition of the inhabitants of their territories such as 
 to leave them no room to envy the citizens of the best con- 
 stituted cities. They were driven to do this — it is well to 
 repeat it — by the absolute necessity of the times ; seeino- 
 that the free Communes — which found in the greater num- 
 
 * Stoiia politica degli Municipii Italiani, p. 553. 
 
VAIN CONCESSIONS OP FEUDAL LORDS. 83 
 
 ber of citizens ready to defend their own walls a guarantee ^.d. 
 
 1'20S 
 
 of their safety and of their future fortunes — had become 
 as it were centres of attraction, inviting in a hundred ways 
 the inhabitants of the surrounding country, who flocked to 
 them for the sake of safety to their lives and property, and 
 of enjoying beneath the shadow of the venerated gonfalon 
 of the Commune, the pleasure of feehng themselves to be 
 free men." 
 
 Of course all the efforts thus made were vain. Of course 
 the security offered by the great Communes (though to 
 our notions it was singularly insecure security), and the 
 pleasure of feeling themselves to be freemen, by which is 
 to be understood the pleasure of taking a part in the go- 
 vernment ; of being a member of the ruling class, which is, 
 it may be remarked in passing, a very seriously different 
 thing ; of course all this prevailed. Of course it was then 
 as ever useless for the old and effete to attempt competi- 
 tion with the new and young, for the birth of which the due 
 and full time has arrived. 
 
 (J d 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Foreign Podesta elected — Extension of the territory of the city — Forces 
 against which Florence had to contend — Influence of the Papacy — 
 Puhlio opinion — Civil dissension fatal to Florence — Sameness of the 
 underlying causes of the successive feuds — Why these quarrels were 
 fatal to Florence — The title of Podesta not a new one — Significance of 
 the regulation, that the Podesta must be a foreigner — Policy of distrust 
 — War with the Siena — Quarrel between Buondelmonte and other 
 nobles — Origin of the dispute — The jilted bride — Murder of Buondel- 
 mCnte— Origin of the Guelph and Ghibelline feud attributed to this 
 quarrel — Not so in reality — What the Ghibellines were — Keal causes 
 of the feud. 
 
 A.T). In the year 1207 a very notable innovation was effected 
 ■ in the constitution of Florence. In that year a foreign 
 Podesta was for the first time elected as chief magistrate 
 of the Commonweialth. 
 
 We have traversed a space of about a hundred years 
 from the period fixed on as the commencement of the 
 independence of the Commune ; — of exactly a hundred 
 years, if we date that independence from those earliest 
 recorded expeditions of the Elorentines against some of 
 the more immediately neighbouring and smaller feudal 
 chieftains, which may be considered as marking the earliest 
 self-consciousness of the infant community. In 1107 the 
 Commune began its course of portentous growth, by 
 absorbing the territories immediately outside those narrow 
 bounds, some three miles from the walls, within which 
 Dante would have wished to circumscribe his country. 
 And in 1207 the resolution of the government, which 
 
INCREASE OF THE CITY. 83 
 
 made it imperative that the first magistrate in Morence a.d. 
 should be a foreigner, was accomplished. • 
 
 Let us take a brief glance backwards at what has been 
 done by the young Commonwealth in this first century of 
 its existence. 
 
 The leading and by far the most prominent paragraph 
 in the report, is that which signalizes the progress of 
 material increase. As in the case of the individual infant, 
 so in that of the young body social, this is the most 
 notable and important phenomenon ; and the chief business 
 of the earliest historians of the Commonwealth is that of 
 taking stock, and noting the rapidly progressing proportions 
 of increment. 
 
 The elder historians narrate, one after the other, these 
 incessant expeditions of their fathers against all their 
 neighbours, and chronicle the unvarying results of them, 
 very impassibly, as is their way, without any word of 
 apology for aggressions, or any exultation over their gains. 
 But later writers of Florentine history have been struck 
 by the rapidity of this growth, and have enumerated the 
 extraordinary lists of the Florentine conquests. But though 
 an EngHsh reader might be astonished at the length of this 
 roll of names, many of them existing no more save as 
 reminiscences, they would afford him very little intelligible 
 information of the extent of the increase accompHshed by 
 the Commonwealth. He will form a better idea of this 
 by being told, that whereas a diameter of about six miles 
 may be taken as the measure of the Florentine territory at 
 the beginning of the century in question, a diameter of 
 forty miles might with about equal precision be assumed 
 as that of the acquisitions of the Commune at the end of 
 it. The frontier had been pushed nearly half way to Pisa 
 and Lucca, nearly to the walls of Pistoia, and much more 
 than half way in the direction of the cities of Arezzo and 
 Siena. The acquisitions of Florence indeed overlapped in 
 
86 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH 0¥ FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. part the latter city ; for she had already, as we have seen, 
 '■ quasi-subject Communes beyond it towards Perugia and 
 Rome. 
 
 And this growth had been well-nigh continuous and 
 unceasing. With one or two short and ineffectual checks, 
 the progress had been unbroken ; and it had been accom- 
 plished in defiance of the greatest temporal authority then 
 existing in the world — against the interest, against the 
 wish, and in the teeth of the prohibitions of the Emperors. 
 In vain had the more powerful of the Imperial feudatories, 
 observing the fatal onward march of this upstart commu- 
 nity, and looking forward with painful anxiety to the day 
 when, with the inevitable certainty of an advancing ocean 
 tide, their own turn to be swallowed up should arrive, 
 appealed to their great chief and patron. In vain had 
 they pointed out, with the irresistible logic of facts, that 
 this dreadful community was insatiable, that its onward 
 march was unbroken, that its ambition would be satisfied 
 with nothing less than the possession and sovereignty of 
 all Central Italy, and that if a remedy for the evil were 
 not speedily adopted, the Imperial authority itself would 
 find that it had lost aU hold on Italy, when these Com- 
 munes, and especially Morence, should have absolutely 
 become strong enough to defy the Empire. The appeal 
 was vain; not because the Emperors did not feel the 
 cogency of it, or did not sympathise with the complainants, 
 but because they were powerless to prevent the evil. 
 
 In truth, when we consider the forces arrayed against 
 each other in this struggle for supremacy, the result of the 
 contest seems extraordinary in a greater degree than has 
 been remarked by the historians who have treated of it. 
 On the one side we have a little community of — say at the 
 utmost a hundred thousand souls, including the inhabitants 
 of the narrotv strip of territory around the city, — citizens, 
 accustomed no doubt to the use of arms, but organized for 
 
INrLUENCE OP THE PAPACY. 87 
 
 civic and not for military purposes. On the other hand, a.b. 
 we have a long list of military chieftains, whose profession 
 and business was war, exercising absolute authority over a 
 population of vassals and retainers very far larger than 
 that of their adversaries, occupying an extensive territory 
 studded with their strongholds and fortified towns, knowing 
 that their interests and dangers were perfectly identical, 
 and supported by the whole force of the Imperial interest 
 and authority. 
 
 There was, however, one other force which fought on 
 the side of the citizens, which must be taken into account 
 — ^the Papacy ; and had there been no such force in exist- 
 ence, the issue of the struggle must, as far as a judgment 
 can be formed on an hypothesis which deranges every 
 element of the problem, have been difierent; but it is 
 necessary that the mode in which this force operated should 
 be rightly understood. We do not find any trace of active 
 interference by the Popes on behalf of the Florentines; 
 but they every now and then paralysed the Imperial power 
 by their anathemas and excommunications, and this usually 
 exactly at those moments when the danger to be feared 
 from the Emperor's power in Italy was the most imminent. 
 There was also another way in which the Popes were no 
 doubt useful to the cause of the citizens. They made 
 what has been called in the jargon of modem party strife, 
 "a good cry." Emperor and Empire were words of 
 power in Italy. To renounce and outrage that constituted 
 authority was an audacious illegality that made it very 
 necessary for those engaged in it to have some pretext, 
 something to say for themselves, some " cry " to oppose to 
 that old and powerful one of the Empire; and this the 
 Church and its fortunate stage of antagonism to the 
 Empire afforded. 
 
 Nevertheless, the victorious and irresistible progress of 
 the Commune of Florence against all the forces and 
 
A.D. 
 
 1207. 
 
 88 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 interests opposed to it, was one of those events which 
 have so often in the history of the world gone to prove 
 that great social mutations are produced and ruled, not so 
 much by those visible and superficial causes which appear 
 in the form of events, are recorded in the pages of history, 
 and are calculable as material forces, as by those less trace- 
 able, more subtle, and more pervading influences which 
 operate on the opinion and the will of large numbers of 
 individuals. It is a common mistake to speak of public 
 opinion as a new force of modern date in the world. 
 Public opinion has in modern social bodies means of 
 manifesting itself and propagating itself infinitely greater 
 than was the case in the centuries of which we are 
 speaking. Its force is on that account greater, its opera- 
 tion very much more rapid, and especially very much more 
 visible. It is also, from the same causes, liable to be more 
 changeable and less persistent in its direction. But it is a 
 mistake, I think, to assume that it has been non-existent 
 or inoperative in social conditions, where it has been inar- 
 ticulate, unappearing, and even void of self-consciousness. 
 Only in those social organisms which have remained for 
 long periods without change can it be fairly assumed that 
 no pubhc opinion has existed. 
 
 This was assuredly the force which supplemented the 
 apparent material weakness of the winning party in the 
 struggle between the old feudalism and the new civic 
 society. That curious Valdambra statute is a very notable 
 evidence to the existence, power, and tendency of the 
 public opinion of that day in Tuscany. Men had no news- 
 papers, and read hardly at all. But they talked. The 
 pen, it is true, addresses its thousands, when the tongue 
 can reach only tens. But at the best of either instrument, 
 the tongue is within its limits the more powerful of the 
 two ; and in a community very small in proportion to the 
 numbers with which modern social systems have to deal. 
 
MEDIiEVAL PUBLIC OPINION. 89 
 
 the advantage, in favour of the tongue w^as yet greater, a.d. 
 It was greater also on the southern than it would have 
 been on the northern side of the Alps. The Italians talk 
 more than we northern folk do, and they talk better. 
 Eloquence is a far more common gift among them than 
 among ourselves. The pleasure of discourse is more 
 keenly appreciated by all classes of society ; and the desire 
 of expressing — " externating " as the Italian phrase has it 
 — the thought within is stronger with those impulsive races. 
 Italian mediaeval society stood therefore at a less disadvan- 
 tage in this matter of public opinion, when compared with 
 the same society in our own times, than our own ancestors 
 of the thirteenth centmy would stand as compared with 
 our nineteenth century England. 
 
 It cannot be doubted, I think, that the contagion of pre- 
 vailing opinion operated even on the minds of those who 
 were to be the victims of it, paralysing their efforts at self- 
 defence by the dispiriting consciousness of having a bad, a 
 reprobated, and a losing cause, and explaining in some mea- 
 sure that strange absence of any combination for self- 
 preservation which has been already noticed. 
 
 This extraordinary growth of the young Commonwealth, 
 this advance in spite of all opposition, this portentous 
 onward movement like the roll of a tide that gathers force 
 and impetus as it sweeps over every dyke and barrier in 
 its course, is the main fact and feature of its history during 
 the first century of its existence. The momentum is very 
 far from having expended itself. The period of growth and 
 increase is by no means at an end. The youthful prodigy 
 is far from being full-grown as yet. The law which we 
 have seen presiding over its development hitherto will con- 
 tinue to be operative. 
 
 But there is another important feature to be noticed in 
 the history of this first century, which will be found to be 
 an abiding one during the remainder of the career of the 
 
90 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. Commonwealth ; the first symptoms of a malady, which 
 * having its roots thus deeply implanted in the constitution 
 of the body social, will be seen, as we proceed, to grow 
 with its growth and strengthen with its strength. Civil 
 war has already made its appearance in Florence. This 
 was the death-germ that every living creature brings with 
 it into the world ; the principle of dissolution, which is 
 ultimately to overpower that other principle of vitality, 
 the vigorous development of which we have been re- 
 cording. 
 
 Everybody who has ever heard of the history of Florence 
 knows, in a general way, that a very large portion of that 
 history is occupied with the never-ending dissensions and 
 party feuds of the citizens. And they have heard these 
 spoken of by names taken from the party rallying cries, 
 which have become as well known in history as they once 
 were in tile streets of Florence. Who has not heard of the 
 enmities of Bianchi and Neri • of Guelphs and Ghibellines ; 
 of Palleschi and Ottimati ? And in reading the historians 
 of the different ages of the Commonwealth, each outbreak 
 of hostilities wiU be found attributed to some special event, 
 which is stated to have led to all the mischief. But an 
 examination of the entire course of that history will lead 
 the student of a later day to conclude that such divisions 
 must be attributed to some underlying cause, of larger and 
 deeper significance than any to which they are attributed. 
 A match falling into a- powder-barrel is in one sense the 
 cause of all the wide-spread ruin that follows. But the 
 destructive force which has been put into activity, had been 
 previously prepared and stored up, without which the 
 accidental match would have been harmless. A careful 
 consideration of the political bearing of that incessant par-, 
 tisan warfare, will, it seems to me, lead us one step further 
 than this ; and bring us to the conviction that the real 
 underlying cause of the differently-named party -feuds which 
 
INTERNAL DISSENSIONS. 91 
 
 divided the republic, were throughout the entire course of a.d. 
 the history one and the same. 
 
 These dissensions were in fact, and at the bottom, phases 
 of the great quarrel as old as humanity, as widely spread 
 as the world ; the quarrel between the few who have, and 
 would keep, the high places and the good things of society, 
 and the many who would share them. It is a quarrel 
 that suffers truce only in climes and ages in which mankind 
 are making no onward movement, and have fallen furthest 
 from our highest ideal of human destinies. It is a quarrel 
 that was waged more or less actively in every part of 
 Europe, in the ages of which we are speaking, but which 
 was inflamed into acute excess and violent eruption in 
 Florence by certain circumstances peculiar to that social 
 organisation. 
 
 This old and perennial struggle, however, if the view 
 of it enunciated in the above Hues be admitted, must be 
 held to be not only normal and inevitable, but also salu- 
 tary. Yet in Florence it produced devastating lacerations 
 of the body social, and ultimately its destruction and ex- 
 tinction. 
 
 Whence happened this ? 
 
 The disaster is attributable, I think, to two causes. In 
 the first place it was due to the illegitimate pretensions 
 and immoderate violence of those who sought to rise, and 
 specially to their conception of the natm'e of the advantages 
 to be attained by such rising ; to their having conceived 
 liberty to consist not so much in escaping from the undue 
 interference of others with their own volitions, as in attain- 
 ing the power to interfere with the volitions of their neigh- 
 bours ; not so much in being themselves free from tyrannical 
 government, as in being admitted to become sharers in the 
 power of tyrannising. If the acts and pretensions of the 
 Florentine populace at the period of their most successful 
 attempts to participate in the governing power be exa- 
 
92 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OE FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B^ mined, it will be found that" they made no demand to the 
 ^^°'" effect that freedom should be increased, that the citizens 
 should be less shackled by governmental interference, less 
 hedged about by rules and regulations, less exposed to 
 espionage. They only insisted that a larger number should 
 have the right to impose the shackles, make the rules and 
 regulations, and hear the result of the espionage. In a 
 community, where such notions prevailed, even if every 
 smallest governmental act had been voted by an assembly 
 of the entire population, individual freedom would have 
 gained nothing. 
 
 This was the first cause. But if it be objected that similar 
 want of moderation, and similarly unphilosophic views, have 
 prevailed in other communities, it may be replied, — first 
 observing by the way, that no community where similar 
 notions of hberty have prevailed, or rather where similar 
 desires have been stronger in men's minds than the desire 
 of liberty, has ever yet attained to a system of stable self- 
 government, — premising this, it may be replied, I say, that 
 this evil worked to a more direct, decisive, and complete 
 ruin in Tlorence, by reason of the second of the two 
 causes above-mentioned. 
 
 This was the smallness of the community, and the con- 
 sequent directness and immediateness of the action exer- 
 cised by individuals on the social organisation ; to which 
 is to be added, as arising from the same circumstance, 
 that element of personal hatred which played so large a 
 part in Florentine history, and which cannot exist where 
 men are not brought into close personal contact with 
 each other. A revolution, a rebellion, a disturbance in 
 Florence, had all the intensity and peril of a mutiny on 
 board ship, the dangers of which are increased tenfold 
 by the confinement of the explosive elements within a 
 small space. And in reading of the results produced in 
 Florence by the will of an individual, or of a small knot of 
 
A FOREIGN PODEStA APPOINTED. 93 
 
 individuals, it is always necessary to remember and make a.d^ 
 allowance for this fact. ^^"'' 
 
 To enter here upon the task of showing that in their 
 true significance all the long series of Florentine civil wars 
 were truly due to the causes which have been named, 
 would, be to anticipate conclusions which should be drawn 
 from a c9nsideration of each case as it comes before us. 
 It is sufficient for my present purpose, while noting that 
 already in this first century the poison of civil discord had 
 shown itself, to have drawn attention to the law, which 
 wiU be found to contain the true explanation of this large . 
 portion of Florentine history, and of the deplorable failure 
 of one of the most noteworthy tentatives at social organi- 
 zation ever seen in the world. 
 
 The appointment of a Podesta as chief magistrate of 
 the city in 1207, which marks the commencement of the 
 second century of the life of the Commonwealth, is spoken 
 of by several chroniclers as the first occasion on which an 
 ofiicer of that name was known in Florence. But it would 
 seem that such was not the case. The title is met with 
 in some of the Lombard cities at a much earlier date; 
 and an officer with that name is unquestionably mentioned 
 in authentic Florentine documents of a date previous to 
 the thirteenth century. The explanation of the contra- 
 diction, however, seems to be found in the fact, that in 
 1207 a foreign Podesta was appointed for the first time 
 in Florence. 
 
 And in truth, the whole interest and importance of 
 the innovation lies in this, that the new chief magistrate 
 was to be thenceforward necessarily a foreigner. The 
 adoption of one title or another would have been a matter of 
 small moment ; but the opinion maturely adopted by a free 
 community, that they could not venture to entrust judicial 
 power over their persons and property to any man among 
 themselves, is a very curious and suggestive circumstance. 
 
94 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 ■*•!>• The new regulations required, not only that the Podesta 
 ■ should be a foreigner, but that he should be chosen from a 
 city at least fifty miles distant from Florence. He remained 
 in office for one year. His power was strictly judicial, 
 comprising the administration of both civil and criminal 
 justice. His official costume was a long robe {lucco) of 
 scarlet cloth, and he took precedence of every other person 
 in the city. The political administration of the govern- 
 ment remained with the Consuls as before. 
 
 The chroniclers who record this innovation agree to- 
 gether completely in the motives to which they assign the 
 change.* It was found that no citizen of Florence could 
 be trusted to withstand, in the administration of civil and 
 criminal justice, the influences of fear or friendship, or 
 interest or pity. A Florentine judge would decide a suit 
 unjustly in favour of his friend. Therefore it was deter- 
 mined to have a judge who had no friends among his 
 suitors. A Florentine magistrate would be deterred from 
 putting the laws in action against a criminal, for fear of 
 the subsequent vengeance of that criminal or his friends. 
 Therefore, a stranger must be brought from a distance to 
 do this odious duty, who, returning at the end of a year to 
 his own distant home, would be safe from such danger, 
 and therefore uninfluenced by such fears. 
 
 The measure has been praised, as indicating a determi- 
 nation on the part of the community to secure purity of 
 justice and equal administration of the law, and as a wise 
 and ingenious method to the attainment of this end. But 
 I confess that the provision suggests to my mind reflec- 
 tions of a different kind. Doubtless the Florentines ob- 
 jected to leave their property at the mercy of a magistrate 
 Avho could not be trusted to give a sentence at variance with 
 his own or his friends' interest; or to entrust the pro- 
 
 * Malispini, chap. xciv. ; Villani, book v. chap, xxsii. ; Coppo Stefani, 
 book i. rubr. Is. 
 
MOTIVES POR THIS MEASURE. 95 
 
 tection of their lives and persons to a judge who feared a.b. 
 to put the law in action against powerful or desperate 
 evil-doers. But surely the remedy adopted, — not to insist 
 on the great probability that it would prove inef&cacious, — 
 admits the existence of a very unsound condition in the 
 body politic ; while the disposition to acquiesce in that 
 condition, and to accept it as a normal and inevitable 
 incident of human society, betokens an exceedingly un- 
 satisfactory tone in the public mind and conscience, and 
 discloses ominously discouraging symptoms of the prevail- 
 ing views respecting the objects to which a community 
 should direct its efforts. A pack of hounds may obtain 
 fairness in the distribution of their rations by submission 
 to the huntsman ; but they will none the less remain 
 hounds to the end of the chapter. 
 
 It has an ominous and evil-boding look about it, to my 
 thinking, this import trade in common honesty and high 
 principle, resorted to by the young' community in the first 
 vigour of its youth. It is the first manifestation of that 
 policy, or rather of that instinctive habit of universal 
 distrust, which will be found deeply marking all the future 
 course of this history. And it presents itself to our con- 
 sideration at this its earliest appearance, as a second worm 
 in this vigorous and apparently healthy bud, destined to 
 contribute much towards that premature decay and death 
 in which we know our story is to end, and the causes of 
 which it is our business to investigate. We shall see this 
 policy and this vice of character in its working, and in its 
 wide-spread' consequences as we proceed; and we shall 
 see the narrow cunning and skilful calculation on low 
 motives and base sentiments, which a mind educated under 
 such a system mistakes for wisdom, set forth as such by 
 statesmen and writers, in whose school generations less 
 enlightened than our own have sought maxims of state- 
 craft. 
 
96 HISTOEY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. How little good is to be learned in that school ; — how 
 an atmosphere of universal suspicion and distrust is as 
 fatal to national greatness and prosperity, as it is to indi- 
 vidual nobleness; — how men become untrustworthy by 
 being distrusted, and are made worthy to be trusted by 
 having trust reposed in them ; — how far less is the evil, 
 as to an individual so to a nation, that may arise occa- 
 sionally from confidence misplaced, than that which must 
 inevitably be generated by the habit and policy of trusting 
 no man; — how vain the hope that the precautions of 
 distrustfulness will in the main attain their object, or that 
 those valuable fruits, which can only grow on the tree of 
 public virtue, may be artificially produced by the schemes 
 and checks of suspicious vigilance : — these are among the 
 truths which it seems to me the history to be narrated is 
 eminently calculated to teach. 
 
 The first Podesta under the new regimen was Gual- 
 freddotto of Milan, who was continued in his office for a 
 second year, the rule peremptorily limiting the duration of 
 the Podesta in office to one year being the result of a 
 subsequent attempt to provide against an abuse of the 
 powers entrusted to him. 
 
 The events of these first years of the thirteenth century 
 continue to be of the same kind as those which made up 
 the history of the growing Commonwealth during the 
 preceding period ;— fresh destructions of feudal castles, 
 fresh encroachments on neighbouring jurisdictions, and 
 almost unceasing pushing back of the frontier. Wliat 
 mainly characterises the new century, however, is an in- 
 creased frequency of war with the neighbouring rival 
 cities. The course of continual aggrandizement on which 
 the Commonwealth had been advancing for several gene- 
 rations past made it evident that such must before long be 
 the case. The Plorentine frontier had already, as we have 
 seen, advanced more than half way towards Siena. There 
 
FLORENCE PROTECTS MONTEPULCIANO. 97 
 
 it met the advanced posts of another vigorous and growino- a.d. 
 community, a rival of its own sort. And a series of ^^^^' 
 struggles commenced with a far more equally matched 
 adversary, than any with whom Florence had yet con- 
 tended. Henceforward accordingly the military career of 
 the Commonwealth was by no means so unchequered by 
 reverses, as it had been while engaged in sweeping from 
 the surface of the soil one after the other, the castles of the 
 feudal nobility. 
 
 Siena was no mouthful to be snatched, swallowed, and 
 assimilated after the fashion in which Florence had dis- 
 posed of the feudal tenures which had stood in her path. 
 The enmity therefore, which was sure to arise between the 
 two communes when brought face to face with each other, 
 did not assume the form of an attack with the avowed 
 object of conquest, but broke out on occasion of questions 
 of frontier line, and jealousies of the relations of either 
 party with other smaller communes. 
 
 The small but strongly situated town of Montepulciano, 
 perched on the top of its lofty hill, after the fashion of the 
 old Etruscan cities, the site of one of which it occupies, is 
 much nearer to Siena than to Florence. It lies indeed 
 on the other side of Siena away to the south-eastward, 
 towards Perugia ; and is in fact little less than half way 
 from Florence to Rome. The surrounding powers there- 
 fore, of every kind, whether princes or cities, might well 
 begin to ask where the aggressions and pretensions of this 
 upstart Florence were likely to stop, when that ambitious 
 community announced its intention of taking Montepul- 
 ciano " under its protection ;" and marched an army to 
 prevent Siena from meddling with it in any way. Already 
 once before, a peace had been made with Siena on con- 
 dition that she was in no way to interfere with Monte- 
 pulciano. But in the first year of the new Podesta's rule, 
 Siena broke the treaty by attacking her weaker neighbour. 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
1215. 
 
 98 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 Whereupon, Florence at once marched out against the 
 Sienese forces, and defeated them at Montalto, a fortress 
 on the Sienese frontier to the eastward, about half-way 
 between Siena and Arezzo, leaving many of the enemy 
 dead on the field, and bringing back with them to Florence 
 1331 prisoners.* 
 
 Siena sued for peace ; and it was granted on condition 
 that she should rebuild the walls of Montepulciano, and 
 also those of Montalcino, another hill town, about twenty 
 miles to the south of Siena, which Florence chose equally 
 to protect; and that she should promise not to make 
 war on either of these two communities for the future. 
 Both of these two little " protected " cities were but out- 
 posts of the Florentine power, which thus had already 
 hemmed in Siena well-nigh on all sides. 
 
 Looked at from without, while she was thus victoriously 
 and proudly dictating conditions of peace to neighbouring 
 cities, and pushing the limits of her power half-way 
 towards Rome, all appearances testified to the wonderful 
 vigour and prosperity of the young state, and called the 
 attention of Europe to the advent among the nations of a 
 new comer already evidently destined to occupy a place of 
 primary importance among them. But within the walls 
 our attention is called to events of a very different cha- 
 racter and significance. 
 
 In the year- 1215 it chanced that a quarrel occurred at 
 a festival between some young nobles of Florence. It was 
 an event of as frivolous, and apparently unimportant, a 
 character as thousands of other such broils ; but this 
 obscure quarrel has been treated by the whole body of 
 Florentine historians as the origin and starting point of 
 that series of civil wars which shaped the entire future 
 fortunes of the community, and shook to its centre the 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, book i. rubr. lii. Tbe other historians do not mention 
 the circumstance of the prisoners. 
 
THE BUONDELMONTB aUARREL. ■ 99 
 
 whole fabric of society throughout central Italy. The a.d. 
 story of it has become memorable therefore in Florentine 
 annals, and has been rendered famous not only by the 
 writers of history, but by many generations of poets, 
 painters, novelists, and sculptors. 
 
 When the story shall have been told, it will be time to 
 inquire how far the circumstances can be fairly made to 
 bear the immense burthen of consequences which has been 
 laid upon them. 
 
 Messer Mazzino Tegrini de' Mazzinghi had been ad- 
 mitted to the order of knighthood ; and about the begin- 
 ning of the year 1215, a festival was to be given to 
 celebrate the occasion, at Campi, now a large and populous 
 village, three or four miles from the city, on the side of 
 Prato, where almost all the female population may be seen 
 seated at the doors of their dwellings plaiting straw from 
 morning till night. At the date of our story Campi was 
 probably only the fortified villa and farm of the giver of 
 the feast. Among the guests was the young and remark- 
 ably handsome Buondelmonte de' Buondelmonti. We 
 have heard all about his parentage, and how they came to 
 be Florentine citizens, as the reader will remember. The 
 name, as given above, indicates that the family had thriven 
 and extended itself since it had been transplanted to 
 Florence some seventy years before. It is clear also that 
 no prejudice or jealousy connected with his origin pre- 
 vented the young scion of the Buondelmonti from standing 
 well with his fellow-citizens. He was invited to the 
 festival, together with a party comprising many of the 
 most conspicuous names in Florence ; and the sequel 
 makes it evident that the young man, the remarkable 
 beauty of whose person is specially recorded by the chroni. 
 clers, was considered one of the most desirable sons-in-law 
 by the match-making mothers of Florence. 
 
 Young Buondelmonte had taken with him to the 
 
 « 2 
 
100 HISTORY' OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D festival his friend Uberto degli Infangati, — Hubert the 
 ^^^^•Mudbedraggled, of that ilk ;— a proud old family of the 
 earliest Florentine times, whose name, unheroic-sounding to 
 modern EngHsh ears, was probably first bestowed on the 
 actor in some deed of prowess which left him in the plight 
 described, and was afterwards retained with as much pride 
 by his descendants as that of any noble race in a more 
 euphonious appellation. 
 
 While they were sitting at table, " a jester," the chro- 
 nicle says, whether meaning a professional buffoon or a 
 wag among the company is not clear, snatched a plate of 
 meat from before this Hubert, who was so much nettled 
 at the impertinence that when Oddo Arringhi dei Pifanti, 
 one of the guests, proceeded to banter him, he lost his 
 temper completely, and in reply to something said by 
 Oddo, gave him the lie direct. Whereupon Oddo seized a 
 plate from the table and hurled it at Hubert's head. 
 
 Hitherto Buondelmonte had not been concerned in the 
 quarrel in any wise, but he seems to have thought that it 
 was incumbent on him to resent the insult thus publicly 
 offered to his friend; and as soon as the "tables were 
 withdrawn" he stabbed Oddo with his poniard. On 
 this, the party broke up in anger and confusion ; and the 
 special friends and connections of the wounded man, 
 returning to Florence together, took counsel respecting the 
 satisfaction to be exacted from the assailant. There were 
 present men of the Gangalaudi, Amidei, Uberti, Lamberti, 
 and other families, all, like Buondelmonte himself, de- 
 scended from feudal nobles of the Empire, and all, there- 
 fore, united by poHtical feeling and social prejudice. This 
 made it possible to arrange the affair in a manner that 
 would not otherwise have been feasible. It was agreed 
 that a reconciliation should be eff'ected by a marriage 
 between Buondelmonte and the niece of the injured man, 
 Oddo Arringhi ; and it would seem that this arrangement 
 
BUONDELMONTE'S FAITHLESSNESS. 101 
 
 was at once acceded to by Buondelinonte, inasmucb as it a.d. 
 is recorded that the betrothal was fixed to take place on 
 the next day but one. 
 
 But on that intervening day, while the bridegroom was 
 riding through the city, as he passed by the mansion of 
 the Donati family, Monna Gualdrada, the wife of Messer 
 Forese de' Donati, called to him from her window to 
 ahght, and come up to speak with her.. There was a 
 marriageable daughter too in the house of the Donati, and 
 Monna Gualdrada had long cherished the hope of obtain- 
 ing the handsome scion of the Buondelmonti for a son-in- 
 law. So she spoke after the manner of would-be mothers- 
 in-law in all ages and climes ; — taunted him bitterly with 
 taking a wife at the bidding and for fear of the Amidei 
 and the Lamberti, — contrasted the wife thus forced upon 
 him with the bride she had, as she declared, long reserved 
 for him, having with a view to his alliance already rejected 
 many brilliant offers ; — and finished by throwing open the 
 door of an inner chamber in which her daughter was 
 sitting, and telling him to look at the bride, who might 
 yet be his, if he had but the courage to take her. 
 
 The lady of the Amidei family whom he had agreed to 
 marry as a fine for having been too ready with his dagger, 
 was, we are told, not handsome ; and the chroniclers 
 all dwell on the matchless beauty of the young Donati. 
 The result was that the young man, thus sorely tempted, 
 became, "by the devil's assistance," as Villani says,* 
 desperately enamoured of the beautiful girl thus offered 
 for his acceptance; told Monna Gualdrada that he did 
 dare to please himself, despite all the Amidei in Florence ; 
 and the next day, which was Thursday, the 10th of 
 February, while all the parties to the other engagement 
 were waiting at the house of the Amidei for the ceremony 
 
 * Lib. V. chap, xxxviii. 
 
102 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A-D- of the betrothal, went pubhcly and betrothed himself to 
 " the beautiful Donati. 
 
 It could hardly be supposed that such an insult as this 
 would be allowed to pass without signal vengeance. All 
 the friends of the Amidei assembled at once in the church 
 of Santa Maria, sopra fortam* to decide on the steps to 
 be taken. It was proposed by some that the false traitor 
 to his engagement should be waylaid and beaten ; by 
 others, that his face should be gashed in such sort that he 
 should carry the mark of his chastisement to the grave 
 with him. But Mosca de' Lamberti warned the "meeting 
 against any such half measures. " Beat him, or mark him 
 as you will," said he ; " but if you stop there you may as 
 well take thought for your own graves. No ! he deserves 
 death. Let him die ! Che cosafatta capo ha .' " f This 
 counsel prevailed ; and it was determined to avenge the 
 slighted honour of the Amidei, involving also an insult to 
 all those noble families who had taken part in putting an 
 end to the original quarrel by arranging that match, in 
 the most signal manner. The faithless bridegroom was 
 doomed to be slain on his return from the church with his 
 newly-wedded bride. 
 
 The wedding took place in the church of Santa Pelicita, 
 near the foot of the Ponte Vecchio, on the morning of 
 Easter Sunday. After the ceremony, the wedding party, 
 returning over the Ponte Vecchio, had to pass before the 
 houses of the Amidei. The conspirators were all gathered 
 there; and it could hardly be that Buondelmonte could 
 have seen that knot of the men he had deceived and so 
 grievously insulted standing there with their lowering 
 faces, and fancied that he was to ride by them in his gala 
 triumph with his bride, unquestioned. Nevertheless, he 
 
 * No longer existing. 
 
 t An expression -which was or has since hecome proverbial. " A deed 
 done has a head ; " i.e., a thing done outright is done, finished, and com- 
 pleted. 
 
BUONDELMONTE'S PUNISHMENT. 103 
 
 came riding on in the pride of his beauty, " clad in jacket a.b. 
 and mantle of white silk, with a garland on his head,"* till ^^^°' 
 he came in front of the home of the lady he had jilted. 
 
 Then with a shout, Schiatta de' Lamberti sprung out 
 into the street, and with one blow of an iron maoe brought 
 the gay rider from his saddle to the ground. In an instant 
 he was surrounded by the rest of the band; and Oddo 
 Arringhi, the man whom he had wounded, and whose niece 
 he had wronged, cut his throat with his dagger. 
 
 The assassins retired to their fortress houses, and' left 
 the bridal party to form itself as it might into a funeral 
 procession. " Great was the uproar in the city. He was 
 placed on a bier ; and his wife took her station on the bier 
 also, and held his head in her lap, violently weeping ; and 
 in that manner they carried him through the whole of the 
 city ; and on that day began the ruin of Florence."! 
 
 The last phrase of the above citation marks the signifi- 
 cance which the Tuscan historians have attributed to this 
 incident, and the important place that has always been 
 assigned to it in Florentine history. We are told by all 
 the earliest historians, especially by Mahspini, in whose 
 childhood these events must have happened, and whom 
 Villani copies almost word for word, that from this quarrel 
 began the great, fatal, and world-famous division of Flo- 
 rence into the parties of Guelph and Ghibelline. Dante 
 goes so far as to consider the conduct of Buondelmonte in 
 this affair so entirely the cause of the evils that arose from 
 the Guelph and Ghibelline wars, that, had that cause not 
 existed, no such misfortunes would have arisen. "0 
 Buondelmonte," he exclaims — 
 
 • Chronicle, cited more particularly in the next note. 
 
 + All the historians relate the facts without any material discrepancy. 
 But the above details have been taken from a little chronicle by a contem- 
 porary, or nearly contemporary, writer belonging to the Buondelmouti 
 family, and first printed in a volume now become rare, " La Tosoana Illus- 
 trata nella sua Storia," 4to, Livorno, 1755. See page 283, 
 
104 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. " Buondelmonte, qnanto mal fuggisti 
 
 1215, Le nozze sue per gli altrui conforti ! 
 
 Molti sarebbon lieti che son triati, 
 Se Dio t' avesse oonceduto ad Ema 
 La prima volta ch.' a oitta venisti." * 
 
 Yet the historians admit that the party names of Guelph 
 and Ghibelline were known in Florence long before ; but 
 they say that not till then did the city divide itself into 
 two hostile camps under those rallying cries. It is curiously 
 clear, from the accounts of Malispini and Villani, that, as 
 usual in such matters, the Florentines had but a very hazy 
 notion as to the meaning and origin of the two names,! 
 for the sake of which they were prepared to cut each other's 
 throats. Any name or watchword is good enough for a 
 party rallying cry, when once passions have been connected 
 with it; but the Florentines understood that Ghibelline 
 meant attachment to the Empire in opposition to the 
 Church, and Guelph attachment to the Church in oppo- 
 sition to the Empire. But it would be a mistake tending 
 much to prevent a right understanding of the future course 
 of Florentine politics, to suppose that enthusiasm in favour 
 of either of these two institutions, or hatred against either 
 of them, had much to do with the party strife that divided 
 Florence. The antagonism between the civil and the 
 ecclesiastical power is in truth as old as ecclesiastical 
 encroachment, and must be as perennial as the existence of 
 
 * Paradiso, cant. xvi. ver. cxxxTiii. " Buondelmonte, how ill thou 
 didst in evading the alliance with the Amidei by listening to the counsels 
 of another ; {i.e. of Q-ualdrada Donati.) Many would now be happy who 
 are in sorrow, if God had given thee a victim to the river Ema, when first 
 thou crossedst it to come to the city." That is to say, when first your 
 ancestors, who established the family in Florence, did so. The river Ema 
 runs between Florence and Monteboni, the original seat of the Buondel- 
 monti family. 
 
 t It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to note that the Imperial house of 
 Franconia received the appellation of Ghibelline from the castle of Weibling, 
 in the mountains near Augsburg, and the rival house of Bavaria was called 
 Guelph, because many of its members were named Welf. 
 
ORIGIN or GHIBELLINISM. 105 
 
 Church temporahties. But the quarrel of Guelph with Ghi- 
 belline in Plorence was the expression of a still wider spread 
 and more perennial conflict. It was the struggle of those 
 who have, and would keep to themselves wealth, power, 
 station, and pre-eminence, with those who have not, and 
 would acquire all these things. The Ghibellines were the 
 old Imperial nobles, who, whether more anciently or more 
 recently incorporated into the body of Florentine citizens, 
 formed the aristocracy of the social body, and were natu- 
 rally Imperialist in their sympathies. These Ghibellines 
 were the high Tories of the Florentine community. The 
 body of the people were Guelphs, naming themselves after 
 the party professing attachment to the Church only be- 
 cause the Papacy was in opposition to the Empire. The 
 Guelphs were the Whigs of Florence. The Radicals 
 appeared on the scene in due time and normal sequence, 
 as will be seen. 
 
 What Englishman does not know how a progressive 
 civilisation deals with such party landmarks ? — how high 
 Toryism gets gradually pushed out of existence, and is 
 lost sight of ; — how Whiggism, stepping into the vacated 
 place, loses some of its previously distinguishing character- 
 istics, partly from having succeeded to a position, which 
 naturally induces the opinion that progress has gone far 
 enough, and should now halt, and partly from having been 
 left behind by the onward flow of ideas ; — how Whiggism 
 under these circumstances divides itself, and gives the name 
 of Radicalism to its less aristocratic and more active portion. 
 All this movement of party, — exactly this progression of 
 events, will be seen to pass in due and normal order across 
 the field of Florentine history. The GhibeUines will 
 gradually vanish from the scene, even as Toryism is 
 vanishing. The Guelphs will divide and give rise to 
 parties Avith new names, even as the Whigs have done. 
 
 And assuredly all this would have happened in no very 
 
 A.B. 
 
 1215. 
 
106 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A-B. material circumstance differently from what did happen, 
 ■ even had the first Buondelmonte who ever came to Florence 
 perished in the Ema on his way thither. It can hardly, 
 I think, be doubted that the writers who have represented 
 all this great series of social developments as arising from 
 the fault of Buondelmonte, and the punishment of it, have 
 fallen into the common error of mistaking for a cause that 
 Avhich was only a symptom or manifestation of a condition 
 produced by causes of much wider operation. 
 
 It will be remembered, too, that this was not the first 
 outbreak of civil discord in Florence. The party fights 
 which arose respecting the election of Consuls in the year 
 1185, only thirty years, that is, before Buondelmonte's 
 death, divided the city very much in the same sense. 
 There were then the Uberti and the other Imperialist 
 nobles, their natural friends and allies, on the one side, 
 and the people, with such nobles as were moved to take 
 the popular part, on the other. It is very significant also, 
 that the Buondelmonti family, which had previously been 
 Ghibelline in its politics and sympathies, as was naturally 
 to be expected from its feudal origin, became, at this time, 
 and from henceforth remained Guelph. The meaning of 
 this is, that in order to obtain vengeance for the murder of 
 their kinsman by those who were, as we have seen, all 
 Ghibellines, they found it necessary to take advantage of 
 the passions of the opposite party. Had the division of 
 the city taken its rise from the Buondelmonti quarrel, the 
 citizens would have divided themselves differently, and no 
 such change of political party would have been needed. 
 Nobles and people alike would have espoused either side 
 of the quarrel according to their personal sympathies and 
 connections. But this change of party by the Buon- 
 delmonti proves clearly that the hatreds arising from the 
 murder of their kinsman were but engrafted on pre-existing 
 enmities. 
 
LATENT CAUSES OF CIVIL WAR. 107 
 
 A spark falling into an open barrel of gunpowder in a ^.r. 
 
 dwelling-house causes the destruction of all around it, 
 But the victims of the disaster would not say, " Ah ! if 
 no spark had ever fallen ! " but rather, " Ah ! if that 
 gunpowder had not been left there .! " Sparks will fall; if 
 not at one moment, at another. We are told of cases in 
 which a scratch on the finger causes death. But the 
 real cause of it is in the bad condition of the organism 
 so injured. It must needs be that fingers will get 
 scratched. 
 
 The Buondelmonte tragedy was the spark falling on the 
 open gunpowder, — the scratch on the finger of the fevered 
 and unhealthy body politic ; and in that sense, but in no 
 other, I think it may be called the cause of the civil wars 
 which followed it in Florence. 
 
 1215. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ftuarrel between Florence and Pisa — Erroneously attributed to a frivolous 
 cause — The Cardinal's lapdog — Florence endeavours to avoid war — 
 Florentine victory — "War with Pistoia — The carrocoio — Expedition 
 against Siena — Intervention between Orvieto and Perugia — Brag- 
 gadocio spirit of the mediseval Communes — Solemn treaty with Siena 
 signed near Poggibonzi — Origin of the Order of Servites — Paving of 
 the streets in Florence — Ponte di Eubaconte — The " Misericordia" — 
 Its origin — Frederick II. — His character — His conduct towards Flo- 
 rence — Movement among the Ghibellines — Frederick obtains hostages 
 from Florence — Civil war in the city — The Guelphs driven out of the 
 city — Funeral of Rustico MarignoUe — Destruction of Gruelph palaces — 
 Tower of Guardamorto — The Baptistery saved from destruction by 
 Niccola Pisano. 
 
 Although fighting was caused in the streets of Florence, 
 as an immediate result of the murder of Buondelmonte, 
 and although the remarkable step taken by his family of 
 changing their political party in consequence of that event, 
 and declaring themselves thenceforth to be Guelphs and 
 supporters of the popular cause, contributed to give a 
 political significance to the crime, and to prepare the city 
 for making it a pretext for party division, yet after the first 
 outbreak of violence, the virulence of party feud seems to 
 have been suspended awhile by the interest attached to, 
 and the needs arising out of, foreign war. 
 
 In 1220 the first quarrel between Pisa and Florence 
 arose. And the record of the fact ofi'ers to our notice 
 another singular instance of the tendency of the historians 
 of that time to see in trifling and superficial accidents the 
 ultimate causes of great events, the real roots of which they 
 should have sought far deeper below the surface. The cause 
 
CORONATION OP FREDERICK II. 103. 
 
 to which the misunderstandina; between the two cities is a.d. 
 attributed by the chroniclers is an absurdly frivolous one ; 
 — worth relating only as illustrative of manners and the 
 methods of dealing with each other practised by the 
 governments of the great communes. The two cities quar- 
 relled because they were jealous of each other's power and 
 prosperity ; and it is possible enough that two neighbour- 
 ing communities actuated by such feelings towards each 
 other may have found an occasion though not a cause 
 of quarrel even in such an incident as that related by 
 Villani.* 
 
 The Emperor Frederick II. was to be crowned in Rome 
 on the 22nd of November, 1220, and all the cities of Italy 
 sent embassies to do honour to the occasion. Florence 
 and Pisa rivalled each other in the dignity and splendour 
 of their respective representatives. Already those " Arabs 
 of the interior" were beginning to assert their place among 
 the wealthiest and most civihzed communities of the period 
 on no unequal footing. 
 
 Now it so happened that a great man at Rome — a 
 cardinal, we are told; but he is not more particularly 
 designated — wishing to do honour to the Republic, in- 
 vited the Florentine ambassadors to dinner; on which 
 occasion, one of them seeing a lapdog that struck his 
 fancy, asked the cardinal to make him a present of it. 
 The great man said he was welcome to the dog, told him 
 to send for it at his pleasure, and thought no more about 
 the matter. But on the following day the ambassadors 
 of the rival Tuscan city were invited to dine with his 
 Eminence; and, as ill-luck would have it, one of the 
 Pisans also took it into his head to ask the cardinal to give 
 him the same little dog ; and the magnificent host, for- 
 getting all about his present to the Florentine, told him 
 
 * Book vi. chap. ii. 
 
.110 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A-B. also that he was welcome to it. Here were the elements 
 ■ of a very pretty quarrel, and they were not permitted to 
 fall to the ground. 
 
 The Florentine happening to make application first, 
 received the dog. The Pisan insisted that it should be 
 given up to him. The rival ambassadors met in the 
 streets of Rome, and came to abusive words ; and from 
 words quickly to blows ; on which occasion the Pisans got 
 the better of it, because, say the Florentine writers, the 
 Pisan embassy was accompanied by fifty Pisan soldiers. 
 There were, however, a large number of Florentines in 
 Rome ; for besides the embassy from the city, a great 
 many citizens had gone to be present at the coronation 
 for their own amusement. And all these, as soon as it 
 became known among them that Florentine citizens had 
 been ill-treated by Pisans, and the city insulted in the 
 persons of its ambassadors, assembled together, and " took 
 bitter vengeance" on the men of Pisa. The latter wrote 
 home to their community, complaining of the outrage com- 
 mitted on themselves, and the affront offered to Pisa. 
 Whereupon the government of that city instantly laid 
 hands on all the merchandise belonging to Florentine 
 citizens to be found in Pisa ; of which there happened to 
 be at that time a considerable quantity. " For," says one 
 writer, " The Florentines were great merchants, and im- 
 ported all their merchandise in Pisan ships."* 
 
 The Florentines sent many messages to Pisa to induce 
 that city to restore the confiscated property, but could 
 obtain no satisfaction. They even, as the Florentine his- 
 torians all declare, in their anxiety to avoid the necessity 
 of war, gave the Pisan government to understand, that, 
 being more concerned for the reputation of their city in the 
 eyes of the world, than for the value of the goods which 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, book ii, rubr, Ixvi. 
 
1222. 
 
 aUARREL WITH PISA. Ill 
 
 had been seized, they would be contented if the com- a^-D; 
 munity of Pisa would send a quantity of horseloads of any 
 rubbish merely for the appearance of the thing, and to 
 content the Florentine populace ; that they would then 
 privately compensate the merchants for their loss ; and so 
 the two communities might remain on friendly terms. 
 They added, however, to this conciUatory message, an 
 intimation that if these friendly proposals were not com- 
 plied with, they should be obliged to declare war against 
 Pisa. 
 
 Such a threat on the part of the upstart community, 
 whom Pisan merchants had not so very long ago described 
 as "Tuscan Arabs," appeared to the older and wealthier 
 city an excess of insolent audacity. That a community, 
 they said, which had done nothing as yet but oppress 
 and rob a few poor nobfes, should dream of measuring 
 itself with Pisa, seemed incredible. They were in no wise 
 concerned to care for the reputation of Florence, they 
 added ; and would make no restitution real or apparent ; 
 and if the Florentines thought fit to come out to fight 
 them, all they could do was to shorten their journey for 
 them by meeting them half way. 
 
 The Florentines said no more ; but sedulously set to 
 work to prepare for a great effort. In July, .1222, they 
 marched forth ; and the Pisans as good as their word did 
 come out to meet them. The armies met at a place called 
 Castel del Bosco ; and the fight lasted the whole of the 
 long summer day. But when the sun went down, the 
 Pisan army was thoroughly routed ; many were left dead 
 on the field; and the victors marched back to Florence 
 bringing with them thirteen hundred prisoners, among 
 virhom were many of the principal families of Pisa.* 
 
 " I have related thus at length this matter between the 
 
 *■ Malispini, chap, cviii. ; Villani, book vi. chap. ii. ; Ammirato, libro 
 primo, accresciuto ad an, 1221. 
 
112 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.n. Pisans and the Florentines," says Villani, "that all the 
 ■ world may know from how small a matter began these 
 quarrels between the two cities, which produced so much 
 evil to both of them, and to Italy generally. All began 
 from a dispute about a little dog ; if we ought not rather 
 to conclude that it was the devil in the form of a dog, who 
 brought about all the misfortunes which followed." 
 
 But if the historian must needs see the operation of the 
 foul fiend in the matter, there is no necessity to suppose 
 him to have quitted for the purpose his usual more re- 
 cognised habitat. Passions were growing strong in 
 Florence and in Pisa, which were sure to bring about all 
 that followed, had the Lord Cardinal's lapdog, either 
 possessed or non-possessed by the devil, never lived. 
 
 Of course this great success against such an adversary 
 did not tend to make the Florentines more moderate or 
 forbearing in their dealings with other neighbours. After 
 a few years, marked only by two or three of the usual 
 expeditions against " castles," or villages, which had re- 
 belled against the " Commune," Florence is found again 
 at war with another of its more powerful neighbours, 
 though one of very different calibre from haughty Pisa. 
 
 Pistoia was the object of the displeasure of Florence in 
 1228, for having injured certain smaller communes, which 
 the latter thought fit to protect. The pushing, fighting 
 community on the banks of the Arno, did not, on this 
 occasion, succeed in taking the city of Pistoia ; but it con- 
 strained the Pistoians to sign a treaty, which was hardly 
 less than a submission in all respects to the will and 
 authority of their turbulent neighbour. And this treaty 
 was sworn to by every male inhabitant of Pistoia, from 15 
 to 70 years of age.* 
 
 This expedition against Pistoia, however, is chiefly 
 
 * Ammirato, libro primo, aooresciuto ad an. 1228, 
 
THE CARROCCIO. 113 
 
 remarkable as havinej been the first occasion on wliich we ^•'°- 
 find mention of that singular embodiment of the pride, 
 pomp, circumstance of mediaeval Italian warfarCj the " Car- 
 roccio." The carroccio was a massive car, or platform 
 rather, on four low wheels. On this were erected two 
 lofty masts, from which hung out the great red and white 
 standard of the Commonwealth. The whole machine was 
 painted the colour of vermilion ; and was drawn by the 
 largest and finest pair of oxen that could be found, covered 
 with housings of the same colour. These animals were 
 kept at the expense of the community, and were never 
 used for any other purpose. As soon as war was pro- 
 claimed, the leading nobles and captains of the city went in 
 solemn state to the store-house of the church of St. John, 
 where the machine was kept ; and taking it thence, brought 
 it to the market-place,* and there placed it on a certain 
 spot marked by a stone with the figure of a wheel engraved 
 on it.f Then the carroccio was solemnly given into the 
 charge of a chosen band of the. bravest youths of the city, 
 whose sacred duty it was to guard and defend it in battle 
 at all hazards and to the last extremity, " as though it 
 Avere something divine," says the historian Ammirato.| 
 A second car went to the field in company with it, bearing 
 on a lofty belfry the " martinello," as the great war bell 
 was called. One month before the army took the field 
 this bell was hoisted in the tower of a small church, § close 
 by the station of the carroccio in the market, where it was 
 rung day and night during that time. Then it was taken 
 down and hung in the portable belfry of the car, which 
 
 * That at the present day known as the Meroato Nuovo, where there is 
 now a sc[uare portico. 
 
 f It was the same stone on which bankrupts were compelled to sit 
 publicly, with that part of their person in contact with the stone, naked, as 
 a punishment for not meeting their engagements. 
 
 t Lihro prime acoresciuto ad an. 1228. 
 
 § Santa Maria. . 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 I 
 
114 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D^ accompanied the other bearing the standard. This bell, 
 °" says one of the older chroniclers, was rung day and night 
 for a month before taking the field, for no other purpose 
 but this, — that the enemy against whom Florence was 
 about to march might have abundant notice to look well 
 to its defence.* 
 
 The seven years, from 1238 to 1235, seem to have been 
 spent in an almost continual series of desultory expeditions, 
 chiefly against the Sienese and their allies. The first 
 motive which gave rise to all this, was a breach of treaty 
 by Siena in commencing fresh hostilities against Monte- 
 pulciano. The Florentine host marched the carroccio on 
 to the Sienese territory, ravaging and destroying every- 
 thing as they passed onwards. They took and razed to 
 the ground the strong " castello " of Querciagrossa, " send- 
 ing all the inhabitants to Florence;" on which the his- 
 torian, Ammirato, writing in the sixteenth century, re- 
 marks, that on this as on many other occasions it seemed 
 as if the hatred of the combatants of those days was 
 stronger against the walls than against the men who 
 defended them ; and that in all those wars there is no 
 record or tradition of many lives having been lost. And 
 many close observers of the manners of those ages, he 
 adds, have been led to think that all these frequent 
 destructions of strongholds and villages were not due to 
 any hatred against their inhabitants, or even to the mere 
 love of warfare and adventure, so much as for the sake of 
 increasing the strength and population of their own city, 
 by removing thither and making Florentines of people, 
 who, left where they were, would have remained enemies 
 of Florence.! 
 
 Nevertheless many of the exploits of the Florentine 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, book ii, rubr. Ixxii. 
 
 t Ammirato, libro primo aceresoiuto ad an. 1232. 
 
SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE. 115 
 
 army, during these years, seem to bear the impress of a a.d. 
 love of adventure, rather than of any other more serious ^^^''* 
 motive. They wandered away far to the south of Siena 
 into the Val d'Orcia, and as far as Radicofani, a good half- 
 way to Rome, destroying fortified villages and castles. 
 They took the part of Orvieto against Perugia, which 
 latter city applied to Rome for assistance to withstand 
 them. We find them also on the coast of the Maremma 
 taking possession of Port ErcolCj and other places in that 
 vicinity ; enterprises which, however, may have been in- 
 spired by more of political purpose than useless sieges of 
 Siena, which seem to have been prompted really by that 
 school-boy-hke spirit of half-sportive braggadocio and 
 buUying, which seems to have often entered so largely 
 into the dealings and sentiments of these mediaeval com- 
 munes towards each other. They would erect tall masts 
 bearing derisive and insulting emblems within sight of 
 an enemy's city walls. " They would discharge against 
 them from their engines absurd missiles, intended to 
 ridicule and taunt their adversaries, rather than hurt them. 
 We hear of their hurhng, in this spirit, a hve ass against 
 the city of Siena. Once they pushed their attack up to 
 the gates of the city, broke into the suburb, defended 
 by an outer gate, and took a vast quantity of prisoners, 
 of whom they retained thirteen hundred men, after 
 liberating the women and children. They were all carried 
 in triumph to Florence ; but were shortly afterwards set at 
 liberty, — ^much as in the school-boy's game called " pri- 
 soner's base." They destroyed a vast number* of fortified 
 places in the territory of Siena, in this one expedition ; 
 and the traces of those thirteenth-century incursions may 
 still be seen in the remarkable quantity of ruined towers 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, book ii. rubr. Ixxii. sag. xix. ; Villani, bookvi. chap. xi. 
 sag. xliii. 
 
 I 2 
 
A.B. 
 
 1235, 
 
 116 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 and castles whicli stud the district around that city, the 
 very names of many of which have perished and been 
 forgotten. 
 
 At last the Sienese sued for peace, v^hich vras granted 
 on moderate terms, the Cardinal of Preneste having been 
 sent by Pope Gregory IX. to preside over the reconcilia- 
 tion. The terms agreed to vrere, that the Sienese should 
 rebuild the walls of Montepulciano, which they had de- 
 stroyed, should promise to abstain from molesting Montal- 
 cino in any way, and should restore to Orvieto all the 
 conquests it had made in the territory of that commune. 
 
 The scene of this solemn treaty must have been a no less 
 picturesque than characteristic bit of the life of these days. 
 It took place on the last day of June, in the year 1235, in 
 the tent of the Podesta of Florence, which was pitched in 
 the midst of the army encamped in the neighbourhood of 
 Poggibonzi. That region is to the present day richly 
 wooded with oak ; and doubtless was so to a still greater 
 degree in the thirteenth century. We must picture to 
 ourselves the whole of the victorious Plorentine host 
 bivouacking among these woods, and the palladium car- 
 roccio with its attendant martinello, which had accom- 
 panied the army in its wanderings through the distant 
 districts of the Val d'Orcia, and the mountains in the 
 neighbourhood of Radiofani, drawn up in the immediate 
 vicinity of the Podesta s tent. The company assembled 
 within, or in front of it, was of no ordinary state and 
 dignity. Pirst there was his Eminence the Cardinal of 
 Preneste, acting as Papal legate. Then there was Messer 
 Compagnone del Poltrono of Mantua, the Podesta of Flo- 
 rence for the year, who with Ubertino del Gesso the syndic 
 for an assessor, was appointed the Plorentine commis- 
 sioner for signing the treaty of peace. There were Messer 
 Bernardino de' Pii of Modena, the Podesta of Siena, the 
 Bishop of that city, and Messer Buonagrazia their syndic 
 
TREATY OF PEACE WITH SIENA. 117 
 
 as commissioners on tlie part of Siena. Besides these there a.d. 
 were Pagano, Bishop of Volterra, Hildebrand, Bishop of ^^^^' 
 Kesole, Ramir-i, Bishop of Orvieto, with many other pre- 
 lates, who were there, one does not well understand in 
 what character or for what purpose, save that of con- 
 tributing to the solemnity of the occasion, and gratifying 
 the propensity of the Church for thrusting not a finger, — 
 for one finger can pull out no plums, — but a finger and 
 thumb at least into every pie that was going. Of course 
 there were blessings and Te Deums in abundance. Of 
 course the peace thus solemnly made was declared to 
 be eternal; and of course this eternity was bounded by 
 the occurrence of the first cause of fresh quarrel between 
 the two cities, which happened about seventeen years 
 afterwards. 
 
 But while the more active and restless spirits in Plorence 
 were thus engaged in a sort of civic joint-stock knight- 
 errantry expedition, there were citizens of a different 
 temperament at home bent on other methods of making 
 for themselves a reputation and a place in the world's 
 history. 
 
 Few visitors of Florence will have failed to observe, or 
 to remember, the remarkable pine-covered peak of Apen- 
 nine, with its convent walls gleaming out from among the' 
 dark fir-woods, when the sun touches them, which shuts. 
 in the horizon of the Valdarno to the north, far behind and 
 above Piesole, and bounds the view from the opposite high 
 ground of St. Miniato. And most of those, who have 
 marked it, will have asked, and been told that the name of 
 that noticeable convent-topped hill is Monte Senario. To 
 that solitude, seven Florentine artizans retired in the year 
 1233, to devote themselves to the special service of the 
 Virgin Mary. Why the Virgin should be more efiica- 
 ciously served on the top of Monte Senario, than in the 
 city of Florence, it would be hard to say. But the notion 
 
A.B. 
 
 1235. 
 
 118 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 commended itself to other minds ; and the result was, that 
 from the beginning so made, grew the famous Society of 
 Servites, or servants of the Virgin Mary, a branch of the 
 Augustine Order, which recognises that mountain convent 
 as its cradle and chief. To this order Tra Paolo Sarpi 
 belonged. The names of the seven founders have been 
 preserved, but would be of small interest to an English 
 reader. 
 
 But neither did the wars prevent Morence from finding 
 time and means for attending to more practical objects. 
 About this period the city was, for the first time, paved 
 after that curious fashion which has attracted the attention 
 of strangers up to the present day ; but the last specimens 
 of which are now rapidly disappearing in the progress of 
 material improvement. It is very evident that that 
 peculiar method of laying down huge irregularly-shaped 
 flagstones, accurately and with much ingenuity fitted to 
 suit the many-angled irregularities of each other, must have 
 been an inheritance from the traditions of the old Etruscan 
 workmen, specimens of whose walls, constructed after the 
 same fashion, and even some few fragments of paving, are 
 still extant, to testify to the similarity of the workmanship. 
 It is curious to find an industrial process holding its 
 ground in a peculiar locality, while the change has been so 
 very great around it, for some two or three thousand 
 years. But at last the nineteenth century, intolerant of 
 local peculiarities even in the matter of laying down a 
 pavement, is putting an end to the old Etruscan method, 
 and paving Florence with rectangular stones like other 
 places. 
 
 About the same time, a third bridge was built over the 
 Arno in Florence, that above the Ponte Vecchio, called 
 originally, " di Rubaconte," after Messer Rubaconte di 
 Mundello of Milan, who was Podesta when it was built ; 
 but known better at a later period as the " Ponte alle 
 
ORIGIIir OF THE MI8ERIC0EDIA. 119 
 
 Grazie," from a little chapel at the foot of it dedicated to a..b. 
 Santa Maria delle Grazie. ^'^^^' 
 
 To about the same period belongs the first foundation of 
 that very peculiar and characteristic Florentine institution, 
 the " Compagnia della Misericordia." No one who has 
 ever been in Florence need be reminded that the " Mise- 
 ricordia " still exists in all the striking pecuharity of its 
 mediaeval costume and practice; and that the dismal- 
 looking processions of the brethren may be daily seen 
 there, passing through the streets on their melancholy 
 errands of mercy and charity. More remnants of the Hfe 
 of the centuries preceding the sixteenth have survived in 
 Italy than in other countries, in which progress has been 
 more active ; and many such have very recently perished 
 there also. But this still extant and living institution is 
 by far the most remarkable and strangely picturesque 
 fragment of that old life still remaining. And the circum- 
 stances of its foundation, as they are detailed in an ancient 
 manuscript in gothic letter, copied by the Reverend 
 Lorenzo Ficiin the year 1605, and subsequently published 
 in a history of the Misericordia,* are so illustrative of the 
 Florentine life of that tiuje, that they are of more value 
 than the narratives of a hundred military expeditions 
 against forgotten castles. 
 
 It was in the year 1240, " when the city of Florence 
 and its citizens were intently occupied in the business of 
 trading in, or rather of manufacturing cloths, which by 
 reason of their quality and excellence were sought by all 
 the cities in the world, to such a degree that two annual 
 fairs were held, one at St. Simon's and one at Martinmas, 
 to each of which all the richest merchants in Italy came, 
 and sales were made to the amount at each fair of from 
 
 * Istoria dell' Oratorio e della Venerabile Arcioonfraternita della Miseri- 
 cordia, seritta da Placido Landani. A new edition by the Abate Pietro 
 Pillori. Firenze, 1843, p. 31. 
 
120 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. fifteen to sixteen millions of florins," that the first begin- 
 ■ ning of the Misericordia was made in this manner. All 
 this vast woollen trade gave work to a great number of 
 porters, who most of them waited for their jobs on the 
 Piazza of the Baptistery, that being the place assigned to 
 them by the City. "Now in that piazza there was a 
 cellar, which is believed to have belonged to the Adimari ; 
 but inasmuch as it always stood open, in consequence of 
 having been flooded by the inundations of the Arno,* the 
 porters used to take possession of the place as their refuge 
 from the rain and the cold, while waiting for a job ; and 
 they used to have a fire there, and play at dice, when work 
 was slack, which was rarely the case." There used to be 
 some seventy or eighty porters lounging there ; and it 
 happened that one Piero di Luca Borsi, an elderly man, 
 and the head of the whole gang, was afflicted by the 
 quantity of ill language and blasphemy which was fre- 
 quently heard among them. So he induced them all to 
 agree, that every man who should be guilty of using any 
 blasphemous expression, should be fined by putting a 
 crazia — now equal to two-thirds of a penny — ^into a box 
 provided for the purpose. In process of time a very con- 
 siderable sum was thus collected. And then good old 
 Piero proposed and induced his companions to consent to 
 spend it in providing six litters, one for each ward of the 
 city, and to appoint every week two of their number to 
 each litter, for the purpose of carrying poor sick persons 
 to the hospitals, or those who met with sudden accidents, 
 or who died suddenly or were killed in the streets. And 
 that was the humble origin of the society which became so 
 
 * It is a curious fact, proyed by recent examinations of the locality, that 
 the soil of the Piazza del Duomo and the Piazza of the Baptistery was in 
 the thirteenth century at least two feet lower than it is at present. And in 
 the Archives of the Commune there is a record of money voted in 1288 for 
 raising and levelling the brick pavement of the area. 
 
A.D. 
 
 ASCENDANCY OP GHIBELLINISM. 121 
 
 celebrated in Plorentine story, and has lasted more than 
 
 six hundred years. "^^*^' 
 
 But evil days were at hand for Florence. The energy 
 and indomitable perseverance of Prederick II. had — not by 
 any means conquered, but had cowed for a time the Church 
 and the Church party in Italy ; and Innocent IV. was a 
 fugitive from Rome at Lyons. There is very much that is 
 interesting in the history of this Trederick II. and his 
 struggles with the Church. And as usual in the case of 
 those who were the opponents of priestly power, in days 
 when the pen was held almost exclusively by priests, there 
 is difficulty in getting at the truth, through the thick and 
 manifold covering of falsehood and calumny which the 
 ecclesiastical historians have thrown over his entire story 
 and character. The son of a nun, brought from her 
 cloister by Papal dispensation, to be married to his father 
 the Emperor, Henry VI., he was from his cradle the 
 nurseling and pupil of the Church, which seems to have 
 thought that if it could succeed in getting a whelp of that 
 dangerous Imperial brood, which had caused it so much 
 trouble, into its own hands, to be brought up tame on its 
 ovra spoon-meat, it would accomplish the great object of 
 having in the first place a son who might be set up as an 
 opponent, and made a weapon of ofience against his father, 
 and ultimately an Emperor, who would be its own tool and 
 creature. But the experiment turned put as unfortunately 
 as most of the recorded attempts to mould and fashion a 
 human being to a certain end from his cradle upwards 
 ever have done. Of all the Emperors, the bitterest and 
 most dangerous to the Church was this Frederick II. He 
 seems to have been a man endowed with many great and 
 brilliant qualities both of intellect and character. But he 
 knew the Church, not only as his ancestors had done before 
 him, by experience of its encroaching tyranny, but by that 
 intimate acquaintance with its real character which was 
 
122 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OE FLORENCE. 
 
 A.i>. only to be acquired by one who had studied it in its own 
 ' home, and in a measure observed it behind the scenes. 
 The , consequence was that Prederick was not a good 
 Cathohc, and that excommunications and Papal anathemas 
 passed over him, as far as he was personally concerned, as 
 harmless as water over a duck's back. It was a dangerous 
 scheme, that notion of breeding an Emperor, though there 
 have been plenty of crowned heads with whom it might 
 have answered ; but Frederick was not of the right sort for 
 the experiment. 
 
 But whatever view might be formed of Frederick's 
 character and of his political conduct, by an historian of 
 his life and reign, he can hardly be regarded favourably 
 when looked at from within the walls of Florence ; and all, 
 or almost all, the Florentine writers are bitter against him, 
 and adopt the tone of the Church in their strictures on 
 his character. It could hardly be otherwise ; and yet it 
 is scarcely just to lay at his door the responsibility of the 
 evils which he helped to cause, or to bring to a crisis in 
 Florence. Florentines have cause enough to hate the 
 Imperial power ; but it really became fatal to them, and 
 really merited all their imprecations only when it was 
 wielded by an Emperor who was the ally and the accom- 
 plice of the Church, instead of being its enemy. Frederick 
 in fighting his up-hill fight against his implacable adversary, 
 had to strengthen his influence, and gain adherents to his 
 cause in every part of Italy, as he best might ; and for this 
 purpose he availed himself of the party feuds in Florence 
 which it will be unjust to accuse him of causing, though 
 he is fairly chargeable with having fomented them. 
 
 In 1248 Frederick had had sentence of excommunica- 
 tion and deprivation fulminated against him by Innocent 
 IV. But Innocent was a fugitive at Lyons, aniJ, despite 
 his anathemas, the Imperial party in Italy was in the 
 ascendant. The sure and immediate consequence of this 
 
GUELPHS THE VICTIMS OF TREACHERY. 123 
 
 was, that the Ghibelline nobles in Florence took heart, and A.ti. 
 began to be turbulent and overbearing. " But," says an 
 historian by no means friendly to Prederick, " it was more 
 from party spirit and sectarian feeling preconceived than 
 from caring for either the Pope or the Emperor, that the 
 minds of the Plorentines were inflamed."* And he goes 
 on to relate how, at an assembly of the leaders of the 
 Ghibellines in the church of St. Pietro Scheraggio,t which, 
 was in the immediate neighbourhood of the Uberti Palace, 
 and was a common place of meeting for the Ghibelline 
 party, it was urged that, considering the position in which 
 the Emperor stood towards the Church, it would not 
 sound creditable to make " the Emperor ! " their cry in 
 opposition to the cry of " the Church ! " J And it was 
 determined, therefore, that the rallying cry should be 
 " Viva parte Ghibellina ! " — and the other party, equally 
 well inclined to forget all about the Pope, and make the 
 quarrel a purely Florentine one, abandoned the cry of 
 " Church," and adopted that of " Parte Guelfa ! " 
 
 While the fire was thus smouldering and ready to burst 
 into open flame in the city, Frederick sent to Florence, as 
 to the other cities of Tuscany, professing a desire to main- 
 tain peace within their walls, and demanding for this 
 purpose hostages from either party. Had he asked for 
 them from one party alone, says the historian, § they would 
 not have been sent, as the Emperor well knew ; but as the 
 demand seemed an impartial one, the hostages were sent 
 to the Imperial Vicar at San Miniato, where those of the 
 Guelphs were thrown into prison, and those of the Ghibel- 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, borik ii. rubr, Ixxxii. 
 
 t It exists no longer ; having been destroyed to make way for the build- 
 ing of the Ufizi. It stood on the spot now occupied by the portion of that 
 • building nearest to the Palazzo Pubblioo. The Uberti Palace, as has been 
 before noted, stood exactly on the other side of the Palazzo. 
 
 % " Non era onore di dire contra la Chiesa." — Coppo Stefani, loo. cit. 
 
 § Coppo Stefani, loc. cit. 
 
124 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 J"-^- lines allowed to return to. Florence. At the same tinae the 
 ' Emperor sent a private message to the head of the great 
 Ghibelline house of Uberti, who was the leader of all that 
 faction, urging them to rise at once, promising to send 
 them assistance, and telling them that now was such an 
 opportunity as might not come again, for finally crushing 
 their opponents. 
 
 Less than this would have sufficed to raise the war-cry 
 in every street of the city. The towers of the nobles were 
 manned, barricades were thrown up, and a desperate con- 
 test ensued. The Ghibellines had four principal strong- 
 holds in the city, the chief of which was the palace of the 
 Uberti, and around that the fight was the hottest. The 
 Guelphs were at a disadvantage in consequence of the 
 stratagem which had deprived them of several of their best 
 leaders. But the struggle was maintained with tenacious 
 obstinacy for some days, till on a Sunday morning Fre- 
 derick of Antioch, as he was called, a natural son of the 
 Emperor, arrived in the city with sixteen hundred German 
 horsemen. Nevertheless the Guelphs, gathering their 
 forces to one point of the city, stood at bay, and pro- 
 longed their resistance, fighting with desperate valour till 
 the Wednesday morning, when at length they yielded.* 
 
 But in order to estimate duly the desperation of this 
 defence, it is needful to understand aright what was in- 
 volved in defeat. This fighting against men of the same 
 race, and fellow-citizens, every one of whom was personally 
 known to each of his opponents, and probably personally 
 hated, was a very different thing from the half tournament- 
 like expeditions against other cities. In that case there 
 was victory and glory, or defeat and mortification ; in 
 either case a peace for the nonce, and a return home. At 
 the very worst, loss of life on the field from an unlucky 
 
 * Malispini, chap, cxxxii. ; Yillani, book vi. chap, xxxiii. ; Coppo 
 Stefani, book ii. rubr. Ixxxii. 
 
BURIAL OF A GUELPH CHIEF. 125 
 
 arrow was nothing more than men have to meet and ar? a.d. 
 wont to brave. But in the party warfare of the cities ^^^^" 
 death in the fight was by far the least evil that could 
 happen to one of the defeated party. In those contests it 
 was indeed Voe victis ! The lot of Adam after the fall was 
 the doom of the conquered. Men, women, and children, 
 fathers, sons, wives, sisters, babies, of the vanquished faction, 
 or at least of all the nobles and leaders of that side, had to 
 go forth from their homes, leaving them and their property 
 to the rage of the conqueror, driven forth from the city gates 
 into the world penniless and homeless exiles. This was 
 what now, for the first time, happened to the Guelphs ; 
 and it may well be believed that they fought hard ere they 
 bent their necks to it. 
 
 One strikingly picturesque incident is recorded as having 
 happened on this occasion of the first exile. of the Guelphs 
 from the city. 
 
 While desperately fighting on that last fatal morning, 
 Messer Rustico Marignolle, one of the principal chieftains 
 of the Guelphs, was killed by an arrow which struck him 
 in the face. He had fought with conspicuous bravery 
 throughout the contest, and his loss contributed much to 
 the final defeat of his party. That same night the Guelphs 
 were to leave the city, and the distress, the confusion, the 
 hurry of that last day may be imagined. But if the body 
 of the fallen leader had been left to the mercy of the 
 victors, it would, as his friends well knew, be subjected 
 to every sort of insult and outrage. So the Guelphs 
 determined, amid all the difficulties of those last hours, to 
 give their chieftain decent burial. There was little time 
 for ecclesiastical rites. A strong party of the leading 
 chieftains carried a bier to the place where he had fallen, 
 and placing him on it in his armour as he fell, raised it to 
 their shoulders, and escorted by all their best men in full 
 armour, carried the body to St, Lorenzo. The procession, 
 
126 HISTOUT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. says one of the historians, was more like a military triumph 
 ■ than a funeral. Instead of church banners preceding it, 
 there were the battle standards of the party; instead of 
 wax torches the gleam of swords and spears; instead of 
 chaunting priests the clank of armed men.* In this 
 manner they carried him to St. Lorenzo, and so hastily 
 buried him in a hurriedly made grave ; and there was not 
 a man, says the historian, who did not feel as he stood by 
 that grave, that the lot of him who was placed in it was 
 very far preferable to that of the survivors, who, with their 
 wives and children, were about to go forth homeless wan- 
 derers into the world that night. The place where this 
 memorable interment took place is not known, for as soon 
 as the Guelphs had gone, the canons of St. Lorenzo 
 hurriedly transferred the body to another grave, for fear 
 lest it should be disinterred by the Ghibellines.f 
 
 It was the 2nd of February on which the Guelphs left 
 the city ; and no sooner were they out of the walls than 
 the vengeful work of destroying their homes began. No 
 less than thirty-eight large mansions were destroyed, 
 besides others of lesser note. J It was then that the 
 magnificent mansion of the Tosinghi, of which such won- 
 derful things are recorded, was razed to the ground. It 
 stood- near the present " Mercato Vecchio," and was com- 
 monly called " II Palazzo," as being the only building 
 then in Florence deserving of the name. It was ninety 
 braccia high (about 170 feet), and had an isolated tower 
 by the side of it, an hundred and thirty braccia in height. 
 The fapade was composed of four ranges of arched win- 
 dows, with marbled columns between each ; and the 
 tower was circular, with ranges of marble columns one 
 above the other, after the fashion of the tower at Pisa. 
 
 * Ammirato, libro primo aeerescinto ad an. 1249. 
 
 \ Villani, book yI. chap, xxxiii. 
 
 X Coppo Stefani, book ii. rubr. Ixxs'iii. 
 
THE GUARDAMOETO TOWER. ■ 127 
 
 "And the beauty of it was such," says Coppo Stefani, a-b. 
 "that it would have sufficed for the residence of an ^^*^' 
 emperor."* 
 
 Another deed of wanton Vandalism which was com- 
 mitted by the Ghibellines on this occasion is yet more 
 characteristic of the kind of feeling which existed between 
 the two rival parties, and is too curious to be omitted. 
 
 Exactly at the corner of the long new street which now 
 leads from the Piazza del Diiomo to the Piazza del Popolo, 
 on the spot on which the beautiful Httle oratory of the ancient 
 foundling hospital called the Bigallo now stands, there 
 was then a magnificent and lofty tower, an hundred and 
 twenty braccia high, belonging to the Adimari family, and 
 called the " Guardamorto" tower, because, as the church 
 of St. John, then the cathedral, now the baptistery, imme- 
 diately in front of it was the principal burying-place of the 
 citizens, the tower was thus said to " watch the dead." 
 This tower the Ghibellines determined to destroy. But 
 that which has been visited by the reprobation of every 
 writer from that day to this, was the intention of causing 
 the fall of the tower to destroy the venerable cathedral 
 beneath it. The church of St. Giovanni was the meeting- 
 place of the Guelphs, as that of St. Pietro Scheraggio was 
 of the Ghibellines ; and for no reason save this the latter 
 were bent on its destruction. Not even in those days, 
 however, did they dare to compass such an aim openly and 
 avowedly. The plan therefore was to cause the tower so 
 to fall as to crush the church beneath it; and this in- 
 famous task was intrusted to Niccola Pisano, the cele- 
 brated sculptor and architect. The plan adopted was to 
 cut away the foundations of the tower on the side nearest 
 the church, propping it the while with short upright 
 timbers, to which fire was to be set when all was ready. 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, loo. cit. 
 
128 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. These preparations were made accordingly ; but Niccola, 
 ■ having more of the artist than the Ghibelhne in him, so 
 managed his undermining, and his props, and his fire, that 
 the tower fell clear of the church into the Piazza, and the 
 fine old baptistery, where so many generations of Floren- 
 tines had been baptised and lay buried, was spared.* 
 
 * Villani, book vi. chap, xxxiv. ; Coppo Stefani, loc. cit. ; Ammirato 
 loc, eit, ; Osservatore Fiorentino, vol. i. p. 121. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Indestructibility of Italian parties— Mitigations of the misery of the Guelph 
 exiles— The Ghibellines attack Capraia— Guelph traitor— Ghibellines 
 attack Montevarohi- Are defeated— Result of the defeat in Florence- 
 Rising of the people — Popular constitution — ^Demolition of the towers 
 of the nobles — Tidings of the Emperor Frederick's death — Peace made 
 between the parties of the people — Expedition against Pistoia — Ghibel- 
 line treason — Ghibellines driven out of the city— IJbaldini chastised— 
 Second expedition against Pistoia — Assistance sent to Orvieto— Ghibel- 
 lines restored to Arezzo — Pisa attacks Lucca — Manfred, son of Fre- 
 derick II. — Lucca, how regarded by Florence — Pisan army defeated — 
 Negotiations with regard to Castel Mutrone — Aldobrandino Ottobuoni 
 — Ghibelline outrage — Prosperity of Florence — Ghibelline attempts to 
 recover their position in the city — Rising of the people — Destruction of 
 the TJberti palace — Execution of Ghibellines — The Ghibellines leave the 
 city — Their palaces destroyed — Abbot of Vallombrosa killed — Florence 
 under interdict — Ghibellines in Siena — They seek aid from Manfred — 
 Farinata degU Uberti — Florentines march against Siena — Ghibellines 
 send a second time to Manfred — The people of Florence insist on fight- 
 ing, against the advice of the nobles — Ceoe de' Gherardini — Popular 
 arrogance — Battle of Montaperti — Great defeat of the Florentine army 
 and the Guelphs — Montaperti stUl remembered in Siena — Anecdotes — 
 Effects of the defeat at Florence. 
 
 Fkederick the son of the Emperor quitted Florence 
 ■when the work of driving out the Guelphs had been 
 accomplished, taking with him some of the Ghibelline 
 chiefs who had entered into his service. But he left eight 
 hundred men-at-arms in the city to support the Ghibelline 
 faction, and complete the work by hunting out the Guelph 
 exiles from their retreat, and finally extirpating the party in 
 Tuscany. 
 
 But this was a thing not to be so readily accomplished as 
 the young German prince might have supposed. Indeed, 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
130 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. nothing in the history of the wars and party contests of 
 ■ those ages strikes a modern reader as more remarkable 
 than the indestructible vitality and speedy resurrection of 
 conquered parties and communities. So to manage the 
 afiairs of a people, and so to strike as that the misery, the 
 loss, and the suffering of warfare should at least be not 
 uselessly undergone, that some decisive result may follow, 
 and some more or less final arrangement be attained by 
 the struggle — this seems to be a modern improvement in 
 the art of managing international quarrels. The mediaeval 
 contests in Italy were never final. However extreme the 
 rancour and violence of the victorious party, it appears 
 never to have been sufiiciently so to crush their adversaries 
 efficiently and thoroughly. The victors seem always to 
 have done as careful gardeners do, who in gathering their 
 produce, take care to leave a sufficient number of plants 
 for the production of seed that shall renew the crop. And 
 in reading the chronicles of these never-ending still- 
 beginning struggles, nothing seems more surprising than 
 the quantity of killing it takes to kill any party, sect, 
 or community; or rather, the inefficacy of any amount 
 of killing to compass that end. We read accounts of 
 slaughter, exile, imprisonment, confiscation, spoliation, 
 destruction, and despair enough, it might be supposed, 
 utterly to extinguish and extirpate the objects of them. 
 But in an incredibly short space of time we find the 
 shattered, discouraged, crushed party still alive, recovering 
 its strength, and soon ready to try another fall with its 
 old adversary, and probably to succeed in reversing the 
 previous decision of fortune. 
 
 Nothing could seem more deplorable and hopeless than 
 the condition of the Guelphs as they are described by the 
 historians, driven forth as -we have- seen from the city, 
 and their homes and property destroyed. But as in the 
 operations of nature, so almost always in the arrangements 
 
EXPULSION OP THE GUELPHS. 131 
 
 of a social system, there are compensations which prevent a.d. 
 any action or any blow from exercising all the force, that ^'^^^' 
 seems to those living under different social circumstances 
 necessarily to belong to it. One of these compensating 
 influences in the mediaeval Italian life was the intense 
 feeling and unrestricted admission of solidarity between 
 all the members of families, of communities, of parties. A 
 father or a brother did not feel it to be strange, unreason- 
 able, or unjust that he should suffer in life or goods for 
 the crime of a son or a brother. When the Pisans seized 
 the goods of Florentine merchants in Pisa, because other 
 Florentines had beaten other Pisans in Rome, the proceed- 
 ing did riot appear to anybody unwarrantable or other 
 than could be expected ; and when the Florentine Guelphs, 
 beaten, ruined, and homeless, went forth into exile, the 
 homes, the support and the assistance of their partisans 
 tliroughout Tuscany were open to them. 
 
 Many went to Montevarchi in the upper Valdarno, and 
 many, especially the principal leaders of the party, threw 
 themselves into the strong Guelph fortress of Capraia in 
 the lower Valdarno, about fifteen miles from Florence. 
 The GhibeUines went out to attack the latter ; and the 
 Emperor, who was at Fucecchio, a small town on the Arno 
 about half way to Pisa, being unwilling to come to 
 Rorence, say the historians, because the astrologers had 
 foretold that he should die there,* sent forces to their 
 assistance ; but Capraia was too strong. The Guelphs 
 defended themselves vigorously, though hard pressed by 
 want of food. They held out, however, and would have 
 obtained favourable terms, had not one Giovanni del Tosco, 
 a shoemaker, who had been a prominent Guelph partisan 
 among the people, and had .fled from the city with the 
 leaders of the party, being enraged at not being invited to 
 
 * And he did die at Firenzuola, a town in Apulia, so ttat they were not 
 so far wrong, says .Coppq Stefani, book ii. rubr. Ixxxvi. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OE FLORENCE. 
 
 A-B- be present at a council held by the chiefs in their 
 ■ beleaguered stronghold, ran to the gate and called to one 
 of the besiegers to go to the Vicar (who Avas, it would seem, 
 conducting the siege on the part of the Emperor), and tell 
 him to grant no terms, for that the place could not hold 
 out a day longer ; and in fact, on the next day the Guelphs 
 were compelled to yield at discretion. Several of the 
 principal prisoners were taken to the Emperor, who being 
 about to return into the kingdom of Naples, took them 
 with him, and according to the Florentine historians, 
 treated them with the most revolting cruelty, putting out 
 the eyes of all of them, and condemning many to death. 
 " This sort of thing," says Coppo Stefani, " is the dower 
 of partisanship. These are the delights that spring from 
 party divisions. And assuredly my belief is, that he who 
 is a violent partisan, either Guelph or Ghibelline, cannot 
 gain his salvation. God forgive me if I am in error; and 
 if I say wrong, let it be as though I had not said it, or 
 written it." * 
 
 The Ghibellines attacked their adversaries also in the 
 other principal place of their retreat, Montevarchi ; but 
 there the event turned out very differently. A strong 
 body of the party in the ascendant, together with the band 
 of German soldiers who had been left by Frederick in 
 Florence, were at "Figghine," as Dante and the old 
 chroniclers call it, but as it is now written Figline, a small 
 town in the immediate neighbourhood of Montevarchi, 
 preparing to attack the Guelphs in the latter place. But 
 these, instead of waiting for the attack, sallied out one dark 
 night, succeeded in completely surprising the enemy, and 
 massacred nearly the whole of them. 
 
 The news of this notable defeat and disaster produced a 
 most powerful revulsion of feeling in Florence, and very 
 important events followed from it. 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, book ii, ta.hr, Ixxxyi. 
 
POPULAR RISING. 133 
 
 No sooner had the defeat and exile of the Guelphs left ^-p- 
 the city entirely in the hands of the Ghibelline nobles, than ^^''°' 
 they began to impose new taxes, and to treat the city, as 
 was the natural tendency of that party, after the fashion of 
 lords dealing with their vassals. The Ghibelline nobles 
 were at all times hated by the populace of Florence, even 
 by those lower strata of it, which were hardly high enough 
 in the social scale to participate in the enmities of their 
 superiors. And their present mode of treating the people 
 was not calculated to make them more popular. The 
 Ghibelline massacre at Figline took place on the 20th of 
 September, 1250 ; and immediately on tidings of it 
 reaching Florence, the attitude and the aspect of the people 
 became menacing. It was not however till the 20th of 
 October that the popular discontent rose to the overflowing 
 point. On the morning of that day there were large 
 tumultuous meetings of the people, first at the Badia, as a 
 church and monastery not far from the Piazza del Popolo 
 was called ; and then, because they were there too close to 
 the houses of the Uberti, at Santa Croce. The Uberti, 
 who would not hear of any measures of reconciliation or 
 moderation, armed their adherents in haste, and went out 
 to disperse the meeting by force. But the numbers 
 increased so rapidly, and the appearance of the people was 
 so menacing, that the haughty Ghibellines withdrew* into 
 their fortified houses, and remained " in great fear " f all 
 that day. The people gathering courage as the day went 
 on and they found themselves uninterfered with, advanced 
 from mere vague discontent to organized revolution ; and 
 before they separated, agreed to and decreed, by no other 
 authority than the popular will, various changes in the 
 constitution, which exercised an important influence on 
 the future history of the city. 
 
 * Ammirato, libro ii. ad an. 1250. 
 t Coppo Stefaai, book ii. rubr. Ixxxix. 
 
A.B. 
 1250. 
 
 134 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 The principal scope of the changes introduced aimed at 
 and accomphshed nothing less than a complete politico- 
 military organization of the body of the people. The first 
 step was to declare the Podesta deposed, and to appoint a 
 captain of the people — " Capitano del Popolo " — in his 
 place. The chief magistrate so named was to be entrusted 
 not only with the military captaincy of the people, but 
 also with the judicial functions of the Podesta, and with 
 those that at a later date were attributed to the Gon- 
 faloniere. But although the office of Podesta did not 
 remain long in abeyance, and in 1293 a part of the powers 
 of the Capitano del Popolo were assigned to the then 
 created Gonfaloniere, still the Captain of the People con- 
 tinued to be a position of high importance in the Common- 
 wealth. Under him captains {caporalt) of the six wards, 
 three or four to each, so that the entire number was 
 twenty, were appointed ; and the whole able-bodied 
 population of the city divided into twenty companies, 
 according to the districts which they inhabited, were 
 placed under their orders, and were bound to appear in 
 arms beneath their ward standards whenever summoned 
 by these officers. A large tocsin bell was placed on the 
 " Tower of the Lion," at the sound of which the whole of 
 the twenty companies were to assemble in arms. Twelve 
 men of the people chosen two from each of the six wards, 
 and called " Anziani del Popolo " — Elders of the People — 
 were appointed as a council to assist the Capitano. And 
 all these arrangements were agreed to, perfected, and 
 carried into execution, by that spontaneous and anarchic 
 meeting of the people, on that twentieth day of October !* 
 And the work so accomplished within the hours of that 
 short autumn day stood and held its ground, and took root 
 in the city ; surely a marvellous manifestation of that 
 
 * Malispini, chap, cxxxvii. ; Villani, book vi. chap, xxxix. ; Coppo 
 Stefani, book ii. rubr. Ixxxix. ; Ammirato, book ii. ad an. 1250, 
 
OEaANIZATION OF THE PEOPLE. 135 
 
 genius for organization, which I have said was to a re- a.d. 
 markable degree characteristic of the mediaeval municipal ^^^°' 
 communities. And surely that alarm of the Ghibelline 
 chieftains shut up in their fortresses, while these things 
 were being done, was not without cause— not without 
 ample cause for misgivings, not only respecting the imme- 
 diate upshot of the rising, but, if they had any skill to read 
 the signs of the times, as regarded the future of them- 
 selves and their party in the city. A populace armed, 
 militarily organized under ward-captains of its own choosing, 
 and a head captain equally of their own choice, with the 
 rope of a big tocsin bell in his hand, at the first pull of 
 which every man of those stout wool-combers, and weavers, 
 and dyers, and porters, and their peers were ready to troop 
 forth armed and marshalled under their respective banners, 
 each with its well-known device, into the streets and 
 squares in their bands and companies at a minute's notice, 
 — surely this was not a comfortable spectacle for any 
 aristocracy, GhibeUine or other. Surely this was a por- 
 tentous and disgusting spectacle for any lover of law 
 and order. But no love of disorder and anarchy for 
 disorder's sake was ever among the vices of the people of 
 this " most republican of republics." Vices enough they 
 had ; but not that ; the organizing instinct was too strong 
 within them. And on the present occasion, being thus left 
 to themselves, with the Guelph leaders in exile and the 
 Ghibellines shut up in their city-castles, the people behaved 
 not only with moderation, but with far more of political 
 prudence and wisdom than the leaders of either party 
 among their social superiors had manifested. 
 
 They decreed and executed the demolition of all the 
 towers of the nobles' fortresses above the height of fifty 
 braccia. Having reduced those that exceeded that measure, 
 they destroyed no other building, notwithstanding the 
 examples which had been given them by the Ghibellines 
 
136 HISTORY OF THE COMMOFWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 AD when the city was in their power. On the contrary, bent 
 rather on providing for the future than on avenging the 
 past, and on embellishing and improving the city rather 
 than on laying it waste, they laid the foundations of that 
 Palazzo del Podesta, which was to be the embodiment of 
 the majesty of the Commonwealth, and which has been the 
 admiration of so many subsequent generations. 
 
 In all respects their conduct was more than moderate 
 towards the Ghibelline nobles. They strove to bring about 
 a reconciliation between them and the Guelph exiles ; and 
 much debate with this view had taken place in the city. 
 The Ghibellines in the position in which they were did not 
 dare to reject all such proposals ; but they temporised and 
 made delays ; and up to the end of the year nothing had 
 been done in the matter.* About the middle of Decem- 
 ber,! finding themselves hard pressed, and stOl exceedingly 
 unwilling to accept any such pacification of the city as the 
 people were striving to bring about, they sent privately 
 one of the Uberti to their patron, the Emperor, to ask for 
 advice and assistance. But on the 20th, their messenger 
 returned with the tidings that the Emperor had died on 
 the 13th. On this news becoming known in the city, the 
 people took the matter into their own hands, and " half by 
 force as it were," | peace was made ; and on the 8th of 
 January the Guelphs returned into the city. 
 
 But the peace thus made, as might have been antici- 
 pated, was but of short duration. One of the first cares of 
 the city after the Guelphs had returned to it, was naturally 
 enough that of causing the members of their party who 
 had been driven out of neighbouring cities by the same 
 general political aspects of the times which had caused 
 their own exile, to be restored. And an expedition against 
 Pistoia was determined on for this purpose. But the 
 
 • Coppo Stefani, book ii. rubr. xoii. f 1250. 
 
 X Coppo Stefani, he. cit. 
 
GHIBELLINE TREACHERY. 13V 
 
 Ghibellines thinking that they saw here an opportunity of a-b- 
 undoing all that had been done, and regaining once more 
 their ascendancy, privately encouraged the Pistoia people 
 to resist, promising that they would obtain for them 
 efficacious assistance from without, and that they with all 
 their adherents in the city would abstain from joining in 
 the expedition. Their plan was, to seize the city when 
 thus left as it were alone in it, to ensure a defeat of their 
 Guelph fellow-citizens at the hands of the citizens of 
 Pistoia, to shut the city gates against them, when returning 
 in confusion from their rout, and thus to find themselves 
 completely restored to their old ascendancy. 
 
 The plot was well contrived ; but it so happened that 
 all their provisions were frustrated by the event. The 
 Guelphs, notwithstanding the sudden defection of their 
 fellow-citizens at the last moment, were completely 
 victorious at Pistoia; and some of the prisoners they 
 brought back with them revealed the whole of the plot. 
 The consequence was, that several of the leading Ghibel- 
 line famihes were driven out of the city ; and the fruitful 
 seed was thus sown of future troubles and reprisals. 
 
 It is impossible, however, to avoid admitting that on 
 this occasion the Guelph party seem to have wished to act 
 with moderation, to bring about a possibility of living at 
 peace with their political adversaries within the same city 
 walls, and to lay a foundation for the future tranquillity 
 and security of the city. It is very observable, moreover, 
 that this moderate and wise pohcy was not apparently due 
 so much to the Guelph partisans, as to the body of the 
 citizens, who, though in a general way Guelph in their 
 tendencies and sympathies, were not, it may easily be 
 imagined, violent partisans after the fashion of the leaders 
 and prominent men of the party who had suffered for their 
 cause, and had come into personal contact with, and were 
 therefore animated by personal enmity against, the leaders 
 
138 HISTOEY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OE FLORENCE. 
 
 A.I). of the other faction. And it will be remembered, that the 
 ■ Guelphs on their return to the city in the early part of 
 1251 did not owe that return to any victory of their own. 
 For though they inflicted a defeat on the Ghibellines, as 
 we have seen, at Pigline, that was in October, 1250. And 
 they did not return to the city till the beginning of 1251, 
 being then brought back by the people, who had, during 
 the intervening time, been striving to induce the Ghibel- 
 lines to make peace with the exiles, but had been unable 
 to prevail with them to do so, until the Ghibellines were 
 discouraged and cowed by the news of the Emperor's 
 death on the 20th of December. All this time the city 
 had been in the hands of the people, organized, as we have 
 seen, according to the scheme arranged by themselves on 
 that memorable 20 th of October, while the Guelphs were 
 in exile, and the Ghibellines shut up in their palaces, and 
 passing the day " in great fear." Had the party leaders 
 on either side remained so disposed of for evermore, there 
 might have been better hope for the future fortunes of the 
 city. As it was, the Guelphs, who were the popular party, 
 and had a much closer connection with the people, and 
 much more of the popular element among them, did 
 appear inclined to moderate and conciliatory councils. 
 And it was Ghibelline treason, and a Ghibelline attempt to 
 set their heels once again both on Guelphs and populace, 
 that led to new proscriptions, and destroyed aU hope of 
 concord in the city. 
 
 Only a few of the leading and most incorrigibly hostile 
 Ghibellines had been exiled in consequence of the treason 
 plotted on the occasion of the expedition against Pistoia ; 
 and they were shortly pardoned and permitted to retm-n to 
 the city.* Nevertheless, although it would appear that 
 the wish and purpose of the city government at this time 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, book ii. rubr. cxiii. 
 
GUELPH MODERATION. 139 
 
 was really and honestly to be moderate, conciliatory, and a.b, 
 impartial, the next few years were occupied in expeditions 
 to put down and reduce to obedience various Ghibelline 
 nobles in the country, and several towns in which Ghibel- 
 line politics were in the ascendant. The Ubaldini in the 
 Mugello* were brought to their allegiance. Poggibonzi, 
 which had been a thorn in the flesh to Florence ever since 
 the foundation of it under the circumstances related in a 
 former chapter, and the strong position of Volterra, were 
 reduced and taken possession of. A second expedition 
 against Pistoia was entirely successful; and Florence be- 
 came mistress of that city. Less decisive, but successful, 
 skirmishes with the Pisans and Sienese also contributed 
 to increase the prestige of the still rising commonwealth. 
 Besides all this, the Florentines found time and forces to 
 spare for the assistance of distant alhes. They sent in the 
 year 1255 a troop of five hundred horsemen to Orvieto, to 
 assist that city in its war with Viterbo. But the circum- 
 stance is chiefly worth mentioning because it led to an 
 incident which furnishes a remarkable illustration of that 
 fairness and moderation, which has been attributed above 
 to the pppular Florentine government at this period, and 
 which very rarely characterised its conduct at any future 
 time. 
 
 The troop of five hundred cavaliers sent to Orvieto on 
 this service, passing by Arezzo on their way, were re- 
 quested by the citizens to aid them in a revolution, the 
 object of which was to drive the Arezzo Ghibellines out of 
 the city. The Florentine commander, thinking probably 
 
 * The district, then and still so called, is the fertile valley of the Sieye in 
 that upper portion of its course which runs in a direction from west to east, 
 that is, from the junction of the Stura with the Sieve, to the junction of the 
 Dicomano with the same river. This heautiful valley then lies immediately 
 behind, and to the north of Monte Senario, and is hidden from Florence hy 
 the range of mountains of which that is one of the culminating points. 
 
140 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.i). that he was sure of the approval of the Guelph authorities 
 ^^^^' of his own city, consented ; and the GhibelHnes of Arezzo 
 were driven from their homes. But the Florentine govern- 
 ment lost no time in repudiating the act of their general, 
 declaring that having no cause of war with Arezzo, it was 
 not for them to make themselves parties in the civil dis- 
 cords of the Aretines. And they forthwith sent a force to 
 undo the wrong which had been done, and replace the 
 exiled GhibelHnes in their homes ; * an unique instance, 
 probably, in the long course of the Guelph and Ghibelline 
 wars throughout Italy, of the exiles of either party having 
 been restored to their position in their city by the forces of 
 their political adversaries. 
 
 In the following year the city was engaged in a graver 
 and more arduous contest. Pisa, at the instigation of 
 Manfred, the natural son of the Emperor Frederick, as 
 Villani declares,! broke the peace by attacking Lucca. 
 Conrad, recognised by the Ghibellines as emperor, had 
 succeeded to his father Frederick; but dying in 1254, was 
 succeeded in the kingdom of Naples, or Cicilia, as the con- 
 temporary historians term it, by his half-brother Manfred. 
 "The said Manfred," writes Villani,:}: "was the son of a 
 beautiful lady of the Lancia family of Lombardy, who had 
 been loved by Frederick. He was very handsome, like 
 his father, and even more so than he. He was abandoned 
 to pleasure of every sort. A musician and a singer, he 
 was;§ and willingly saw around him minstrels, and 
 courtiers, and pretty women. He always dressed himself 
 in green cloth. He was very liberal and generous, di 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, book ii. rubr. ex. ; Villani, book vi, chap. Ixi. 
 
 t Book vi. chap. Ixii. 
 
 X Book vi. chap, xlvi, 
 
 § The collocation of the words in the original expresses the old Florentine 
 writer's contempt for those accomplishments in a manner that the English 
 scarcely does justice to. 
 
MANFRED OF NAPLES. 141 
 
 buon aire {debonnaire) ; so that he was gracious and much 
 loved. But all his life was epicurean, caring scarcely at 
 all for God or the saints,* and for nothing save the 
 pleasures of the body. He was an enemy of Holy Church, 
 and of churchmen, taking possession of church property 
 like his father. He was a very rich sovereign too, both by 
 reason of the treasure left by his father Frederick, and his 
 brother Conrad, and from the extent and fertility of his 
 kingdom; which he, despite the continual war he was 
 engaged in with the Pope, maintained as long as he Hved 
 in a prosperous condition ; so that he rose much in riches 
 and in power both by land and sea." 
 
 But the impiety and pleasure-loving habits of the hand- 
 some minstrel king would not have provoked the censure 
 of the old Florentine historian, in all probability, if 
 Manfred had not persevered in the traditional policy of 
 his family, by interfering in Tuscan politics, and foment- 
 ing discord between city and city, and party and party, in 
 the hope of securing GhibeUine ascendancy, and as a con- 
 sequence of that, the extension of his own influence and 
 power. And it is worth notice, that the avowed, and as 
 it were natural, connection of Manfred with the GhibeUine 
 party is a curious proof how very little the theoretical 
 rights of the Emperor, and the principle of feudal alle- 
 giance to him, had to do with the policy and spirit of 
 Ghibellinism at this period of its development. For Man- 
 fred, however much he may have been by virtue of his 
 own energy and prowess rather than by right of any other 
 title, king of Naples, was certainly not emperor. He 
 could in no wise claim any allegiance from Tuscan nobles, 
 or authority over Tuscan cities. But he was the repre- 
 sentative of Toryism in Italy; and, as such, the natural 
 aUy and protector of the GhibeUine party everywhere. 
 
 * That is to say, he was at war with the Church, which laid claim to the 
 suzerainty of Naples, and was excommunicated. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1256. 
 
142 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. It was as such that he now, having just (1256) been 
 ' successful in making good his hold of Naples against the 
 Pope, instigated Pisa, GhibeUine in its sympathies as ever, 
 to break the peace with Florence. The Pisans did so, by 
 taking a step that aimed a blow at Florence in a very 
 tender part. 
 
 Lucca, from its position, and from its inferiority in 
 strength to either of the two rival cities, was sure sooner 
 or later to fall into the hands of one or the other of them. 
 Both of them watched it with the same sort of anxiety 
 that certain modern potentates feel with regard to the 
 sundry constituent parts of the Turkish empire. Both 
 w^ere always ready to protect it against the other. And 
 now Pisa made an inroad on the Lucchese territory. And 
 they must have perfectly well known that this was equiva- 
 lent to a formal challenge to Florence. 
 
 The attack of Pisa was directed against an important 
 fortress defending a bridge over the river Serchio between 
 Lucca and Pisa ; and thither the Florentine forces hastened. 
 The Pisan army appears to have been caught between the 
 Lucchese forces and those of Florence, and a very severe 
 defeat was the result. A vast number of Pisans were left 
 dead on the field ; very many were drowned in the Serchio, 
 and no less than three thousand were taken prisoners.* 
 The victorious Florentines advanced to within a few miles 
 of Pisa, and there celebrated their victory by one of those 
 whimsical boy-like pieces of braggadocio that so often 
 remarkably impress the character of youthfulness on the 
 sentiments and doings of those ages. At the furthest 
 point of their advance on the Pisan territory, they cut 
 down a huge pine ; and on the stump of it struck a number 
 of golden florins, distinguished from the usual Florentine 
 coinage by having a little trefoil between the feet of the 
 
 * Tillani, book vi. chap. Ixii. 
 
GOLD COINAaE. 143 
 
 figure of St. John, which is borne on the obverse of the a.d. 
 florin. "And of these florins," says Villani, " plenty are ^^^^' 
 to be seen to this day." 
 
 The first gold coin had been struck in Florence four 
 years before this, in September of the year 1252. The 
 coins were florins of gold of twenty-four carats, or in other 
 words of pure gold without any alloy at all ; and eight of 
 them weighed an ounce. On one side they bore the 
 " Giglio,"^ which from time immemorial was the cogni- 
 sance of the Commune, and on the other the figure of St. 
 John. Pisa, wealthy as she was, and had long been, had 
 never possessed any gold coinage of her own; and the 
 achievement was regarded with much pride and triumph 
 by Florence. This circumstance also, perhaps, added a 
 flavour to the taunt embodied and recorded by the coinage 
 of Florentine money on the territory of the rival city. 
 
 Pisa was obhged by this defeat to sue for peace, which 
 was granted on the usual terms, consisting chiefly of 
 promises of good behaviour for the future, which however 
 secured by multiplied swearing and by the giving of 
 hostages, were rarely found of any avail to prevent a 
 renewal of hostilities on the first favourable occasion. 
 But an anecdote has been preserved in connection with 
 the negotiations that followed on this Pisan defeat, which 
 is too characteristic of the times to be omitted. 
 
 Among the other conditions imposed on Pisa by the 
 victors, was the delivery to Florence of an important 
 stronghold held by Pisa on the Lucchese frontier called 
 the castle of Mutrone, to be held by Florence or to be 
 destroyed at her pleasure ; and a council of those elders of 
 the people chosen, as will be remembered, by the people 
 themselves, in accordance with the constitution so strangely 
 improvised by the assembled populace, on that memorable 
 
 * This well-known emblem is not properly a lily, but a species of iris. 
 
144 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOKENCE. 
 
 A.D. 20th of October, 1250, was held in Plorence to decide 
 ° ' whether Mutrone should be kept or destroyed. The 
 elders determined that it should be destroyed; but the 
 pubKc announcement of their decision was not to be made 
 till the morrow. The Pisans, meanwhile, were awaiting 
 the determination of Florence on this point with great 
 anxiety. They were extremely desirous that the castle 
 should be destroyed, being of opinion, rightly enough, it 
 would seem, that such an advanced post in the hands of 
 either a Lucchese or Florentine garrison would be a sad 
 thorn in their side. So in the course of that night which 
 intervened between the deliberation of the Florentine 
 elders, and the public announcement of their decision, a 
 Pisan envoy arrived secretly in Florence, bringing with him 
 a very large sum of money. Now there was a certain 
 member of that council, an independent man of the people,* 
 by name Aldobrandino Ottobuoni, who was known to be 
 the leading man, and to have almost a decisive voice in the 
 council. The Pisan envoy did not venture to enter into 
 direct communication with him ; but in the course of that 
 night a friend of Aldobrandino's came secretly to his house, 
 and whispered that he might have four thousand golden 
 florins paid on the nail, or a larger sum if that was not 
 enough, if he would cause Florence to decide on destroying 
 castle Mutrone. The council, as has been seen, had already 
 come to that determination, so that the Florentine elder 
 might at all events without any difficulty, and, as many 
 men would have felt, without greatly burthening his con- 
 science, have accepted the money, and even made no 
 secret afterwards among his own countrymen about such 
 spoiling of the Egyptians. But old Ottobuoni did not see 
 the matter in that light. This extreme anxiety of the 
 Pisans to secure the demolition of the castle set him 
 
 * Franco popolano is Villani's phrase. 
 
ALD0BRA.NDINO OTTOBUONI. 145 
 
 tliinking whether he and his fellow-elders had not been a.t). 
 mistaken in their judgment. He meditated the matter ^^°®' 
 during the remainder of that night, and in the morning, 
 before the promulgation of the decision, called together the 
 council, and induced them to reverse their determination. 
 
 So the Pisans overreached themselves, and castle 
 Mutrone was preserved; and when, shortly afterwards, 
 the patriot elder died, he was buried at the expense of the 
 city, in the church of Santa Reparata, beneath a marble 
 tomb, "higher than any other," as Villani says, with the 
 following verses (incomprehensible both as to sense and 
 prosody, as he gives them, though perhaps none the less 
 complimentary) inscribed on it. 
 
 " Fons est supremus Aldobrandinus amoenus 
 Ottoboni natus, a bona oivi'ta datus." 
 
 _^ The Ghibellines, when next the city fell into their haijds,, 
 destroyed the tomb and the inscription ; and might almost 
 have been pardoned for doing so, if they had limited their 
 spite to the abolition of that wonderful epigraph. But 
 they tore the body of the patriot from the grave, and 
 dragging it through the streets, flung it out into the city 
 ditch ; * — a brutal ferocity of stupid partisan spite, which 
 may serve to give the measure of the intensity of the party 
 hatreds of that day. 
 
 Since the insurrection of the people against the Ghibel- 
 lines in 1250, all had been going well with Florence. 
 The Guelphs had been restored without the usual result of 
 driving out the opposite party; the government of the 
 city had been carried on in a moderate spirit ; the Eloren- 
 tine arms had been victorious on all sides, the increase 
 of wealth had led to. the highly-prized magnificence of 
 possessing a golden coinage ; the increase of population 
 
 * Villani, book vi. chap. Ixii. 
 
 VOL. "l. I' 
 
146 HISTOEY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. and traffic had led to the construction of a fourth bridge 
 over the Arno ;* and lastly, the Florentine democracy had 
 inflicted a severe and notable defeat on the rival Ghibel- 
 line city of Pisa. " And the people of Florence, which 
 ruled the city in those days," says Villani,t " were very 
 proud, and given to deeds of high emprise, and in many 
 respects they were insolent. But one virtue the rulers had : 
 they were loyal and devoted to the Commonwealth." 
 
 But the feelings with which the Ghibelline nobles, 
 secluded in their fortress palaces and shut out from all 
 participation in the government of the city, looked on aU 
 this prosperity and saw their political friends and allies 
 snubbed and put down in every part of Tuscany by these 
 prosperous and audacious burghers, may easily be imagined. 
 The last important reverse inflicted on their party by the 
 defeat of the great Ghibelline stronghold of Pisa, seems to 
 have been the last drop which made the cup of their 
 impatience run over. 
 
 In July, 1258, one of the Uberti, — for, as usual, that 
 detested family were once again foremost in conspiring 
 against the Commonwealth, — Giovanni degii Uberti, says 
 Coppo Stefani, went out from Florence to make his way in 
 all secresy to King Manfred, for the purpose of setting 
 before him the prostrate condition of the Ghibelline party 
 in Tuscany, and telling him that, if supported by aid from 
 him, the Florentine Ghibellines were disposed to try a bold 
 stroke for regaining possession of the city, and putting 
 an end to the present democratic government. Manfred 
 seems to have promised the assistance required. But in 
 the meantime some rumour of the conspiracy reached the 
 ears of the government of Florence. The podesta there- 
 fore sent a summons to the heads of the Uberti to appear 
 before him and answer these accusations against them ; 
 
 * The Ponte a Santa Trinita, built in 1252. f Book vi. cliap. Ixv. 
 
POPULAR RISING. 147 
 
 but they, making sure of tlie assistance, which they sup- 
 posed to be near at hand, threw oif the mask, shut them- 
 selves up in their fortress, and sent back the officers of the 
 podesta wounded, and flying for their hves. But they had 
 not duly reckoned on the tardiness of mercenary troops, 
 and the swiftness of popular indignation. At this open 
 contempt of all law, and rebellion against the authority of 
 the Commonwealth, the whole city rose in arms in an 
 instant. The tocsin bell, which had been placed on the 
 lion tower, exactly with a view to such an emergency, rang 
 put, its summons for the first time; the city companies 
 came out 'ifromi, their, wards, under their different banners 
 and ward captains; and it soon became abundantly evident 
 that the city was in a very different mood from what it had 
 been on that last occasion of popular assembly, when the 
 organization, which now for the first time was tried in 
 .action, had been established. 
 
 The incorrigible lawlessness of the Ghibelline nobles had 
 moved the indignation of the people to the utmost. Of 
 course the general place of meeting, as the companies came 
 towards the centre from the wards, was that Piazza del 
 Popolo on which so much of the subsequent history of 
 Florence has been enacted. There, too, stood the grim 
 and menacing feudal stronghold palace of the Uberti, now 
 as ever the ringleaders in every attempt to destroy civic 
 liberty. Tts proud towers had been lopped to a more 
 moderate height, as a warning on the last occasion on 
 which the overbearing pride of its lords had provoked civil 
 discord. But the strong walls still remained, a fortress 
 fitted only to enable their owners to set law and the State 
 at defiance, and to be the nest for hatching never-ceasing 
 conspiracies against the liberty and prosperous civic life 
 of Florence. This hated fortress was at once attacked 
 by the people, and soon forced. Sohiatuzzo Uberti and 
 several of the retainers and adherents of the family were 
 
 L 2 
 
 A.D. 
 
 12o«. 
 
A.D. 
 1238. 
 
 148 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 slain in the fight. Uberto degli Uberti and Mangia degli 
 Infangati were taken prisoners, and under torture con- 
 fessed all the particulars of the conspiracy. They were 
 forthwith hurried off to the Garden of St. Michael, — that 
 Orto di San Michele on which one of the most beautiful 
 structures of Florence now stands — and there beheaded. 
 
 Then the fury of the people turned itself against the 
 walls, from within which had come forth so much of evil 
 to Florence ; and the homes of the Uberti were levelled 
 with the ground, and a decree made that no building 
 should ever again be raised on that accursed spot. In 
 remarkable obedience to which decree, when nearly half a 
 century later the Palace of the Commonwealtla was built 
 by the city, it was determined that the plan of it should be 
 so contrived that, at whatever cost of convenience and 
 symmetry to the structure, no inch of it should rest on the 
 soil on which the Uberti had hatched treason against their, 
 country. 
 
 Of couse in such a state of things Florence was no place 
 for the Ghibellines to remain in. The principal leaders of 
 the faction did not wait to be hooted from the city, but 
 made all haste to leave it. The names of many of the 
 leading families, who had then to submit to the fate which 
 they had so recently inflicted on others, are recorded by 
 the historians,* who, however, conclude their lists by 
 adding, " and many others of less note." Many Ghibel- 
 lines, who did not leave the city in the first instance, were 
 compelled, or found it necessary to their safety, to do so in 
 the following days. Many other of their palaces were 
 razed, and the stones were used to build that part of the 
 city wall which passes over the hill of St. George, from 
 the gate of St. Nicolas to the vicinity of the Roman gate. 
 The city was upon this occasion pretty thoroughly purged 
 
 * Malispini, chap. olx. ; Villani, book vi. chap. Ixv. ; Coppo Stefani 
 book ii. rnbr. oxiii. ; Ammirato, book ii. ad an, 1258. 
 
THE ABBOT OP VALLOMBIIOSA; 149 
 
 of its Ghibelline element. But the popular passions had a.d. 
 been raised to a dangerous height ; and the triumph of the 
 popular cause was stained by one act which is severely 
 feprobated by the most thorough partisan Guelph writers. 
 
 The Abbot of Vallombrosa, a notorious Ghibelline of the 
 noble family of Beccheria of Pavia, being in Florence — 
 where it would, seem that, if he were innocent of political 
 plotting, he had at such a moment little business to be, 
 instead of in the safety of his monastery among the hills — 
 fell into the hands of the populace, was accused of having 
 ■meddled in the late conspiracy, confessed the fact under 
 torture, and despite his loud appeals to the sacredness of 
 his person, and threats of the vengeance of Rome, was 
 beheaded in the Piazza of St. ApoUinare, immediately 
 behind the Bargello. For this act Florence was placed 
 imder interdict, and the governing body excommunicated, 
 by Pope Alexander IV. But the ecclesiastical censures 
 seem to have sat lightly on the burghers ; for we hear 
 nothing further of any consequences following therefrom. 
 A worse result seems to have been, that many Florentines, 
 passing on their affairs through Lombardy, were maltreated 
 by the people of Pavia and the relatives of the abbot in 
 retaliation for his death. 
 
 The Ghibellines were gone ; the city was quiet ; the 
 new walls on the further side of the Arno were being built; 
 the magnificent Palazzo of the Commune was rising 
 proudly from its foundations. But, as ever, the expulsion 
 of the vanquished party was but the germ of new troubles ; 
 and the- Florentines well knew that the Ghibellines were 
 not gone far, and that they should soon hear more of them. 
 And it was a history filled with siqiilar experiences that 
 begot in the mind of Machiavelli many of those reflections 
 and theories which have excited the reprobation of more 
 happily circumstanced generations in happier countries. 
 
 The Ghibellines betook themselves to Siena, which, 
 
150 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.p. generally Ghibelline in its politics and sympathies, and 
 ■^ ■ smarting under the recent defeats it had experienced at the 
 hands of the Florentines, received the exiles with open 
 arms, and immediately began to conceive hopes of making 
 the civil discords of Florence the means of avenging their 
 past misfortunes, and regaining all the many positions 
 which the Florentines had taken from them. 
 
 The first step necessary was to obtain assistance from 
 King Manfred, the natural head and protector of Ghi- 
 bellinism in every part of Italy. A deputation of four 
 cavaliers was accordingly sent, of whom Farinata degli 
 Uberti — a name which has remained celebrated in Floren- 
 tine history, and who is heard of for the first time on this 
 occasion — was one. They found Manfred, however, in 
 the thick of one of his almost unceasing struggles with the 
 Pope, and so hard pressed that he was unable to do more 
 for them than give them a hundred horsemen. Much 
 disappointed at the smallness of this aid, the Ghibelline 
 envoys were disposed to decline it. But Farinata said, 
 " Nay, let us take the hundred horse. We take with 
 them the King's standard and the King's reputation ; and 
 we will find the means of so using them, that he shall soon 
 be ready enough to give us a more efficient assistance." 
 
 The four envoys returned to Siena, therefore, with their 
 little band of a hundred horsemen, to the great disappoint- 
 ment of those who were awaiting their coming. The 
 Florentines meantime, having heard all these circumstances, 
 thought it better not to wait to be attacked in their own 
 city, but to carry the inevitable struggle on to the territory 
 of the enemy. So the Florentine host marched to Siena 
 in the month of May, 1259, taking the Carroccio with them, 
 and encamped before the city. The Ghibelline exiles and 
 their Sienese friends meanwhile treated their German allies 
 magnificently, and one day, having filled "their stomachs 
 with meat and their heads with wine," they told them 
 
STRATAGEM OF FAEINATA. 151 
 
 that they were going to make a sally against the enemy a.b. 
 encamped before the walls ; that they, the Germans, should ^^^^' 
 lead the way, and the whole Sienese host would follow. 
 The poor mercenaries rode forth from the gate, nothing 
 doubting, and rushed to the attack of the Florentine 
 camp. But instead of being supported by their false 
 friends in the city, the gates were closed behind them ; the 
 whole band was massacred by the Tlorentines ; the royal 
 banner was dragged in triumph through the camp, as 
 Farinata had foreseen and intended, and suspended the 
 wrong way upwards in Florence, where this disgrace of 
 the royal arms was witnessed by certain prisoners, and 
 duly reported to Manfred, as the Ghibelline chieftain had 
 intended it should be. 
 
 Nevertheless, before sending a new application to 
 Manfred, the Florentine exiles thought it well to provide 
 themselves with the means of making an offer, which might 
 facilitate their dealings with a sovereign short of money. 
 They entered into negotiations, therefore, with the Salim- 
 beni company— ^great Sienese merchants at. that period^ 
 and succeeded in borrowing from them twenty thousand 
 florins. With this money in their pockets they again went 
 to Manfred, offering to find the pay for eight hundred 
 horsemen for three months, if he could supply the men ; 
 and Manfred sent the troops required on these terms. 
 
 Half the three months was consumed in the march from 
 Apulia to Siena ; it was wholly out of the power of the 
 Ghibellines to raise more money to pay them for a further 
 period ; * and it became urgent therefore with the Sienese 
 and their friends that means should be devised for bringing 
 on a battle at once; Assistance had been obtained from 
 
 * This is the story as told by the Florentine historians. Malavolti, an 
 historian of Siena; writing in the sixteenth century, declares that these 
 troops were paid by Manfred, and that they had already been more than 
 three months in Sienai 
 
152 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEAL! H OP FLORENCE. 
 
 A -p. the Pisans and some other Ghibelline communities in 
 Tuscany, so that their disposable forces amounted to 
 eighteen hundred cavaliers, besides the usual proportion of 
 foot soldiers. With this force they at once marched out 
 to attack Montalcino, a protected ally of the Plorentines ; 
 but fearing that this might not suffice to draw forth the 
 men of Florence to meet them, they had recourse to a plot, 
 whicb was devised by Farinata degli Uberti, who seems to 
 have been the leading spirit and directing head of the 
 , whole affair. He employed two Franciscan * friars to 
 proceed to Florence, furnished with letters from apparent 
 malcontents in Siena, making an offer to the government to 
 give up to them one of the gates of Siena, as soon as the 
 Florentine army should appear before it. The friars came 
 and made their proposals with every appearance of mystery 
 and secresy; and the council of elders was completely 
 taken in. They were anxious to put the army in march 
 instantly, on the faith of the two friars. But in the 
 general assembly which was called to decide on the policy 
 to be adopted, the Guelph nobles who, as Villani says, 
 understood more of war than the citizens, were strongly of 
 opinion that the better plan was to wait. They hesitated 
 to attack the eight hundred German horse, and urged that, 
 if the city would only have patience for six weeks, these 
 formidable enemies would return to the south of Italy ; — 
 that they were hired only for three months, that half that 
 time had already elapsed, and that they assuredly would 
 not remain a day beyond the covenanted term without 
 further pay, which the Ghibellines were in no condition to 
 give them. Nothing could be more rational than these 
 observations. But the popular leaders would not listen to 
 any policy save that of immediate action. One of the 
 Anziani insulted Aldebrando degli Ademari, accusing him 
 
 * St. Francis died ia 1226 ; only thirty-four years before his disoiplcs 
 were thus employed. 
 
CECE DE' GHERARDINI. 133 
 
 of counselling delay only from cowardice. Messer Cece ^-p. 
 de' Gherardini then rose to speak, and was about to advo- 
 cate the obvious wisdom of a short delay, when one of the 
 elders of the people reminded him that any citizen speaking 
 without the permission of the elders was liable to a fine of 
 a hundred lire. " I will speak and pay the fine," said 
 Cece. " You have spoken and incurred the fine ; and if 
 you proceed will incur a repetition of it," said the popular 
 leader. " So be it ! " said Cece, and again proceeded to 
 speak. /' Three hundred lire, if you utter another word ! " 
 retorted the overbearing citizen. " I will pay three 
 hundred for the privilege of saving my countrymen from 
 ruin," returned the patriotic Gherardini. But the " Anzi- 
 ani," rising, told him that if he persisted further he should 
 pay not with lire, but with his head. 
 
 We have seen, a few pages back, the Florentine people 
 under their best aspect — lovers of law ; expert at, and 
 given to, organization ; quick at combination ; willingly 
 obedient to authority set over them by their own act ; and 
 powerfully moved by a strong and generous love for the 
 Commonwealth. In the scene above described we see 
 them at their worst ; and it is a worst ominous of evil issue 
 to the attempt at popular self-government. We see them 
 impatient, arrogant, incapable of forming a due estimate 
 of opponents, puffed up with vainglory and braggadocio 
 ardour born of ignorance. And these are the faults of all 
 inexperienced popular bodies, and are not more fatal or 
 dangerous symptoms than are the analogous defects in 
 individual youth. But far worse than all this, we see them 
 untouched by any real appreciation or conception of the 
 essence of civil liberty — lovers, not of liberty, but of 
 despotic force. The men who impose silence on a fellow- 
 citizen because he wishes to enunciate views in opposition 
 to the popular opinion of the hour, are very far off from 
 any such stage of social culture as can render popular self- 
 
154 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A. p. government a hopeful experiment; — as far as those who 
 1260. by clamour forcibly prevent an unpopular candidate from 
 speaking on a hustings are from being ready to be entrusted 
 with the suffrage. It is not the last time that we shall 
 have to notice similar despotic tendencies in the Florentine 
 people ; which, like the ominous symptoms that sometimes, 
 even in the heyday of youth, betray the germ of mortal 
 disease lurking in the constitution, remind us- of the fatal 
 catastrophe towards which our story has to travel. 
 
 The people had thek will. It was determined to march 
 against the enemy. Florence summoned her allies from all 
 the towns with which she had treaties, obliging them to 
 succour her at need ; — and Lucca, Pistoria, Prato, Bologna, 
 Volterra, San Miniato (no longer in the gripe of an 
 Imperial Vicar), CoUe, San Gemignano, and others, sent 
 their quotas. Florence herself supplied eight hundred 
 citizen horsemen,* and more than five hundred foot 
 soldiers ; and about the latter end of August, in the year 
 1260, the host marched out with the Martinello ringing, 
 and the standard of the Commune flying from the mast of 
 the red Carroccio. The army advanced to a spot in the 
 Sienese territory on the river Arbia, called Montaperti, 
 and was there, as had been arranged, joined by the con- 
 tingents from Perugia and Orvieto, which brought up the 
 entire force to more than three thousand horsemen, and 
 more than thirty thousand foot.f 
 
 And then, on the 4th of September, was fought that 
 great and long-remembered battle, "che fece I'Arbia 
 colorata in rosso." | Dante was born five years after that 
 
 * Each, attended by two or more squires ; so that the 800 represents a 
 force of at least 2400 men. 
 
 t Villani, lib. vi. chap. Lxxviii. Coppo Stefani says 85,000 foot, book ii. 
 rubr. cxxiii. 
 
 ■f Inferno, cant. x. ver. 86 — 
 
 "Which coloured the river Arbia red." 
 
BATTLE OF MONTAPERTI. 155 
 
 fatal day, but the remembrance of it was evidently still a.d. 
 as of a thing of yesterday m his time. There are other ^^^°" 
 stories of treachery besides that false promise of treason 
 which led the Florentines to expect that one of the gates 
 was going to be given up to them ; how Bocca degli Abati, 
 marching with the Florentine host, but Ghibelline in his 
 heart, suddenly, with one sabre-cut, smote oS" the arm of 
 the Florentine standard-bearer, and then, followed by 
 others equally Ghibelline in their real sympathies, galloped 
 over to the enemy ; for which Dante has inflicted on him 
 an immortahty of infamy* among the traitors to their 
 country. But in truth, the sohd strength of the German 
 mercenaries, under their leader Giordano da Anglona, the 
 military prowess of the Ghibelline nobles, and the superior 
 strategy of Farinata, were more than a match for the far 
 less homogeneous forces of the aUied Guelphic cities ; and 
 despite the most desperate and unyielding valour, they 
 were defeated utterly. Even the palladium Carroccio, with 
 its attendant Martinello, remained in the power of the 
 enemy, and it may be doubted whether this disgrace did 
 not touch the popular heart in Florence with greater 
 bitterness than any of the more serious consequences of 
 the great defeat. The guardianship of the Carroccio had 
 been specially committed to old Giovanni Tornaquinci, now 
 nearly seventy years of age, . a consistent and ardent 
 Gnelph, who had been in aU the battle-fields of Florence 
 for the last half century, and had suffered exile with his 
 party.f Under him Was his son, and three other young 
 men of their house ; all fell around the sacred car, together 
 with a heap of citizens, who made a rampart around it 
 with their bodies when they could no longer protect it 
 otherwise, but all in vain.. 
 
 It has been said that the incessant battles between city. 
 
 * Inferno, cant, xxxii. yer. 79. 
 t Ammirato, book ii. ad an. 1260. 
 
156 HISTOIIY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. and city in Italy during those centuries, from the twelfth 
 ■ to the sixteenth, were for the' most part not very fatal to' 
 life. But the great defeat of Montaperti was an exception 
 to this rule. The Florentine historians state the number 
 of the slain at more than 2500, and the prisoners taken at 
 1500. The writers on the other side estimate the deaths at 
 10,000. But in all probability the former statement is the 
 more accurate, and most likely not far from the truth.* 
 
 The battle was fought on Tuesday, the 4th of Septem- 
 ber ; " and on that day," says Villani, thus finishing his 
 account of it, " was broken and destroyed the old p'opular 
 government of Morence, which had existed for ten years 
 with so great power and dignity, and had won so many 
 victories." 
 
 Few events have ever left a more endurable impression 
 on the memory of a people than this great battle between 
 two cities and parties animated both of them by the most 
 unquenchable hatred. The memory of that day has lasted 
 through six hundred years, more freshly perhaps in Siena 
 than in Florence, both because it was in the former city a 
 pleasant, and in the latter a bitter one ; and because in 
 these latter times Siena, as a smaller and more remote city 
 less disturbed by the admixture of foreign elements of 
 population, has to a much greater degree retained its old- 
 world ways, thoughts, and feelings. This has been the case 
 there to so singular a degree, and the circumstances are 
 so curiously illustrative of the extraordinary vitahty of the 
 old municipal feelings, that I cannot refrain from recording 
 here one or two anecdotes bearing upon this point, which 
 have fallen within my knowledge. 
 
 It was but a few years ago — in 1847 — that a worthy 
 and well-esteemed citizen of Siena, — a bookseller and pub- 
 lisher, — in the course of a conversation in which Empoli 
 
 * Malispini, chap, clxxii. ; Yillani, book vi. chap, Ixxviii. ; Coppo 
 Stefani, book ii. rubr. cxxiii. ; Ammirato, he, cit. 
 
SIENESE ANECDOTES. 137 
 
 was referred to,, remarked : " Ay, sirs ; it was a bad a.b. 
 business, that at Empoli!"— " What was a bad business? ^^^^' 
 Has anything happened there ?"—"Farinata, I say, made 
 a fool of himself there!* Era meglio spianarla !" "It 
 would have been better to have levelled it !" meaning 
 Florence, which was at the time of this con^^ersation, as of 
 old, heaving with the throes of revolution. The Sienese 
 citizen was, in all the simplicity of earnestness, thinking of 
 the battle of Montaperti, as if ■ it had made part of the 
 news of the last week. 
 
 It was at that same period, that on the flight of the 
 Grand Duke from Florence, when a general movement of 
 fraternisation among the people of the different cities was 
 taking • place, and many large bodies of the people, had 
 gone up to Florence' from several of the towns of Tuscany, 
 a well-known Italian poet and patriot was speaking to a 
 numerous assembly of the labouring classes at Siena, with a 
 view of inducing them to march in a body, as those of 
 other cities had done, to the capital. But though eager 
 supporters of the political movement then in progress, 
 there appeared among them a great reluctance to take this 
 step ; — to the surprise of the speaker, who could not at all 
 comprehend the unexplained feeling which was evidently 
 at work among them. At last, on pressing the leaders 
 among them for an explanation of their feelings on the 
 subject, they admitted that they feared lest the remem- 
 brance of Montaperti might lead to a quite other than 
 fraternal reception of a body of Sienese by the Florentines. 
 To the much-astonished politician's assurances, that no 
 such result was likely, it was replied, that had he been a 
 Sienese or a Florentine, instead of a Venetian (as he 
 happened to be), he would have felt and spoken differently. 
 And at length he persuaded them to overcome their fears 
 only on condition that he should by regular notarial act 
 
 * The facts alluded to will be found related a few pages farther on. 
 
1260. 
 
 158 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 become a Sienese citizen, and accompany them to Florence, 
 bearing, as they did, a ribbon with the black and white 
 colours of Siena on his arm. All which was done accord- 
 ingly ,• and the Sienese inheritors of the glory and the 
 responsibilities of Montaperti marched to Florence with no 
 little misgiving as to the results, and were not a little sur- 
 prised and touched by the friendly reception which awaited 
 them. 
 
 The municipality and the gentry of Siena showed on 
 the same occasion, in a different way, that the memory of 
 Montaperti and the sentiments it had left behind it were 
 not extinct among them either. There are to this day in 
 the Cathedral of Siena, where every visitor to the old 
 Ghibelline city must have observed them, two masts with 
 the Florentine standards which were on that day taken 
 from the Carroccio of the rival city. Various trophies 
 of a similar kind, jealously preserved by other cities in 
 memory of the prowess of their mediaeval ancestors, had 
 been sent back to the cities from which they had been 
 taken, in token of the cessation of the old Italian municipal 
 jealousies and feuds. It was proposed, therefore, that these 
 famous masts, with their faded colours, should be sent in 
 token of fraternal feeling to Florence. And the people, 
 moved by the reception they had met with, wished that it 
 should be done. But the authorities of the city could not 
 bring themselves to part with them. There they are still, 
 in the beautiful Siena Duomo : Siena is proud of Monta- 
 perti yet. 
 
 No event had yet happened to Florence which produced 
 any such dismay and sorrow in Jier streets, as did the 
 defeat of Montaperti. There was not a house in the city, 
 say the chroniclers, however grand, or however humble, 
 from which at least one combatant had not gone forth 
 among that ill-starred host. And grievous was the wail 
 of vromen in the half-deserted streets, when the first 
 
THE TIDINGS OF DErEA.T. 169 
 
 fugitives from the field brought the fatal tidings. They a-t. 
 came with hanging heads, ashamed to return ; and those ^^^"* 
 who had remained in the city, the old, the infirm, the sick, 
 wished that they had had the chance of dying on the field, 
 rather than hving to see that day in Morence. The sen- 
 timent of national disaster and disgrace in that small 
 community, — ^in which every individual was a far larger 
 portion of the body social than is the case in larger 
 societies, and felt with proportionable intensity the national 
 triumphs and misfortunes, — was perhaps greater than the 
 distress occasioned by the loss of individuals in an age when 
 life was held cheap in accurate proportion to the risks and 
 dangers amid which it was passed. But that was the 
 feeling of the rougher sex, on whose shoulders the weight 
 of the disgrace fell, and the necessity of facing the mor- 
 row mainly lay. Mothers, wives, and loving maidens, each 
 in her desolated home, wailed over the individual loss that 
 had made her life empty from that bitter day forth. 
 
 Yet tremendous as was the blow, and violent as were 
 the immediate effects of it on Florence and on the Guelph 
 party throughout Italy, it will be seen in the following 
 book, that not even the great' battle of Montaperti was 
 ■ an exception to the remark that has been made on the 
 singular degree in which all the contests and all the party 
 triumphs and reverses of that age are characterised by 
 absence of finality in their results. No party is ever 
 rendered safe by its successes ; none is ever crushed by its 
 reverses. ' The greatness of the Montaperti defeat, and the 
 utter prostration of the popular party and the Guelphs 
 which succeeded it, would lead a reader unaccustomed to 
 the indestructible vitality of Italian mediEeval communities 
 and parties to conclude that the prospects of Guelphism, as 
 a party in the State, were at least in Florence at an end ; 
 and that Florentine democracy was effectually curbed for 
 many a generation to come. 
 
A.B. 
 
 1260. 
 
 160 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 But let him not trust to appearances in this matter ; — 
 and specially not to appearances interpreted by rules and 
 theories drawn from the experience of essentially different 
 social systems. Let him have patience, turn the leaf of a 
 new book, and he shall see a sudden shifting of the slide 
 in the phantasmagoric lantern, showing altogether unex- 
 pected metamorphoses and combinations. 
 
BOOK 11. 
 
 FROM THE BATTLE OP MONTAPERTI, a.d. 1260, 
 
 THE BEGINNING OP WAR WITH CASTRUCCIO CASTRACANE, 
 
 A.D. 1320. 
 
 60 TEARS. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Consequences of the battle of Montaperti— Tlie Guelphs in exile— At Lucca 
 — " Lo Spedito"— Giordane da Anglona— Conte Guido Novello— Meet- 
 ing of the Ghibellines at Empoli— Parinata degli Uberti saves Florence 
 — The Guelphs driven from Lucca — Their march to Bologna— Their 
 fortune there— At Modena— At Reggio— Clement IV. invites Charles of 
 Anjou into Italy — His character— Contrasted -with Manfred — Guelph 
 cavaliers presented to Charles of Anjou— Battle of Benevento — Death 
 of Manfred— Ghibelline dismay in Florence— The Frati Gaudenti—Ihe 
 " Arti" — Arti Maj/giori—'Peonlianty of the new constitution- Pq^oZarai 
 grassi — Popolo minuto — Guido Novello quits Florence — The city in the 
 hands of the people — Guelphs intrigue with Charles of Anjou — Ghibel- 
 lines leave the city — Charles made master of Florence — Captains of the 
 Guelph party — Expeditions against the Ghibelline exiles — Gregory S. 
 in Florence — Pacification of parties by him — How the Guelphs observed 
 it — Gregory X. passes through Florence when under interdict — Inter- 
 dict little regarded at Florence— Expeditions against Ghibelline exiles 
 — Nicholas V. sends a legate to Florence — Fra Latiao Frangipaue — 
 Pacification by him — Decay of the Ghibelline party — Imperial Vicars 
 in Tuscany — Disobedience to their commands — Change in the constitu- 
 tion of Florence — "Priori" — "Arti Maggiori" — "Arti Minori" — 
 "Gonfaloniere" — Nobles allowed to be matriculated to the guilds — 
 Festivities at Florence. 
 
 The immediate consequences that followed from the 
 great Guelph disaster were decisive and notable enough. 
 The victorious army assembled in Siena on the morrow 
 of the battle, determined to march on Florence as soon as 
 the division of the spoil — a work of several days — should 
 be accompHshed. It was a matter of course that they 
 should do so, the grand object of the fight having been the 
 restitution of the Ghibellines to their homes, and of Ghi- 
 belline government in Florence. The miserable remnant 
 of the Guelphs accordingly were in no wise surprised, 
 
 M 2 
 
A.B, 
 
 1260, 
 
 164 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 when it was known in Florence that the GhibeUines and 
 their aUies were on the march towards the city. 
 
 One course only was opened to the conquered : expa- 
 triation and flight. And on the 13th of September, nine 
 days after the fatal fight, the Guelphs left the city. The 
 simple fact is easily stated in these few words, briefly as it 
 is written down by the contemporary chroniclers after their 
 unimpassioned fashion ; but it needs some exercise of the 
 imagination to picture adequately to oneself all that is in- 
 volved in that dry statement. This exodus of the Guelphs 
 was a very different one from that other twelve years 
 before. On that occasion few left the city save the leaders 
 of the party, the fighting-men, nobles mostly, who had 
 embraced the popular cause. The body of the people, 
 though understanding well that that was their side, though 
 hating the Ghibelline nobles, and calling themselves 
 Guelphs, had hardly begun to take a sufficiently pro- 
 minent part in the strife of parties, to be involved in- 
 dividually in the disaster of the party chiefs. But the 
 government had now been for ten years in the hands of 
 the people. Many simple citizens had served the office of 
 " Anziano," or Elder, which placed the holder of it among 
 the statesmen of his country, and put power in his hands, 
 the extent of which we have just witnessed in the de- 
 plorable scene between the Guelph nobles and the Elders, 
 in the debate which led to the battle of Montaperti. 
 Mercantile wealth had been rapidly increasing ; and a con- 
 siderable class had already become those " fopolani grassi" * 
 or well-to-do citizens, whose distinction from the men of 
 noble race on the one hand, and from the " popolo minuto," 
 or small folks of the populace, on the other, was becoming 
 every year more marked, and will shortly be seen to 
 exercise a very important influence on the fortunes of the 
 
 * Literally, " fat men of the people.'' 
 
EXODTJS OF THE GUELPHS. 165 
 
 Commonwealth. This well-to-do bourgeoisie was composed 
 of men who were the political, if not the social, equals and 
 associates of the Guelph nobles, and who were of quite 
 sufBcient note in the city to be personally involved in its 
 misfortunes. But the connection of such men with the 
 class immediately below them in the social scale, was much 
 closer and more indissoluble than that which bound any 
 part of the nobles to their fellow-citizens. The latter were 
 independent men living upon means drawn from their pro- 
 perties outside the walls. The former class were traders, 
 employers of labour, men whose prosperity made the liveli- 
 hood of many others. And the closing of their shops and 
 manufactories was a much more wide-spreading calamity 
 than the abandonment of a noble's palace. 
 
 Por these reasons the exodus of 1260 was a very much 
 more numerous one than that of 1248 had been ; and it 
 included in it vast numbers of a class much less able to 
 meet and override the calamity. Largeness of number 
 alone grievously increases the evil of such a time of 
 trouble. Alleviations which may be available for tens, or 
 even hundreds, are not attainable for thousands. And the 
 " Omne solum forti patria est," with which the warlike 
 noble may have consoled himself, imparted but cold com- 
 fort to an artisan driven forth from his home and his 
 industry ; and stUl colder to the helpless wife with her 
 little ones, compelled to plod the weary miles of the path 
 of exile after him. 
 
 Another circumstance which rendered this exodus of 
 the Guelphs a worse calamity than the former one, was 
 that now nearly all Tuscany was shut against them. So 
 thorough had been the defeat, so complete the Ghibelline 
 ascendency resulting from it, that in every city the same 
 scene on a lesser scale was taking place. Many of the 
 smaller towns, which had always been Guelph in their 
 sympathies, were now subjected to Ghibelline despotism. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1260. 
 
166 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 '^B- One refuge alone remained in Tuscany — Lucca. Either 
 because the Ghibelline element within the walls was 
 weaker there, as is probable, from the constant enmity 
 between that city and neighbouring Pisa, always so 
 strongly Ghibelline, or because the dominant Ghibellines 
 had for the present too much on their hands to turn their 
 attention as yet to the more distant and less promising 
 enterprise of Ghibellinising Lucca, that city was still open 
 as a refuge to the exiles. And thither the whole body of 
 the expatriated Guelphs betook themselves. 
 
 Such bread and shelter as was possible was found for 
 the throng of refugees ; for they were Guelphs in trouble, 
 and Lucca was a Guelph city. But the material as well 
 as moral misery was great among the helpless crowds idly 
 thronging the streets of Lucca in reckless exile fashion. 
 And there were strange meetings and bitter reminiscences 
 among those idlers as they asked each other the news from 
 Florence, and were told of the destruction of homes, and 
 the confiscation of property, and of the absence of any 
 gleam of hope for the future in any quarter of the political 
 sky. 
 
 So met one day in the Lucca streets, as the chroniclers 
 have recorded,* the brave cavalier, Aldobrando Adimari, 
 whose counsel should have saved the city, if the city would 
 have listened to him, and that Elder of the People, who so 
 grossly insulted him on the occasion of the debate which 
 sent Florence to its fate at Montaperti, " Lo Spedito," — 
 the Go-ahead, — they call him, by his nickname, and have 
 not immortalised his folly by any other title. The old 
 noble could not refrain from reminding him of the over- 
 bearing violence which had resulted in bringing ruin upon 
 all of them : to which the other replied in the bitterness 
 of his heart, that the Florentines deserved no better for 
 listening to such as himself. 
 
 * Ammirato, book ii. ad an. 1260. 
 
o 
 
 "ORDER" AT FLORENCE. 167 
 
 The Ghibellines entered Plorence in triumph on the 
 16th of September, three days after their enemies had left 
 it. But the triumph must have been but a melancholy 
 one even to them. The city seemed like a desert. The 
 gates were standing open and unguarded ; the streets were 
 empty ; the comparatively few inhabitants who remained, 
 almost entirely of the lowest class of the populace, were 
 shut up in their obscure dwellings, or were on their knees 
 in the churches. And what was worse, the conquerors 
 did not come back alone. They had invited a foreign 
 despot to "restore order," and "save society" in their 
 native city ; and despots have but one notion of the 
 safety of society. So Giordano da Anglona, King Man- 
 fred's general, marched with them from Siena to Plorence, 
 he and his eight hundred German horsemen and their 
 squires. I find no further mention of any difficulty about 
 their pay; nor any of that hurry to get back to their 
 master, as soon as their three months' service should be 
 over. The noble knight, Giordano da Anglona, on the 
 contrary, was good enough to complete the service he had 
 rendered to Florence by estabhshing himself as Manfred's 
 vicar within its walls. All the constitutional authorities 
 established by the people, and the whole framework of the 
 former government, were destroyed, and the city was ruled 
 entirely by direction transmitted from the king's Sicilian 
 court.* Truly the way in which such matters were 
 managed seems to have been subject to very few improve- 
 ments in the course of six hundred years. 
 
 Giordano da Anglona, however, was too useful a man to. 
 his master to be left in Florence longer than was necessary 
 to sweep away all traces of the old popular hberty, and to 
 set things going on the orthodox legitimate track; but 
 before quitting Florence he named Conte Guido Novello, a 
 Ghibelline of the Ghibellines, as Manfred's vicar in 
 
 * Coppo Stefani, book ii. rubr. oxxv. ; Ammirato, book ii. ad an. 1260. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1260. 
 
168 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. Tuscany. His rule was to commence with the new year 
 1261 ; but the GhibeUines were not idle during the month 
 that yet remained of the memorable year 1260. Of course 
 their first care was to destroy the homes of the Guelph 
 leaders, confiscate their property, and divide it among 
 themselves ; but it is easier and quicker to destroy than to 
 rebuild. The GhibeUines, on re-entering the city, found 
 their own palaces in ruins, and many of them, as that of 
 the Uberti, utterly levelled with the ground. Florence, 
 therefore, was of little value in their eyes ; and when 
 towards the close of the year, before Giordano left Tuscany, 
 a general meeting of all the Ghibelline party was held at 
 Empoli, at which ambassadors from the Ghibelline cities, 
 especially from Siena and Pisa, attended, they actually pro- 
 posed the total destruction of Florence, as the sole means 
 of once for all securing the permanent ascendency of their 
 party throughout Tuscany. It may easily be understood 
 that the deputies from Siena and Pisa, and the Ghibel- 
 lines of other cities, were at once struck by the wisdom 
 and prudence of this policy, and backed it with all their 
 influence and eloquence. The royal vicar had of course 
 nothing to say against the demolition of a city which, from 
 its earliest days, had been a thorn in the side of all legiti- 
 mate potentates, and the very nest and head-quarters of 
 democracy and popular insolence. And the utter destruc- 
 tion of Florence would on that day have been decreed, had 
 there not been in that Ghibelline assembly one man who 
 was a Florentine before he was a Ghibelline. One only 
 voice was raised against the atrocious proposition ; but it 
 was such a voice and so raised that it prevailed. Yet the one 
 sole individual in all that assembly to whom Italy and the 
 world owe the preservation of Florence — ^the gem and the 
 eye of Italy — was the head of that family M'hich, more than 
 any other, was hated by the Guelph and popular party, and 
 which had suffered from that hatred more than any other. 
 
FARINATA SATES FLORENCE. 169 
 
 The Uberti palaces were no more existing in Plorence ; ' ^.d- 
 
 1261 
 
 the ground whereon they had stood was accursed; the 
 heads of the race had been slain while defending the walls; 
 and two of those proud nobles had been put to death by 
 the public executioner in the public streets of Florence. 
 Yet Farinata degliUberti it was who had sufficient nobility 
 of soul to scorn so senseless and brutal a measure of indis- 
 criminate vengeance. When all had received the pro- 
 posal with applause, he rose and addressed the meeting 
 in a speech of burning indignation and reproval; and 
 declaring finally that, let them decide as they would, no 
 such doom should be executed on Florence as long as he 
 could wield a sword in her defence, he left the assembly. 
 
 But all there felt that the party could not afford to lose 
 Parinata degli Uberti — the chief whose prudence and 
 valour had mainly contributed to place them in the position 
 they now occupied. So the Vandal project was at once 
 abandoned ; the great Ghibelline was humbly entreated to 
 return to his place at the council board, and nothing more 
 was heard of destroying Florence.* 
 
 Dante unhappily, instead of placing Farinata in Paradise 
 for this noble deed, so superior to the ordinary level of the 
 sentiments of his age and the passions of those around him, 
 finds him in hell, by reason of some unorthodox opinions 
 of his respecting the immortality of the soul. 'But the 
 passage in which the Ghibelline patriot refers to his 
 conduct towards his country, is an especially beautiful 
 one. " Dimmi," tell me, he asks sadly of the visitor from 
 the upper world : — 
 
 " Dimmi, perche quel popolo d si empio 
 Incontra a miei in oiascuna sua legge ?t 
 
 * Villani, book vi. chap. Ixxxi. ; Coppo Stefani, book ii. rubr. cxsvi. ; 
 Ammirato, lib. ii. ad an. 1260. 
 
 t " Tell me, why that people (of Florence) is so cruel against those of my 
 race, in all its laws ?" On which I said to him, " The rout and the great 
 
170 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OE FLOEENCE. 
 
 j^ j3 ■ Ond' io alui : lo strazio e'l grande schempio 
 
 1261. Che feee 1' Arbia colorata in rosso, 
 
 Tale oraizon fa far nel nostro tempio. 
 Poi oh' ebbe sospirando il capo soosso ; 
 A cio non fu io sol, disse, ni certo 
 Senza cagion sarei con gli altri mosso ; 
 Ma fu' io sol cola, dove sofierto 
 Eu per ciascun di torre via FiorenKa 
 Colui che la difesi a viso aperto." 
 
 Count Guido Novello, the new lieutenant of King 
 Manfred, was not content as long as the Gueiphs had any 
 resting-place left them in Tuscany, and marched out to 
 Lucca against them. Decimated, dispirited, and ill-pre- 
 pared as they were, they were not reduced so low as to 
 wait to be crushed without striking a blow. They hastily 
 threw themselves into Signa, a spot where the Arno and 
 the road to the lower Valdarno, which accompanies it, enter 
 a defile of the hills, and which therefore is a strong position 
 for a force wishing to bar the way from Florence towards 
 Pisa and Lucca, and attempted to defend the pass ; but 
 the inequality in force was too great, and they were easily 
 routed. 
 
 The Ghibelline army marched on Lucca, and had not 
 much more difficulty in reducing that city. The govern- 
 ment was put into Ghibelline hands, and Lucca became a 
 Ghibelline city like all the rest of Tuscany. The Lucchese 
 were not required by the victors to turn their own Guelphs 
 out of the city. But it was imperatively insisted on that 
 every Guelph not a native citizen should be thrust forth 
 from the gates. The fresh aggravation of their position 
 thus inflicted on the miserable exiles from Florence may 
 
 disaster which coloured Arbia red causes such speeches to be made in our 
 halls of assembly." Then, after shaking his headjwith a sigh, he said, "I 
 am not alone concerned in those deeds ; nor assuredly should I have joined 
 others to do them, without cause. But I was alone there, where the anni- 
 hilation of Florence was accepted by every one, — the only one who defended 
 her openly." — Infer. Can. 10. 
 
GUELPHS DRIVEN TO BOLOGNA, 171 
 
 be easily imagined. Literally there was now no rest for a.d. 
 the soles of their feet on Tuscan soil. And the wretched 
 band were compelled, at three days' notice, to go forth 
 from the gate, and turn their faces towards the rugged and 
 roadless mountain barrier which separated them from 
 Bologna, the nearest refuge. Old and young, women and 
 children, had to make that terrible journey across the 
 Apennines ; and many of the Guelph ladies, says Villani,* 
 amid the fatigues and hardships of the way, gave birth to 
 children on the mountains. 
 
 It was in very miserable guise that the wanderers reached 
 Bologna; and most of them were absolutely dependent 
 upon charity for bread. But they had not long been in 
 that city before an opportunity offered itself of improving 
 their condition in some degree. A struggle chanced to be 
 going on between Guelph and Ghibelline parties at Modena; 
 and the former party bethought them of inviting the newly- 
 arrived body of exiles to come over from Bologna, which is 
 but twenty miles from Modena, and help them. The 
 chance was felt to be a godsend by the poor Florentines. 
 They hurried to the scene of action ; and fighting like men 
 who have little to live for, and who may improve, but 
 cannot make worse, their condition, utterly defeated the 
 Ghibelline force, and put Modena into the hands of the 
 citizens of their own party, f A similar occasion very 
 shortly afterwards occurred in Reggio, another city a little 
 further north. There again the assistance of the Florentine 
 Guelphs turned the fortunes of the contest in favour of 
 their own party. The struggle was a far severer one than 
 it had been in Modena ; for the Ghibeliines were much 
 more powerful at Reggio. But the spoil obtained from 
 their defeat was proportionably large ; and besides sufficing 
 for some of the most urgent needs of the poor exiles, 
 
 * Boot ii. chap. Ixxxv. 
 
 + Villani, book ii. chap. Ixxxvi. ; Ammirato, book ii. ad an. 1263. 
 
172 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.D. enabled them to equip, completely in all respects, a select 
 body of four hundred horsemen from among their own 
 ranks, which little force took, as will shortly ^be seen, an 
 influential part in the events which were on the eve of once 
 again changing the face of things in Tuscany. 
 
 For already in 1265, five years only after what seemed 
 the utter destruction of the Guelphs and Guelphism, there 
 were signs in the political sky of one of the sudden storms 
 which so often in those centuries reversed the position of 
 all the parties on the political stage. 
 
 Clement IV., a Frenchman, succeeded to Urban IV. in 
 1265 ; and burning with indignation at the success with 
 which the much anathematized Manfred had resisted his 
 predecessors, determined on adopting new and more 
 powerful means for his destruction. The Holy See claimed 
 suzerain rights over the kingdom of Naples. If it found 
 difficulty in causing those rights to be respected, the best 
 plan was to use them to the profit of some one who could 
 make them available. For this purpose the Pope deter- 
 mined on bestowing the crown of Naples on Charles of 
 Anjou, the brother of the French king St. Louis, and 
 inviting him to come and take possession of it. It is 
 impossible to imagine a greater contrast between any two 
 men than that which existed between Manfred and the 
 opponent pitted against him by the Church. The hand- 
 some, highly-cultivated, accomplished, humane, pleasure- 
 loving, amiable, and much-loved minstrel and poet king 
 has been already described. Here is what Villani says * 
 of Charles of Anjou : — " This Charles was wise and 
 prudent, and valiant in arms. He was harsh and much 
 feared, and redoubted by all the kings in the world. 
 Magnanimous! he was, and of high emprize, and sure in 
 
 * Book vii. chap. i. 
 
 t " Magnanitno " must not be understood to mean, in the mouth, of the 
 old historian, quite what "magnanimous" means among ourselves. " High- 
 spirited," perhaps comes nearer the mark. 
 
CHAELES OF ANJOU. 173 
 
 the execution of great undertakings. He was ever firm a.d. 
 in. adversity, a truthful keeper of his promises, a sparing ^^^''' 
 speaker, and a busy actor. He scarcely ever laughed, was 
 as strict in his conduct as a monk, an orthodox Catholic, 
 severe in the administration of .justice, and ferocious in 
 expression of face. In person he was tall and strong, of 
 olive complexion, with a long nose. And he had in truth 
 more of royal bearing about him than another man. He 
 watched late, and slept little, being wont to say that sleep 
 was loss of time. He was liberal to his men-at-arms, but 
 was covetous to gain lands and seignories, and money for 
 the prosecution of war. Courtiers, poets, and minstrels he 
 could never endure." 
 
 Such was the hard, cruel, ambitious prince, scrupulous 
 in orthodox hatred of all that humanises and refines the 
 life of man, most unscrupulous in all that could minister to 
 his master passion, the greed of dominion and the lust of 
 power ; whom the Church, true to her pohcy of furthering 
 her pious ends by utilizing the vices of men, even at the 
 cost of fostering them, called in as her champion against 
 the excommunicated Manfred ; and whom the less prudent 
 and less far-seeing Guelphs were willing to accept as the 
 leader and protector of their faction. For the purposes of 
 Holy Church this hard, saturnine, bigot warrior was chosen 
 with all that skill and intimate consciousness of her own 
 requirements which has always marked the selection of her 
 instruments. As for the needs of the liberal party in 
 Italy ; it has taken as nearly as possible six hundred years 
 from that time to teach the Italians the value and the 
 meaning, now at last pretty well recognised and duly 
 appreciated, of liberty proffered and patronised by Prance. 
 
 History never repeats itself, we are told. Truly it does 
 not ; and if it did, to eat and drink and to-morrow die 
 would be all that was left to us. Yet though the scenery, 
 and the actors and the costume, and, thank God! the 
 
174 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 ^■^: catastrophe of the great drama be changed, how often do 
 the plot and the moral singularly resemble those of the old 
 pieces in the repertory ! 
 
 So the olive-coloured, long-nosed Frenchman came over 
 the Alps to enact the Eldest Son of the Church and restorer 
 of Italian liberties. The four hundred Guelph cavaliers, 
 armed and mounted, as we have seen, from the Ghibelline 
 spoils at Reggio, sent a dutiful deputation to the Holy 
 Father, offering their swords in the good cause of Mother 
 Church and liberty. They were received by the Pontiff 
 with open arms, and presented with warm recommendations 
 to Charles, just then arrived in response to the Papal invi- 
 tation in Italy. To mark yet more the Papal sympathy 
 with them, and the identification of the Church with the 
 Guelph party, the Holy Father graciously permitted them 
 to assume his own arms, a red eagle on a white field, with 
 a green dragon in its talons. To this device the Guelphs 
 added a small red giglio over the eagle's head ; and so 
 modified, that bearing became the arms of the Guelph 
 party to the end of the chapter. Graciously received by 
 Charles, so far as it was in him to be ever gracious, the 
 little band of Guelphs, under their captain Guido Guerra, 
 belonging to a branch of the great Guidi family, which had 
 separated itself from the rest of the race, and had become 
 Guelphs, were appointed to guide the French troops under 
 Guy de Montfort on their way to join their leader in the 
 neighbourhood of Rome. And there was abundance of 
 fraternizing as usual between the Italians and the French- 
 men ; and the poor Tuscan exiles were much flattered by 
 the Frenchmen's expression of astonishment " that exiles 
 from their country should be so nobly caparisoned."* And 
 all went well ; and the great battle of Benevento was 
 fought on the 16th of February, 1265; in which Manfred, 
 deserted in the crisis of the fight by some of his barons 
 * Villani, book vii. chap. iv. 
 
THE "FRATI GAUDENTI." 175 
 
 was utterly routed, and he himself slain.* His death was a-d. 
 not known with certainty till three days after the battle ; ^^''^" 
 for it was then .only that his corpse was found, amid the 
 dead on the field, and recognised. 
 
 Great was the dismay among the Ghibellines in Florence 
 when the news of Manfred's death reached the city. " They 
 stood most vigilantly on their guard ; and knew not what 
 to do."f For " the people began to growl, remembering 
 that they once were the masters and the rulers ; that they 
 were masters no more, but were treated like dogs by the 
 Ghibellines, with their taxes that Count Guido Novello 
 laid on them." J And the banished Guelphs took heart, 
 and began to approach and hover around the city, waiting 
 the return of their select band of four hundred. 
 
 From day to day the misgivings of the Ghibellines grew 
 stronger ; till, as a means of contenting and quieting the 
 people, whose attitude became more and more menacing, 
 they hit on the strange expedient of inviting from Bologna 
 two knights of a half-military half-religious order, recently 
 established there, and putting the government into their 
 hands. One of these men was by party connection a 
 Ghibelline, and the other a Guelph ; and it was intended 
 by this step to make a show of moderation and even-handed 
 impartiality. The people made no resistance ; but neither 
 did they receive the two new governors with any enthu- 
 siasm. " Frati Gaudenti," they were called. Their order 
 very soon ceased to exist; and Villani remarks of them 
 contemptuously, that " their conduct answered to their 
 name ; — that is to say, they thought more of enjoying them- 
 selves (Gaudere), than anything else." 
 
 During their government of the city, however, a new 
 political organization of the people was introduced, which 
 
 * Malispini, chap, clxxxvii, ; Villani, book vii. chap. ii. ; Coppo Stefani, 
 book ii. rabr. oxxxi. ; Ammirato, book ii. ad an. 1265. 
 + Coppo Stefani, book ii. rabr. oxxxii. t Ibid. 
 
176 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. played a most important part in all the future history of 
 ■ the Commonwealth. This was the division of the people 
 into " Arti," or guilds, not only for the purposes of muni- 
 cipal, but of military organization. The recognised guilds 
 were at this first creation of them seven only, — the lawyers ; 
 the dealers in foreign * cloths ; the money changers ; the 
 woollen manufacturers ; the physicians and apothecaries ; 
 the silk manufacturers and mercers; and the furriers. 
 Various other guilds were afterwards added to the list ; 
 but these remained as the "Arti Maggiori." All these 
 guilds were placed under consuls, had special armorial 
 bearings and ensigns assigned to each of them ; beneath 
 which, and led by their consuls, they were to be ready to 
 appear in arms and act as a national guard in any emer- 
 gency that might require it. 
 
 It will be observed at once, that this popular organiza- 
 tion is very similar in its scope and methods to that former 
 one of the wards under the Elders, which was destroyed 
 after the great Guelph overthrow at Montaperti. Two im- 
 portant differences however will be noted between the old 
 and the new constitution. The first was a merely local classi- 
 fication of the people according to the parts of the city 
 they inhabited. And it is to be observed, that in Morence 
 from that day to this, no district of the city is inhabited 
 exclusively by any one social class. The second consti- 
 tution, on the contrary, enrolls the people according to 
 their occupations. The difference is a very important one. 
 For one street, or one ward of the city had no natural pre- 
 eminence over another. But one trade or profession does 
 rank higher in the social scale than another. The first 
 division could give rise to no jealousies, and to but faint 
 
 * In those cloths that came in great quantities to Florence to he dressed 
 and dyed. The woollen manufacturers were a different body. The first 
 were called the "Arte di Calamala ;" a name still belonging to a street 
 which was the main seat of the trade. 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF CONTE GUJIDO NOVELLO. 177 
 
 rivalries. The second was emirxentlv calculated to pro'duce a.d, 
 
 both. " 1265. 
 
 The other still more important difference is to be found 
 in the designation given above, of " Arti Maggiori," the 
 greater, richer, more dignified, more " respectable " guilds. 
 Here we have the germ of a new aristocracy springing up, 
 from the increasing commercial wealth and prosperity of 
 the Commonwealth. These members of the "Arti Mag- 
 giori" were " popolani" men of the people; but they 
 were "popolani grassi," fat citizens, in very marked con- 
 tradistinction to those of the "popolo minuto" — or small 
 folks, whom we shall ere long find treading on the kib^s^ of 
 their fat fellows, as these have already begun to do on those 
 of the nobles. 
 
 For Florence was a free Commonwealth ; and this is the 
 normal and regular march of the body social in a free state. 
 And it was not this which caused the final overthrow and 
 catastrophe. 
 
 It was a very short time only, as might be supposed, 
 that the 'Ghibelline chieftains, and the people thus or- 
 ganized, could remain together in peace in the city. The 
 immediate ground of quarrel that broke out between the 
 despotic ruler and the would-be free people, was the usual 
 difficulty. The Count had absolute need of money to pay 
 his standing army, — those eight hundred German horse- 
 men sent by Manfred, as we may remember, to keep order 
 and save society. Of course they could not save society 
 without monthly pay ; and the citizens demurred at supply- 
 ing the pay. So there was a " demonstration." Villani 
 declares* that Count Guido took fright before he had any 
 cause to do so ;— and that the people, though armed, had 
 no intention of committing any violence. The Ghibellme 
 chief, however, gathered his men in the Piazza St. Apolh- 
 
 * Book vii. chap. xiv. 
 VOL. I. -^ 
 
A.D. 
 
 1265. 
 
 178 HISTORY OF THE COMMOJiTWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 nari, under the windows of the Bargello (then the palace of 
 the Podesta, and inhabited by the two Gaiidenti cavaUers, 
 Avho shared that oiEce between them). And despite the 
 remonstrances of the two Gaudenti, who, foreseeing that 
 his giving up the game would be the end of their steward- 
 ship, kept screaming to him out of the windows of the 
 palace not to alarm himself, — that they would quiet the 
 people, and warrant his safety, and get him his money ; 
 he called to his men to know if they were all there ; and 
 being answered in the' affirmative, rode out of the town and 
 off to Prato.* When half way to that city — i.e. about six 
 miles from Plorence, — he began to think that the Frati 
 Gaudenti had been right, and that he had acted very 
 foolishly. So he turned his horse's head, and rode back to 
 Florence ; and would have re-entered it. But it was too 
 late. Though the people might not have been prepared to 
 attack him and his eight hundred horsemen in the city, 
 they were far too much alive to the advantage of having 
 them on the outside of the walls to allow them to return. 
 So Count Guido Novello had to turn once more towards 
 Prato ; and was, I am inclined to think, by no means 
 pleasant company that evening to any persons whose ill 
 stars threw them in his way. 
 
 As before, when the city was in the hands of the people 
 in the absence of the nobles of both parties, the citizens, 
 when they had thus got rid of the Ghibelline count, were 
 inclined to be moderate and conciliatory. They declared 
 that Guelphs and Ghibellines alike were free to return to 
 the city; they strove to bring about reconciliations be- 
 tween them ; and in many cases matrimonial alliances were 
 arranged between houses of the rival factions. 
 
 But the virus of party hatred had too thoroughly 
 entered into the blood of the leading partisans on either 
 
 * Villani, book vii. chap. xiv. 
 
GUY DE MONTFOET IN FLORENCE, 179 
 
 side for it to be possible for these well-meant efforts to a.p. 
 
 1267. 
 
 succeed. The Gaelph chiefs who had not formed any- 
 such alliances, became suspicious of those of their own 
 party who had done so. Concord and common obedience 
 to the law was not what they wanted, but the supremacy 
 of their party. So the leading Guelphs secretly sent a 
 deputation to Charles, begging for assistance against their 
 rivals. Of course the Frenchman could wish nothing 
 better than such an application. Without an hour's delay 
 he despatched eight hundred French horsemen under Guy 
 de Montfort, who arrived in Florence on Easter Sunday in 
 the year 1267.* The Ghibellines' knew what this meant 
 very well. They had had their turn with Guido NoVello 
 and his eight hundred German troops ; now the Guelphs 
 were to have theirs with Guy de Montfort and his eight 
 hundred French cavaliers. So without waiting for a 
 contest, for which they were manifestly too weak, or for 
 insults under a thin veil of legality and impartiality, they 
 quietly marched out of the city on the eve of the day on 
 which the French entered it. 
 
 In the city matters proceeded in the normal path with 
 a regularity and smoothness really worthy of the decencies 
 of a later age. Filled with gratitude towards their mag- 
 nanimous ally, the Florentine Guelphs offered to his 
 Majesty the lordship of their city for ten years, sending 
 him the result of the city's universal suffrage f to that 
 effect. The magnanimous ally replied, that he wished to 
 reign only in the hearts and not over the persons of the 
 Florentines. But on the city again beseeching his Majesty 
 to accept their allegiance, and dropping all mention of that 
 limitation to ten years, | he not only condescended to 
 accede to their request, but sent his Vicar every year to 
 
 * Villani, book vii. chap. xv. ; Ammirato, book ii. ad an. 1267. 
 f " Elezione libera e plena." — Villani, he. cit. 
 { " La prese semplioemente." — Villani, ibid. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOKENCE. 
 
 A.D. rule over them with the utmost regularity. So anxious 
 ^^^^' was he, too, to fall in with the humours of his new sub- 
 jects, that that favourite popular institution of the twelve 
 elders of the people to sit as assessors of the chief political 
 authority was preserved, with the merely inappreciable 
 difference that his Majesty took on himself the trouble of 
 selecting them.* 
 
 At this time also was first created one of the most sin- 
 gular institutions that ever entered avowedly into any 
 scheme of polity, and which very curiously illustrates the 
 theory of a social system prevailing in the Florentine mind 
 at that period. This was the magistracy consisting of 
 three officers, called " Captains of the Guelph party," and 
 often in the historians more shortly, " Captains of the 
 Party."! The title alone suggests a series of pertinent 
 reflections. What a confession it involves ! A permanent 
 magistracy created for the behoof and furthering the ex- 
 clusive interests of one party in the State ! A " Lord 
 Chancellor of the Tories ! " or " Board of Commissioners 
 of the Whigs ! " Avowedly, then, Morence was to be 
 governed for the benefit of one section of the citizens 
 alone. And see what were the duties and functions of 
 the " Captains of the Party." In the first place, and in 
 the first instance, they were to take the management of all 
 the confiscated Ghibelline property, distributing one-third 
 among the Guelphs who had suffered from proscription, 
 paying over one-third to the coffers of the State, and 
 administering the other for the advantage of the Guelph 
 party. They were to keep watchful guard over all the 
 interests of the party ; and they were to make special 
 inquisition into the conduct and character of citizens 
 
 * Villani, he. cit. 
 
 t The first title was " Consuls of the Cavaliers." But this appellation 
 had no significance of the functions of the ofSce, and was soon dropped for 
 the more expressive one, hy which the institution is known throughout 
 Florentine history. 
 
1273. 
 
 GREGORY X. IN FLORENCE. 181 
 
 suspected of Ghibelline tendencies, noting them as not a.d, 
 eligible to any office or employment in the government ; 
 banishing such if need were, and in case of confiscation 
 taking possession of their goods in trust for the above 
 uses.* And this extraordinary magistracy answered so 
 well to the wants and notions of the Florentine mind, 
 corresponded so perfectly in its theory and practice to 
 their conceptions of the object of government, that it con- 
 tinued to exist, among so much else that perished, through- 
 out the entii'e duration of the Commonwealth, and gra- 
 dually was invested with much wider functions and more 
 extended action than was contemplated at its first esta- 
 blishment. 
 
 Does the reader begin to understand why this people, 
 however favourable their early start on the path of free 
 institutions and self-government, came to early failure and 
 fatal overthrow ? 
 
 The Ghibellines being in exile, and the Guelphs having 
 the eight hundred horsemen of King Charles at their 
 command, the few following years were occupied with 
 sundry victorious expeditions against the cities, smaller 
 towns, and castles which harboured Ghibellines, or be- 
 longed to them. But in 1373 Pope Gregory X., who had 
 succeeded Clement IV. in the previous year, being on his 
 way from Rome, in company with King Charles and with 
 Baldwin of Flanders, who called himself Emperor of 
 Constantinople, to hold a council at Lyons, arrived in 
 Florence on the 18th of June. "And as the sojourn of 
 Florence pleased them, by the goodness of the water and 
 the salubrity of the air, and because the Court found every 
 comfort in the city, it was determined to spend the summer 
 there ; and the Pope, observing that so fine a city as 
 Florence was wasted by reason of the parties (for the 
 Ghibellines were in exile), willed that they should return, 
 
 * Ammirato, book iii. ad an. 1267. 
 
1273 
 
 182 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. and make peace with the Guelphs ; and so it was done. 
 And on the 3nd of July in that year, the said Pope with 
 his cardinals, and with King Charles, and with the 
 Emperor Baldwin, and with all the barons and courtiers, 
 and the Florentine people, were all collected together in 
 the dry bed of the Arno at the foot of the Ponte Uuba- 
 conte;* and huge scaffoldings of wood, on which all the 
 great people were placed, having been erected in that 
 place, the Pope gave sentence in the matter between the 
 Guelphs and the Ghibelhnes under pain of excommunica- 
 tion to whomsoever should not obey it ; and he made the 
 syndics of either party kiss each other on the mouth, and 
 make peace, and give bail and hostages. And all the 
 castles held by the Ghibelhnes were to be given up into 
 the hands of King Charles."! 
 
 If nny painter be in want of a subject I recommend to 
 his notice the scene thus naively described by the old 
 chronicler. Those who have ever stood on that bridge — 
 for it is not likely that they should have got down to the 
 wide, dry, gravelly bed of the stream, where the above 
 goodly company were assembled, fenced in, as it now is, 
 by the high walls of quays on either side, — those who have 
 stood on the bridge above it, will not have forgotten the 
 lovely landscape-framing of the scene ; the cypress- 
 crowned hill of St. Miniato, the richer green of the 
 valley through which the river makes its way amid fields 
 teeming with corn, and wine, and oil ; and the distant 
 horizon of many-shadowed Chianti and Vallombrosa hills 
 as a background, while in front there is the city, and far 
 behind it the distant jagged peaks of the Carrara moun- 
 tains. Their sate Pope Gregory, a man of noble presence, 
 as I find by the effigies of him, with fine strongly-marked 
 but clean-cut ItaUan features, in the prime of life appa- 
 rently, and, unlike the Popes of a later century, with chin 
 
 * Otherwise the Ponte alle Grazie. t Villani, book vii. chap. slii. 
 
A.D. 
 
 ASSEMBLY IN THE BED OP THE ARNO. 183 
 
 and lip close shaven; on one side of him olive-coloured 
 saturnine Charles of Anjou, with his long nose and hard 12^3; 
 ascetic face ; and on the other, big, bluff, Flemish Baldwin 
 the Crusader, a large-boned, pink-fleshed man in coat of 
 mail, sitting there with Httle personal interest in the matter 
 in hand, but contributing his part to the pageant, while 
 his thoughts were wandering away mayhap to busier and 
 more exciting scenes under a yet hotter and brighter sun ; 
 and all the gala following of them in iron and silk, knights, 
 and squires, bishops and deacons, with the Florentine 
 people lowly on the bare gravel in front, completing the 
 large circle in that strangely chosen spot in the bed of the 
 river, where the heavy piers and arches of the bridge, 
 rising high to the immediate westward of them, were 
 gilded by the rays of the rising July sun. The Ghibelline 
 nobles in their mail, leaning on their long swords, haughty, 
 sullen, and suspiciously distrustful, were grouped together 
 aloof from the citizens, on one side of the circle ; and the 
 principal Guelphs not less haughty, but with the bearing 
 and in the humour of men who are on the winning side, 
 on the other. Most pleased on the occasion were the 
 Florentine populace, to whom the day was a great day 
 indeed. How they talked incessantly each man and 
 woman to their neighbour, marked each smallest trifle in 
 the mien, bearing, and expression of those great ones of 
 the earth, built acute theories of character on their looks, 
 and of intentions on their bearing ! How they pointed 
 out to one another each Ghibelline noble by name, and 
 noted their sullen and mistrustful bearing ! But suddenly 
 there is a great silence. The Vicar of Christ upon earth 
 speaks. But his speech is in Latin ; and even were it 
 not its tones could not reach the ears of that vast multi- 
 tude. He utters only a few formal words, and then the 
 heralds make proclamation ; and the representatives of 
 the two parties come forward in the midst. And the 
 
184 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OP PLORENOE. 
 
 A.B. Ghibellines are told that their castle homes are to be 
 handed over to the magnanimous ally, who has no idea of 
 enacting his part in the show for nothing ; — and then they 
 are to kiss, and be friends with their enemies to the death ; 
 and every human being on the ground there knows that as 
 that kiss is given and received, the parties to it are burn- 
 ing to clutch each other by the throat in a death-struggle. 
 And then Heaven's Vicar speaks again ; — this time more 
 intelligible, though still in Latin ; — for he is menacing 
 curses, anathemas, excommunications, and interdicts, and 
 the words are more familiar to his hearers' ears. 
 
 And then the Pope finished his day's work by laying the 
 foundation-stone of a church, dedicated to " St. Gregory " 
 of course, which was to be built by the Mozzi, who were his 
 bankers at Rome and his hosts at Florence, and whose 
 palace was then and is now hard by the spot where the 
 above memorable scene took place. 
 
 And peace having been thus solemnly made, and sworn 
 to, with kisses in esse and excommunications in posse to 
 ratify it, it was four days afterwards whispered in the ear 
 of the Ghibelline syndic, as he returned to his lodging in 
 the city, that if he and his party did not take themselves off 
 out of Florence forthwith. King Charles' marshal would cut 
 them into mincemeat. And the Ghibellines took the hint, 
 and once more left the city.* 
 
 The Pope, however, was as good at his word, as far as 
 the cursing went. He left Florence immediately, pro- 
 nouncing it under interdict before he went ; in which con- 
 dition it remained three years, with the exception at least of 
 an interval of an hour or so, which was due to a circum- 
 stance characteristic enough of those days. 
 
 Gregory was on his way to Lyons, as has been said, when 
 he halted for the summer at Florence. He went to Lyons 
 and held his council there, and was on the way back ; but 
 
 * Villani, book vii. chap. xlii. ; Ammirato, book iii. ad an. 1273. 
 
INTERDICTS AT FLORENCE. 185 
 
 ecclesiastical etiquette forbade him to put foot in a city a.d. 
 which was under interdict, and every one in it excommu- ^^^^* 
 nicated. So the Pope passed close outside the walls, in- 
 tending to cross the Arno by a ferry a little above the city. 
 But the river was in flood ; the ford was impassable ; and 
 the Pope had nothing for it, if he would continue his 
 journey, but to pass through the banned city. So to 
 make all right, he took ofi' the interdict as he entered 
 the gate, and kept giving blessings right and left as he 
 went through the streets, all in the regular way. But no 
 sooner had he reached the opposite gate, and got clear of 
 it, than he turned him about, and taking back all the 
 blessings he had been dispensing, put the interdict on 
 again, muttering Latin texts as he did so, "which put 
 the Guelph rulers of the city in great perplexity and fear." 
 It is surprising, when we remember the consequences of 
 Papal interdicts in other climes and other ages, — as speci- 
 ally for instance that of Venice in the seventeenth century, 
 — to observe the very little effect which they seem to have 
 produced on Florence in this thirteenth century. Once or 
 twice already Florence has been excommunicated and laid 
 under interdict; and now again for three years. Yet no 
 trace is to be found of any mischief or trouble having 
 ensued in consequence of the punishment. Simply nothing 
 more is heard about it. The years, indeed, immediately 
 foUdwing this angry departure of the Pope, seem to have 
 been altogether prosperous ones. Some expeditions were 
 undertaken against Ghibelline Pisa, and other scattered 
 elements of Ghibellinism, always with the assistance of the 
 French forces maintained in the city by Charles, and with 
 nearly invariable success. The fact was, as Ammirato 
 points out,* that it did not suit Charles that Florence 
 should be at peace. It was his interest that the citizens 
 should have need of him; and with that view he had 
 
 * Book iii, ad an. 1279. 
 
186 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. found means of " always keeping the party enmities alive in 
 
 ^^"- the city."* 
 
 It was probably due to evil influence of the same kind, 
 that in the absence of a sufficient amount of quarrelling 
 with the Ghibellines, enmities and rivalries which endan- 
 gered the prosperity of the city arose at this time between 
 some of the great Guelph families among themselves. There 
 was so much disturbance and danger of violent outbreak 
 from this cause in the city, that the authorities sent to 
 Pope Nicholas III., who had been elected in 1277, entreat- 
 ing him to send a legate to make peace in the city between 
 the rival houses. Notwithstanding the ill success of the 
 similar attempt so recently made by Pope Gregory X., 
 Nicholas III. was willing to try again ; because, as Villani 
 and Ammirato explain,f he was angry with Charles for 
 having haughtily refused an alliance between their families, 
 which the Pope, who was an Orsini, had proposed to him, 
 and was sure that healing the Plorentine discords would be 
 spiting the Frenchman. So he sent Cardinal Pra Latino 
 Prangipane, a man of high reputation for his acquirements 
 and ability, as his legate to Florence. The Cardinal 
 arrived with a retinue of three hundred horsemen on the 
 8th of October, 1278, and was received with great honour 
 by the Ploren tines, who paid him the distinguished and 
 unusual compliment of sending out the Carroccio to meet 
 him. He also, as Pope Gregory had done, laid the first 
 stone of a church, and it was a much more notable one 
 than the Pope's church, — none other in fact than the fine 
 Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. And it was in that con- 
 vent that he did all the work of his embassy, calling the 
 parties severally before him there ,; first reconciling Guelphs 
 with Guelphs, and then proceeding to the more arduous 
 task of making peace between Guelph and Ghibelline. Por 
 
 * Ammirato, he cit. 
 t Villani, took vii. chap. liv. ; Ammirato, book iii. ad an. 1279. 
 
EUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG. 187 
 
 the latter, when they had heard that a Cardinal was to be a.d. 
 
 1 97ft 
 
 sent to Florence on a peace-making mission, had begged to 
 be included in his good ofSces. When he had done the 
 real work thus privately in the convent, then, and not be- 
 fore, he too had a great pubHc manifestation. It took place 
 in the Piazza Vecchia di Santa Maria Novella ; and there 
 were draperies, and scafibldings, and speeches, and oaths, 
 and kissing, all over again as before. " And now," says 
 Villani, "the Ghibellines were at liberty to return to 
 Morence, they and their families. And they did return ; 
 and all decrees and condemnations against them were can- 
 celled ; and all the books of the party proscriptions and 
 banishments that were preserved in the archieves of the 
 Commune were burned. And the said Ghibellines had back 
 again their goods and possessions ; except that certain of 
 the leading families were ordered, for the safety of the city, 
 to remain for a certain time beyond the boundaries of the 
 Florentine territory." * 
 
 In fact little more is heard henceforward of the Ghibel- 
 lines as a faction within the walls of Tlorence. The old 
 name, as a rallying cry for the Tory or Imperialist party, 
 was still raised here and there in Tuscany ; and Pisa still 
 called herself Ghibelline. But the stream of progress had 
 run past them, and left them stranded : — how effectually 
 so is shown by the results of two attempts made by 
 Rudolph of Hapsburg, the head of a new imperial house, 
 to revive and enforce the imperial claims in Tuscany. The 
 first was in 1281, when by concert with the remains of 
 the Ghibelline party, " Messer Loddo, of Germany," was 
 sent to recall the towns to their allegiance. But with the 
 exception of Pisa and San Miniato, there was not a Com- 
 mune, large or small, that would pay the least attention to 
 his summons. He threw his small band of German forces 
 into San Miniato, and attempted to rally the Ghibelline 
 
 * Villani, book vii. chap. Ivi. 
 
188 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. party to a new war against Florence. But it was of no use. 
 
 ^^^^" Nobody heeded his call, and he shortly returned to Germany 
 having done nothing.* 
 
 Again, four years later, another attempt was made in 
 much humbler fashion than would have suited the old 
 Fredericks and Henrys. The consent of the Pope was 
 asked and obtained for the residence of a Conte da Lavagno, 
 as Imperial Vicar in Tuscany. The circumstance that the 
 Papal consent was given is a very significant proof how 
 entirely things were altered since the old days when the 
 Ghibelline party was a real thorn in the side not only of 
 the Pope but of Plorence. Now the Imperial Vicar very 
 quietly came thither, and took u.p his quarters in the Mozzi 
 palace. Thence he issued his summons " to the Ploren- 
 tines, the Sienese, the Lucchese, the Pistoians, and other 
 towns of the Guelph faction in Tuscany."t — (from which 
 passage we perceive that even in Siena the Ghibelline party 
 was dead,) — commanding them to come and swear fidelity 
 to the empire. But not a soul in any one of these com- 
 munities paid the smallest attention to his appeal. So he 
 condemned Plorence to a fine of sixty thousand marks of 
 silver, and left the city in dudgeon. But if he had gratified 
 his resentment by condemning the city to pay sixty mil- 
 lions, it would have come to exactly the same thing. He 
 pronounced similar fines on the other cities in proportion, 
 with the same result. Then he betook himself to Arezzo, 
 and endeavoured to rouse the Ghibelline party there. But 
 nobody would pay any attention to him ; and he returned 
 to Germany, a rather ridiculous Imperial Vicar, f 
 
 It was about this time also, in 1282, that an important 
 and very significant change in the political constitution 
 
 * Villani, book vii. chap. Ixxviii. ; Coppo Stefani, book ii. rub. civ. ; Am- 
 mirato, book iii. ad an. 1281. The latter author says that the commune of 
 Florence induced the Vicar to go away quietly by giving him a reasonable 
 (oonveniente) sum of money. Neither Yillani nor Coppo Stefani make any 
 allusion to such payment. 
 
 t Villani, book vii. chap. cxii. J Villani, book vii. chap. oxii. 
 
CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES. 189 
 
 of the Commonwealth jvas effected. The old popular a.d. 
 magistracy of the " Anziani del popolo " had been, after ^^''^" 
 some other modification, finally replaced at the time when 
 Cardinal Latino made peace in the city, by a board of 
 fourteen notables, of whom eight were to be Guelphs and 
 six GhibeUines. But this was shortly found to be unsatis- 
 factory in many respects. The number was too large ; the 
 avowed distribution of seats in this supreme council, 
 between the two old factions, was calculated to perpetuate 
 divisions and party rivalry ; and above all, such a provision 
 tended to throw power into the hands of the chiefs of those 
 parties — that is to say, of the nobles. But Florence had 
 now advanced on the path which it was destined by the 
 constitution of its social system inevitably to tread, suffi- 
 ciently far to make such an arrangement intolerable to the 
 classes next below those who thus monopolised power in 
 the State. The institution of the guilds, and the military 
 organisation in connection with them, will be remembered 
 by the reader. The constitutional revolution now efiected 
 consisted in a small, and at first sight, not very important, 
 completion and perfectionment of this institution. The 
 scheme was devised by the merchants of the " Calimala," 
 — ^the traders in woollen stuffs of foreign manufacture, 
 which were brought to Florence to be dressed and dyed, 
 and then in great part re-exported. This was at that epoch 
 the most important branch of the Florentine commerce. It 
 was already a source of great wealth ; and the guild of the 
 Calimala consisted of the richest and most influential mer- 
 chants of the community. This powerful guild proposed 
 that " Priors " — Priori — the title being taken, as Villani 
 tells us, from that passage in the Gospel where Christ says 
 to his disciples, " Vos estis priores " — should be chosen 
 by each guild, to preside over it ; and that the priors of 
 the three principal companies — that of Calimala, that of 
 the money-changers, or bankers, and that of the manufac- 
 
190 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. turers of woollen cloths — should form a council, in the 
 ^^^^' place of the fourteen notables above mentioned, to be 
 assessors of the " captain of the people," and with him the 
 supreme authority in the state. The three guilds named, 
 however, were not able, and indeed do not appear to have 
 attempted, to keep this great power and privilege exclu- 
 sively in their own hands. Very shortly the number of the 
 Priori was increased to six, by extending the privilege to 
 other three of the Arti Maggiori ; and before long, four- 
 teen minor guilds — Arti Minori — having been instituted, 
 and some of the principal of these having been added to 
 the Arti Maggiori, so as to make up the entire number 
 to twelve, the number of " Priori '.' forming the supreme 
 council of state was, as in the time of the first " Anziani 
 del popolo," thus increased to twelve. To these was added, 
 somewhat more that half a centm-y later, as we shall see, 
 the chief magistrate, entitled, Gonfalonieue ; and the 
 governmental body thus constituted was that world- 
 celebrated " Signoria," which was held in respect in 
 every part of civilised Europe, and was at home the 
 representative of the power and majesty of the Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 The extreme jealousy of all authority, which always 
 characterised the Florentine people, is notably shown in the 
 regulation which limited the term of office of the " Priori " 
 to two months. During this period the Priors lived together, 
 at the cost of the State, away from their own homes and 
 families, at first in the " Badia," or Abbey of San Firenze. 
 — that ancient convent with a remarkable reddish-coloured 
 spire, close to the Bargello ; and afterwards in the " Pa- 
 lazzo del Comune," when that noble embodiment of the 
 majesty of the Commonwealth, which was then in process 
 of construction, was ready to receive them. 
 
 Of course, it will at once strike every reader, that the 
 scheme of government thus established threw the whole 
 
FESTIVAL OF ST. JOHN. 191 
 
 power of the state into the hands of the upper class of the a.b. 
 " bourgeoisie" and such, of course, was the object of the ^^ ' 
 authors of it. It was not, however, intended, or, as Am- 
 mirato observes,* it was not yet intended to exclude the 
 nobility entirely from the government. It was therefore 
 established that though none save a member of the guild 
 was ehgible to the office of Prior, matriculation on its books 
 was a sufficient qualification for being elected. Any noble, 
 therefore, who was disposed thus far to abdicate all claim 
 to superiority of caste, and to acknowledge himself to be 
 a citizen, in our modern sense of the word, might, by so 
 doing, participate in all the rights of citizenship in the 
 largest acceptation of the term.f 
 
 The new form of government seemed to promise well at 
 starting. " In those days," says Villani, " the city of 
 Florence was in a good and happy state of repose, tran- 
 quil, and at peace, and prosperous for merchants and arti- 
 zans." X And he goes on to give. an account of the festi- 
 vities that enlivened the city at the great festival of St. 
 John, in the year 1283, — the first after the estabUshment 
 of the new government. Down to the present day ^ the 
 festival of St. John, on the 24th of June, has always been 
 the great popular holiday of the year in Horence. But 
 the nineteenth century does not keep its hohdays as the 
 thirteenth did. On the occasion in question, a band of 
 choice spirits, a thousand strong, clubbed together, mainly 
 under the leadership of the Rossi family, in the neighbour- 
 hood of the church of Santa Felicita, between the Ponte 
 Vecchio and the (now) Piazza Pitti. They were arrayed all 
 uniformly in white, and were ruled by a captain whose title 
 
 * Ammirato, book iii. ad an. 1282. 
 
 t Villani, book vii. chap. Ixxix. ; Ammirato, loc. cit. 
 
 J Book vii. chap. Ixxxix. 
 
 § Not quite so. In 1860 the old Florentine celebration of the feast of 
 St. John was abolished la favour of the new national festival, to be held 
 throughout Italy on the first Sunday in June. 
 
192 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. was "The Lord of Love." Por two months, dating from 
 
 128S 
 
 ■ the day of the festival, they kept up the game, spendmg 
 the day and most of the night iii marching through the 
 streets of the city to the sound of trumpets and hautboys, 
 in games of all sorts, in balls, and continual feasting. * The 
 tables were open to all comers ; and any strangers arriving 
 in Florence were not only made welcome, but were attended 
 in their rides or walks through the city, and treated with 
 all imaginable honour and all their needs provided for. 
 
 " And observe," says the historian, " that in those days 
 the city of Florence and the citizens were in the most pros- 
 perous condition they had ever known, and it lasted till the 
 year 1284, when division between the people and the 
 grandees began, with reference to that between the Bianchi 
 and the Neri. In those days there were in Florence some 
 three hundred cavaliers, who kept open house, and many 
 companies of knights and youngsters who had tables 
 spread morning and evening, and on occasion of the festi- 
 vals of Christmas and Easter they gave away numbers of 
 furred dresses. All this brought men of pleasure, and 
 jesters of all sorts to Florence in great numbers from Lom- 
 bardy and all parts of Italy, and they were well received 
 and made welcome ; and no stranger of reputable position 
 passed through Florence without these companies rivalling 
 each other in inviting him, and accompanying him on 
 horseback either within or without the city, according to 
 his requirements." * 
 
 * Villani, book vii. chap. Ixxxix. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 War between Genoa and Pisa— Pisan defeat at Meloria— Florence takes the 
 opportunity to attack Pisa— Ugolino della Gherardesoa— Rivalries in 
 Pisa — The Archbishop Ruggeri — Ugolino reproved by Marco Lombard! 
 — Fall of Ugolino— His death in the Torre della J'ame— Feud between 
 Gnelph and Ghibelline extinct within Florence— Modification o± the 
 Ghibelline Party— Enrichment of the commercial classes— Completion 
 of the walls— Zo^^jfl of Or San Miohele— Death of Charles of Anjou— 
 Scarcity of Food ia Italy— Prices— Charles II. of Anjoa at Florence — 
 Amerigo ISTerbona in Florence— "War with Arezzo— The Bishop Gugliel- 
 mino — The forces on either side — Gruido Novello— Departure of the army 
 from Florence — The Casentino— Treason of the Bishop Guglielmino — 
 Battle of Campaldino — Vieri de' Cerchi — Corso Donati — Dante Alighieri 
 — Florentine Victory — The Florentine army before Arezzo — Cost of the 
 war with Arezzo — Rejoicings in Florence. 
 
 Municipal jealousy, and, to a still greater degree, party 
 spirit, led to quarrels between Florence and Pisa very 
 shortly after the former became sufficiently powerful to 
 attract the notice of the elder, and then far M'ealthier city. 
 But enmity of a much deeper kind had long subsisted 
 between Genoa and Pisa. The interests of both Pisa and 
 Plorence should have made the two cities friends. They 
 should have been as closely allied as Manchester and Liver- 
 pool. Either had need of the other. Florence was the 
 seat of more than one rising and flourishing branch of 
 manufacture. Pisa was an entirely naval and mercantile 
 power. The wars therefore between the two cities were not 
 to the death, nor their enmities as yet of an irreconcilable 
 nature. Between Genoa and Pisa the matter was different. 
 Both these powerful communities lived, and prospered, and 
 
194 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.B. grew great by tlie same means. They ate of tlie same loaf, 
 and each wanted the whole of it. 
 
 In that last quarter of the thirteenth century, which was 
 signalised in Florence by the institution of the new form 
 of government by the Priori delle Arti, war had broken 
 out anew between Genoa and Pisa, immediately and 
 avowedly by reason of certain disputes connected with the 
 government of the island of Sardinia, but really and funda- 
 mentally from the hatred and jealousy of rival commercial 
 communities, each anxious to ruin and destroy the other. 
 Pisa had already sustained more than one defeat; but 
 burning to avenge herself and to injure her rival, she pre- 
 pared a new fleet of Seventy gaUeys, and in July, 1284, 
 sailed for Genoa. The Genoese, being unprepared, re- 
 mained within their walls, and replied to the taunts of 
 their enemies that it would not be courteous if Genoa were 
 to beat them in her own waters ; but that she would come 
 in her own good time, and give them the meeting they 
 were so anxious for. The Pisans, therefore, shot a silver 
 arrow into the town, as an expression of insult and con- 
 tempt, and returned with much vain-glorious talk to their 
 own city. Genoa, however, fully intended to be as good 
 as her word. She equipped with all speed a fleet of an 
 hundred and thirty galleys, and sailed for the Pisan waters. 
 " The Pisans when they heard this got into their galleys 
 with cries and much noise, some at Porto Pisano,* and 
 some in Pisa ; and the podesta and the admiral, and all 
 their best men went on board the galleys in Pisa between 
 the two bridges on the Arno, and raised their standard 
 with great rejoicings ; and the Archbishop of Pisa and all 
 his clergy were there on the bridge — which was decked out 
 with upholstery — to give the army his blessing ; and while 
 he was doing it, the ball and the cross that were on the 
 
 * The fort of Pisa, at the mouth of the Arno, which was then considerably- 
 nearer Pisa than it now is. 
 
BATTLE OF MELOEIA. 195 
 
 mast of the standard fell, and many wise men deemed that a.b. 
 it was an omen of coming evil. Yet they would not aban- ^^^*' 
 don the enterprise, but, crying, ' To arms ! to arms ! ' with 
 great pride, they went forth out of the estuary of the 
 Arno," * Their force amounted to eighty-three galleys ; 
 and they met the Genoese fleet off a little island rock called 
 Meloria ; exactly at the spot where they had, about fifty 
 years before, routed the Genoese, and impiously taken and 
 drowned a number of prelates on their way from Prance 
 to the Council at Rome called together by Gregory IX. 
 And of course that circumstance was recalled, and pointed 
 oat as the cause of the signal defeat of the Pisans which 
 followed. 
 
 " Great and fierce was the battle, and many brave men 
 perished there on either side, slain or drowned in the sea. 
 At last, as it pleased God, the Genoese were the victors ; 
 and the Pisans were defeated with immense loss of life ; 
 for the dead and the captives amounted to sixteen thousand 
 men ; and there remained in the hands of the enemy forty 
 of the Pisan galleys, besides many others wrecked' and 
 sunk. And the Genoese took the galleys, with the pri- 
 soners, to Genoa, without any pomp or other manifestation 
 of triumph, beyond causing masses to be said, processions 
 to be made, and thanks to be offered to God ; for which 
 conduct they were very much praised. In Pisa there was 
 much grief and great wailing, for there was not a house 
 nor a family that had not more than one among the dead 
 and the captives. And from that day forth Pisa never 
 recovered her prosperity nor her power." f 
 
 The Florentines, however, amid their own prosperity, 
 saw in this great calamity of their rival a fine opportunity 
 for taking advantage of her weakness. So a league was 
 made between Florence, Lucca, Siena, Pistoia, Prato, Genoa, 
 
 * Villani, book vii. chap. xcii. 
 
 f Yillani, ibid. ; Ammirato, ad an. 1284. 
 
 o 2 
 
A.I). 
 
 196 HISTORY OF THE COMMONW EALTH , OF FLORENCE. 
 
 and other smaller communities, for the purpose of utterly 
 ^^^^- destroying Pisa. But Ugolino della Gherardesca, who, 
 though a Guelph, was at that time the most powerful 
 citizen in Pisa, thought, as it should seem, that he saw in 
 this position of matters a possibility of making himself 
 absolute master of the city. With this view he secretly 
 opened communications with the Florentines ; and by re- 
 presenting that he had the means of driving the Pisan Ghi- 
 bellines out of Pisa and making it altogether a Guelph 
 city, and, as it is asserted, also by bribery, induced them 
 to break their faith with their allies, and make peace sepa- 
 rately with Pisa. The Florentine historians maintain that 
 this defection of theirs from the league, which drew upon 
 them the indignation of their allies, especially of Genoa 
 and Lucca, bent as they were on the utter extermination of 
 Pisa, was the means of saving her in her extremity ; and 
 bitterly reproach her for ingratitude on occasions of her 
 subsequent hostility to her preserver. There is every 
 reason to suppose that the Plorentine statements are cor- 
 rect in this respect, and that had Florence remained true 
 to her engagements, Pisa must have perished. But if so, 
 it follows that Count Ugolino was doing well for his 
 country, whatever his motives may have been, in thus in- 
 ducing Florence to break up the league ; and that the 
 charge of treason which was afterwards brought against 
 him on this ground at least was unjust. But it is exceed- 
 ingly probable that he was aiming at the acquisition of 
 despotic power in Pisa. The fact is, that there were three 
 parties in the city who were probably all attempting the 
 same thing : a division of the Guelph party, friends of 
 Ugolino; another portion of the Guelphs who were in 
 favour of a nephew of Ugolino, called the Judge of Gallura, 
 from having held that position in the island of Sardinia ; 
 and a Ghibelline party, at the head of which were the 
 Archbishop Ruggeri degli Ubaldiui, and other Ghibelline 
 
UGOLINO'S FESTIVAL. 107 
 
 nobles. And a match of mutual treachery seems to have a.d. 
 been played between them, in which the Archbishop, as ^^^^' 
 the deepest-dyed traitor of all, won the game. 
 
 Count UgoHno first conspired with him and his party to 
 secure the expulsion of the Judge of Gallura. The Arch- 
 bishop seemed to range himself entirely on his side ; and 
 he appeared to have reached, or to be on the point of 
 reaching, the summit of his ambition. On his birthday in 
 the year 1288, being now if not absolute lord of Pisa, yet 
 so pre-eminent a citizen in the State as to lack little of that 
 position, even as at a later period was the case with the 
 founders of the Medicean tyranny in Florence, the Count 
 Ugolino gave an ostentatious and magnificent festival, to 
 which all his race and immediate supporters were bidden. 
 And the chronicles record how, when all was prepared and 
 the guests about to arrive, the Count, in the pride of his 
 heart, called a certain wise and discreet man, named Marco 
 Lombardo, and showing him all the preparations and all 
 the magnificence, said : " Well, Marco, what do you think 
 of it ? " "I think this," answered the wise man, " that 
 with all these preparations you stand a better mark for 
 some great misfortune than any other man this day in 
 Italy." And when the Count, somewhat frightened, said, 
 " What mean you, Marco ? " the reply was — " This I mean: 
 that thought has been taken for everything here .... save 
 for the wrath of God ! " The wise Marco judged rightly 
 enough that there was that in the public temper in Pisa 
 which made the position of the Count a critical one, and 
 that this ostentatious display was a very dangerous indul- 
 gence of vanity at such a moment, and under the eyes of 
 a populace always angered by the sight of individual pre- 
 eminence. Nor was it otherwise than abundantly true, 
 that Ugolino had more than enough on his conscience to 
 make a man fear the wrath of Heaven. But the manner 
 and spirit in which the anecdote is related by the old 
 
198 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.D. writers, shows curiously how far from extinguished in the 
 
 • Italian mind of that day was the old pagan idea, that the 
 
 culmination of human prosperity and happiness was in 
 
 itself displeasing to the gods, and hkely to be visited by 
 
 their wrath. 
 
 At all events, wise Marco was right enough. The Arch- 
 bishop was but biding his time to hurl down the fellow- 
 conspirator whom he- had helped to climb. On the 30th 
 of June there was " rumor armorum in civitate Pisarum,"* 
 — a noise of arms in the city of the Pisans ; — and on the 
 next day the people, led on by the Archbishpp, seized the 
 Count and several of his sons and grandsons, and impri- 
 soned them in the celebrated " Torre della Fame," which 
 had been previously called the " Torre dei Gualandi," but 
 originally the " Torre della Sette Vie," where they all died 
 of starvation. It is remarkable that the Plorentine histo- 
 rians represent that they M^ere shut up in the tower, doomed 
 avowedly to perish by hunger, f But the Pisan chroniclers 
 say that the sentence pronounced on them was not death 
 by starvation or otherwise, but a fine of " five thousand 
 pounds weight of money," which, having already paid 
 three previous fines, they had not the means of discharging ; 
 and were allowed to die of hunger in default of producing 
 the money4 
 
 * Fram. Hist. Pisan. Gruidom de Corvaria ; a queer old diarist, who, 
 though he had elsewhere a wife and family, enters in his diary towards the 
 end of 1285, " Die . . . (left blank) ... a certain daughter (filia quEedam) 
 was born to me in Carraia, named Franoesehina." And a few months later, 
 " I assumed the habit of the blessed Francis; and on the same day Pretiosa, 
 my companion, (' sooia mia') clothed herself in similar weeds." He re- 
 nounces the habit, however, before the year of noviciate is out ; but we hear 
 no more of Pretiosa ; — and are somewhat reminded of one of those French 
 stories of suicide k deux, in which the stronger vessel is apt to survive his 
 Wounds. 
 
 t Tillani, book vii. chap, cxxviii. 
 
 % Fram. Hist. Pisan. duct. Anon., printed in the 24th vol. of Muratori 
 Script. Rerum. Ital., see p. 255. The above-cited diary is also printed in 
 the same volume, see p. 694. See also for the details of the political party 
 
THE TOWER OF FAMINE. 199 
 
 The celebrated passage in the 33rd Canto of the Inferno a.d. 
 is too well known for it to be necessary to quote it at ^^®^' 
 length. And indeed were it not for the undying interest 
 which the poet's touch has imparted to the horrible tragedy, 
 and the consequent celebrity of the story, it would hardly 
 have been worth while to detain the reader by occupying 
 him with details which belong to the history of Pisa rather 
 than that of Florence. 
 
 The period marked by the great naval battle of Meloria, 
 which, as Villani justly remarks, was the commencement 
 of the decline of the Pisan greatness and power, may be 
 considered also as about the time when the tide of the 
 Plorentine fortunes just began to touch the high-water 
 mark. The great party division of Guelphs and Ghibel- 
 lines, which had been the misfortune and well nigh the 
 ruin of the community on so many occasions, was nO 
 longer so clearly marked as to be a source of danger to the 
 Commonwealth. Not that the animosity and rivalry of 
 those two great parties was at an end in Italy, or had 
 ceased to vex other cities and influence the foreign policy 
 of Florence ; but within the walls that danger was over, 
 and another was beginning to loom on the political horizon. 
 The nobles of both parties found themselves in the pre- 
 sence of a power which they began to perceive was greater 
 than that of both of them put together ; and the future 
 danger arose from the tendency of this preponderance to 
 increase and become overwhelming. But this evil was as 
 yet in the future. And though no doubt lamentations, 
 dismay at " what the world was coming to," and dismal 
 vaticinations, were rife in noble homes, yet with few ex- 
 ceptions the Florentine nobles did not refuse to avail them- 
 
 movements whieli led to the downfal of Ugolino, Villani, book vii. chap, 
 cxxi. ; Ammirato, book iii. ad an. 1288 ; Roneioni, Istorie Pisane, printed 
 in Archivio Storioo Italiano, vol. vi. p. 640. These authorities may be con- 
 sulted for the purpose mentioned in this note ; but no details whatsoever of 
 the horrible catastrophe itself will be found. 
 
A.D. 
 
 1285, 
 
 200 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 selves of tliat means of continuing to exercise a fair share 
 of influence in the government which the legislation of 
 the recent revolution had left open to them. They for the 
 most part did put their names on the books of some one of 
 the civic companies, and did thus obtain a very tolerable 
 portion of the honours and power of the State. Some 
 few families there were, men of that strong hard-fibred 
 sort of character who, when once moulded in a certain 
 form, can by no change of circumstance be fashioned into 
 any other, — men of the class destined in every age of the 
 world to be left stranded by the changing stream-course of 
 the world's progress, — men perhaps by no means the least 
 respectable of their class, who consistently refused to bend 
 in any way to the yoke put upon them ; who shut them- 
 selves up in their palaces, and gradually, refusing to move 
 onward, were left behind in the world's race, and sank into 
 poverty and comparative obscurity. 
 
 And this result happened the more"* quickly, for that all 
 around them was moving onward swiftly. Wealth was 
 increasing in the city with great rapidity. Large fortunes 
 were made in all three of those "Arti Maggiori " which 
 have been named : — the dealers in foreign cloths sent to 
 Florence to be dressed and dyed ; the manufacturers of 
 woollen cloths ; and the bankers. The largest fortunes 
 were at this period of the history of the Commonwealth 
 probably made in the first of those trades. A little later, 
 when Florence assumed in Europe that position and those 
 functions in conducting the monetary business of the world 
 which now belong to London, the most colossal fortunes 
 were made, or lost, by the bankers of Florence. 
 
 The increasing prosperity of the city showed itself in the 
 necessity of once again enlarging the circuit of its walls. 
 The work of enclosing the large and populous suburbs — 
 " borghi," as they were called — with which the overflow of 
 the population had surrounded the city on all sides, was 
 
FAMINE AT FLORENCE. 201 
 
 begun in 1285. Much about the same period the superb a.d, 
 " loggia," or open arcade of Or San Michele,* was erected. ■^^^°' 
 As it is now seen, the exquisitely beautiful arches have 
 been built up with dead wall : and the space enclosed is 
 used for a church. When built as an open " loggia," it 
 was intended for a grain market. 
 
 In that same year (1285) Charles of Anjou died; and 
 as the head and patron of all Guelphs and Guelphism in 
 Italy, was lamented and praised by the Florentine histo- 
 rians. He was not so necessary to them, however, as he 
 had once been ; and the good city held on her way with 
 an uninterrupted tranquillity, which marks noticeably 
 enough the contrast with the times but a little further 
 back, when the death of a foreign potentate caused sudden 
 revolution, and reversed aU the relationships of the great 
 parties in the State. 
 
 It is recorded — and the record is worth giving as a 
 criterion of price and of the value of money — that in the 
 next year, 1286, there was a great scarcity of food 
 throughout Italy, which was at the worst in April and 
 May, during which months wheat in Plorence was worth 
 a fraction more than half a golden florin a bushel, i.e., the 
 sixteenth part of an ounce of pure gold.f 
 
 There were, however, plenty of ounces of golden florins 
 in Plorence to pay for the food that was needed ; and hav- 
 ing briefly mentioned the circumstance, the historian goes 
 on his way recording the successes and prosperities of the 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 In 1282, a few years before Charles of Anjou's death, 
 the unhappy Sicilians had made that desperate leap of the 
 Sicilian Vespers from the frying-pan of French insolence 
 and insult into the fire of Spanish tyranny. And now 
 
 * Or for Orto, a garden. This was the open ground on which, as it will 
 be remembered, the Uberti were beheaded, 
 t Villani, book vii. chap, iii, 
 
202 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. Charles his son, having been let out of prison, came to 
 ' Florence on his way southward to plead his cause before the 
 giver of kingdoms— at that time Nicholas IV. — who was 
 then at Rieti. He remained three days at Florence, and 
 was treated with all the honour that a Guelph city could 
 show to the hereditary chief of the Guelph faction. But 
 when he was about to proceed on his journey, tidings came 
 to Florence that the men of Arezzo, in which city for some 
 little time past the Ghibelhne party had been drawing to 
 a head and striving to prepare themselves for some blow 
 that might open to them a path to the power and influence 
 which they had lost in Tuscany, were minded to come 
 ' forth from their walls and bar the way against the young 
 Guelph prince. Whereupon Florence at once put eight 
 hundred cavaliers into the saddle, and turned out a force 
 of three thousand infantry, to escort the prince on his road. 
 And though it was soon ascertained that this demonstra- 
 tion had sufficed to make the Arezzo Ghibellines abandon 
 their plan, and though Charles assured them that it was 
 unnecessary, the Florentines insisted on accompanying him 
 to the frontier of the Commune of Orvieto. And when 
 they parted there, the authorities of the " most republican 
 of republics," who, despite their jealousy and dislike of 
 their native aristocracy, manifested on many occasions a 
 truly bourgeois admiration for foreign potentates, requested 
 the prince to lend them a general, and to continue to them 
 the privilege of hoisting the royal standard of his house 
 whenever their armies took the field. Of course the 
 French prince graciously acceded to their prayer ; and the 
 noble knight Amerigo Nerbona was left with a hundred 
 horsemen to return with them to Florence.* 
 
 No sooner had the little army which had acccompanied 
 Charles II. of Anjou on his journey returned to Florence, 
 bringing with them Messer Amerigo di Nerbona and his 
 
 * Villani, book vii. chap. cxx. 
 
ARETINE POLITICS. 203 
 
 troop of men-at-arms, than preparations were made for an a.b. 
 expedition against Arezzo. The historian Ammirato main- ^^^^■ 
 tains * that Arezzo was bent on aggression, and that 
 Florence, foreseeing that she would have to fight, judged it 
 best to carry the war on to the Aretine territory rather 
 than wait to have it at her own gates. But it is remark- 
 able, that the presence of foreign leaders and their merce- 
 nary troops in Florence always produced, or at all events 
 immediately preceded, war with some of the neighbouring 
 communities. And all experience teaches that^ the exist- 
 ence of an armed force is a dangerous provocative to the 
 use of it. 
 
 It is true that there was at that time in Arezzo a turbu- 
 lent, ambitious, and restless man, the Bishop Guglielmino 
 degli Ubertini, a furious Ghibelline, as might be sup- 
 posed from his name, and a member of that family who 
 on so many occasions had given trouble to Florence. He 
 had obtained great power at Arezzo ; and although his 
 attempts to reinstate the Qhibelline party in their ascend- 
 ancy there had been already once or twice checked by 
 Florentine expeditions against that city, he was still striv- 
 ing to organize a vast coalition with the scattered frag- 
 ments of the Ghibelline power, chiefly in districts beyond 
 the limits of Tuscany. Altogether he had collected a force 
 of eight thousand infantry, and eight hundred cavaliers, 
 officered by several captains of high reputation, Buonconte 
 of Montefeltro, Guglielmino de' Pazzi of the Valdarno, and 
 others, without counting his own Right Reverend arm, 
 which was evidently far more at home with the sword than 
 the crozier. The captain in chief of the Aretine forces 
 was not, however, a leader calculated to inspire an army 
 with confidence, being no other than our old acquaint- 
 ance Count Guido Novello, then Podesta of Arezzo, whose 
 conduct upon this occasion was quite in keeping with 
 
 • Book iii. ad an. 1288. 
 
204 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.I), what we saw of him when he ran away out of Morence 
 ^^^^' from a popular riot, while the " Frati Gaudenti " were 
 screaming to him from the window not to be in such a hurry. 
 The Florentine army consisted of six hundred citizens, 
 " the best mounted and armed that ever went out of 
 Florence," * and four hundred foot soldiers, besides the 
 troop of Amerigo di Nerbona. Lucca sent five hundred 
 cavaliers ; Prato forty, and some foot soldiers ; Pistoia 
 sixty, and some infantry ; Siena one hundred and twenty, 
 and Volterra forty cavaliers. There were also contingents 
 from Bologna, Sanminiato, San Gemigniano, CoUe, and 
 some other places. Several of the landowners of the 
 country districts who had embraced Guelph principles, 
 and recognised the suzerainty of Florence, also brought 
 their retainers. Altogether the Florentine arm.y consisted 
 of sixteen hundred cavaliers and ten thousand infantry; 
 — a very far superior force to that at the disposition of 
 the fighting Bishop. The latter, however, contained a 
 very much smaller proportion of civic troops, being almost 
 entirely composed of the retainers of the great Ghibel- 
 line barons, soldiers by profession, as such deemed even 
 by the Florentine writers necessarily and naturally more 
 than a match for the citizen bands. It is curious to find 
 the leaders of these Ghibelline troopers encouraging them 
 to scorn the superior numbers of the city forces, by sneer- 
 ing at the effeminacy of their habits, and assuring their 
 soldiers that they were creatures who combed their hair 
 like women, and thought more of taking care of their 
 own persons than of their arms. 
 
 It was on the 18th of May, 1289, that Florence for- 
 mally declared war against Arezzo, with the old formality 
 of raising the banner of the Commonwealth for eight days 
 on the Abbey tower on the hill of Ripoli, f before putting 
 
 * Villani, book vii. chap, cxxxi. 
 
 t A hamlet two or three miles from Florence, just behind St. Miniato. 
 
EXPEDITION AGAINST AKEZZO. 205 
 
 tlie army in motion, so that it should not be said that a.d. 
 
 1289 
 
 Florence attacked anybody without giving them fair notice. 
 It is not easy to understand of what avail this notice 
 could be to a city forty miles distant ; but the loyal 
 custom was evidently preserved from that good old time 
 when the frontier of the state was, as Dante wished it had 
 remained, not above some three miles from the city. 
 
 On this occasion, however, the eight days seemed to 
 have been extended to eighteen. For it was not till the 
 2nd of June that the united host marched out of Florence, 
 while all the bells rang out their God speed ! and took its 
 way towards the Casentino. The fertile district so called, 
 consists of the upper valley of the Arno, which, after hav- 
 ing approached to within two or three miles of Arezzo, 
 makes a sudden sweep and pursues its way to Florence in a 
 direction almost the reverse of that it had previously fol- 
 lowed. The high ground which it thus sweeps around and 
 partially encloses, rises to a very considerable elevation, and 
 is called the Prato Magno, a bleak region of open downs, 
 in some parts still covered with forest, and probably 
 entirely so at the date of which we are speaking. This 
 high mountain ridge has therefore to be crossed by any 
 one who would go from Florence into the Casentino with- 
 out following the much longer route by the course of the 
 river. This long upper valley of the Arno, shut in by the 
 main chain of the chestnut and pine covered Apennines to 
 the left of one looking down the stream, and to the right 
 by the long mass of the Prato Magno, is an exceedingly 
 pleasant and fruitful district; and besides some other 
 townlets of lesser note, contains the strong castle and 
 town of Poppi, built on an isolated hill in the centre of it, 
 and the thriving town of Bibbiena at the further extremity, 
 —at the end of the valley, that is, furthest from Florence 
 and nearest to Arezzo. 
 
 Poppi and its castle were the property and stronghold of 
 
A.D. 
 
 1289. 
 
 206 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 Count Giiido Novello, now Podesta of Arezzo, wMch city, 
 it would seem, did not make a point of going so far afield 
 in search of its Podestas as Florence had by statute bound 
 herself to do. All around and beneath Poppi lay the 
 flourishing lands belonging to Count Guido. And the 
 main motive which induced the Plorentines to take this 
 road to Arezzo, rather than the nearer and easier one by 
 the river, was the desire of laying waste the estates of 
 their old acquaintance, now the captain-general of the 
 enemy's army. The Arezzo men, on their side, as soon as 
 they learned the direction the Florentine army had taken, 
 hastened into the Casentino at their end of it, hoping to 
 be in time, if not to save the property of their PodestS, 
 from destruction, at least to protect Bibbiena, on which the 
 enemy would next fall. 
 
 Just as the Arezzo host were marching out, circum- 
 stances came to the knowledge of its leaders which led 
 them to suspect that their fighting Bishop, who had been 
 the chief promoter and agent of the Ghibelhne league and 
 gathering, was in traitorous correspondence with the Floren- 
 tines. It was afterwards known that he had in fact bar- 
 gained with them to betray into their hands Bibbiena, and 
 many other towns and castles of his bishopric, in return 
 for a pension of fifty thousand golden florins a year for 
 his life. 
 
 Those good old times, the " ages of faith " in an eccle- 
 siastical sense, were assuredly marked to a very extraor- 
 dinary degree by faithlessness in a secular sense. But 
 it is impossible to read many pages of their annals without 
 coming upon facts which go to prove that the most slippery 
 of all dangerous customers to deal with in those ages was 
 a bishop. 
 
 At that critical moment, however, all that could be done 
 was to hurry forwards, and give battle at once. The two 
 armies accordingly met on a small plain in the valley 
 
BATTLE OP CAMPALDINO. 20T 
 
 beneath Poppi, a little on the Horence side of that a.d. 
 town, at a spot called Campaldino, which has accord- ^^^^" 
 ingly given its name to one of the most celebrated battles 
 of Florentine history. The fight took place on Saturday, 
 the 11th of June, 1289, "the day of St. Barnabas the 
 Apostle, and the two hosts by common accord placed 
 themselves in array in front of each other in more per- 
 fect order on either side than in any other battle ever 
 fought in Italy."* 
 
 The disposition on both sides was similar, either host 
 distributing its forces into four divisions. The first of these 
 consisted of a body of " f editor i" wounders, literally ; but 
 the word iu this case means attackers. This was the post 
 of honour. No regiment or company en masse was ap- 
 pointed to the duty ; but it was assigned to a certain 
 number of cavaliers, selected individually, man by man, 
 from those most noted for dash and conspicuous personal 
 prowess in all the army. At Campaldino, Messer Vieri de' 
 Cerchi, of whom we shall hear more hereafter, having, 
 as one of the captains of the army, to select the "feditori," 
 acquired great renown by insisting on being among them 
 himself, though sufiering from a wound in the leg at the 
 time, — naming his own son and nephews the first, and re- 
 fusing after that to admit any, save volunteers, into the 
 band. " So that," says Villani, " many nobles placed them-, 
 selves among the feditori from shame." 
 
 Behind this first rank was drawn up the solid mass of 
 the bulk of the army, the greater part of the infantry, with 
 a portion of the horse. Solidity and firmness were the 
 qualities here most required. Their business it was to 
 sustain the shock and weight of the hostile force, and to do 
 so without yielding ground. At a little distance, again, 
 behind these was drawn up all the baggage and camp equi- 
 page, with several companies of veterans to protect it, and 
 
 * Villani, book vii. chap. cj.xxi. 
 
A.B. 
 
 1289. 
 
 208 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ELOEENCE. 
 
 assist in supporting tlie second body if they should show 
 signs of giving way. Fourthly, there was a body of reserve, 
 cavalry mainly, drawn up at some little distance, on a 
 rising ground probably if possible, whose duty it was to 
 watch the fight, and strike at the moment and in the 
 place where such a blow might best serve to decide the 
 fortune of the day. On the occasion in question, Corso 
 Donati, of whom also we shall hear more, was in command 
 of this body ; and was charged not to move at the peril of 
 his life vpithout orders. 
 
 In one of these four divisions of the Florentine host, but 
 in which of them there is no record to tell, there v^as a 
 young citizen soldier, just twenty-four years old, named 
 Dante Alighieri. 
 
 The Arezzo men were the first to begin the attack. 
 Spurring their horses, they dashed against the Florentine 
 ranks with such fury that the main mass of the army was 
 driven back for a space. But it did not break ; and having 
 recovered a little from the first shock stood immoveably 
 firm. But at this crisis the contrasted conduct of the two 
 leaders of the reserved force on either side probably decided 
 the fortune of the day. Count Guido Novello, the Aretine 
 Podesta, at the moment when he should have spurred for- 
 ward against the momentarily wavering Florentine line, was 
 stricken with panic, and galloped off the field to the 
 shelter of his neighbouring castle of Poppi. Messer Corso 
 Donati, on the other hand, who had not received the order 
 to advance for which he had been charged to wait, could not 
 control his impatience, but crying out, " If we lose the day, 
 I prfefer to die with my fellow-citizens on the field ! If we 
 win, anybody who likes may come to Pistoia (of which city 
 he was Podesta at the time) to see me beheaded for breaking 
 orders ! In any case, here goes ! " He dashed forward, 
 and delivered a charge on the enemy in flank, which did 
 much towards winning the battle. 
 
DEFEAT OF THE ARETINES. 209 
 
 The upshot was the entire rout of the Aretine and Ghi- a.b. 
 beUine army. One thousand seven hundred were left by ^^^^' 
 them dead on the field. More than two thousand prisoners 
 were taken. Many were released, either, says Villani, for 
 money or for friendship's sake. But seven hundred and 
 forty were taken in bonds to Florence. Among the dead 
 was found Guglielmino degli Ubertini, the bishop, " who 
 was," says Villani, " a great warrior ; " — making no fur- 
 ther observation concerning him. Many other Ghibellines 
 of note also perished at Campaldino. The loss of the 
 Florentines was very light in comparison. 
 
 The news of the great victory reached Florence that same 
 night, a distance of about thirty -five miles, as Villani thought 
 by some supernatural means. Their lordships the Priori, 
 he tells us, had gone to bed after their dinner, being tired 
 out by having been up, busy and anxious, all the previous 
 night in sending forth the army. When suddenly a knock 
 came at the door of the room where they were sleeping, and 
 a voice cried out, " Get up ! get up ! for the Aretines are 
 beaten ! " But when they got up and opened the door, and 
 questioned the servants, nobody was to be seen or heard 
 of. " And it was held," says the historian, " to be a most 
 wonderful and notable thing, for it was the hour of Vespers 
 before the first bearers of the news arrived. And this is 
 true, for I saw it and heard it ; and all the Florentines 
 marvelled much what it might mean ! " 
 
 The Florentine army marched immediately on Bibbiena, 
 and, having taken it without any resistance, lost eight days 
 in plundering and destroying the walls of the town. And 
 these eight days saved Arezzo. Had they pushed on at 
 once to Arezzo, they had surely taken the city. But the 
 eight days' respite thus allowed to the beaten army gave 
 them time to collect themselves and take all means of 
 securing the safety of the town. So that when the Floren- 
 tines arrived before the walls, they were, forced to content 
 
 VOL, I. ^ 
 
210 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OE ELOEBNCE. 
 
 A.D. themselves with laying waste the gardens and fields around 
 ^^^^' the town, and playing ofi" a variety of those pranks which 
 these mediaeval citizen armies found so exceedingly divert- 
 ing in the execution, and so glorious in the subsequent 
 boasting of them, when they were the aggressive party, and 
 so intolerably irritating when they were made the subjects 
 of them. Thus before the walls of Arezzo, the Florentines, 
 if they could not take the city, could at least insult the 
 inhabitants by flinging asses over the walls with mitres on 
 their heads, as a taunt having a severely satirical reference 
 to their late bishop and his fate. They also, on the 24th 
 of June, the anniversary of the great Florentine festival 
 of St. John, got up a counterpart of the various games and 
 amusements which they would have been engaged in had 
 they been at home on that day ; the understood signifi- 
 cance of the taunt being, that they were so much at their 
 ease there on the enemy's territory and in sight of his 
 walls, and so little apprehensive of his daring to interfere 
 with them, that they could act as if in perfect security at 
 home within their own walls. 
 
 Certainly these people were very young — very boy-Hke ; 
 and the world becomes older as it rolls on in more senses 
 than one ! 
 
 The total cost of this expedition amounted, as we are 
 told by Villani, to 36,000 golden florins,— 4500 ounces of 
 pure gold, that is to say, — which was paid by the Com- 
 monwealth by an income-tax of six and a quarter per 
 cent.* 
 
 " And Florence exulted greatly," he goes on to say, " over 
 this victory ; and became exceedingly flourishing and pros- 
 perous, more so than it had ever been up to that time ; and 
 it increased largely in population and in riches, for every one 
 made large gains in every sort of commerce, art, and trade. 
 And the city continued in peace and tranquillity for several 
 
 * Paid, it is to be understood once, and laid on specially for the occasion. 
 
HALCYON DAYS. 211 
 
 years afterwards, rising in importance and power every a.». 
 day. And by reason of the general happiness and flourish- ^^^^' 
 ing condition, every year in the first days of May, com- 
 panies were formed, and bands of young gentlemen, all in 
 new clothing, used to put up booths of cloth and silk, and 
 enclosures of timber, in various parts of the city. And the 
 women and girls did the like, going all through the city 
 dancing and paired in order, with musical instruments, and 
 with garlands of flowers on their heads, passing their time 
 in play and merriment, and in dinners and suppers." * 
 
 A merry world, my masters ! And young communities, 
 as well as young folks, will be young. 
 
 * Villani, book vii. chap, cxxxii. : Ammirato, book iii. ad an. 1289 ; 
 Coppo Stefani, book iii, rubr. clxxzi. ; Dino Compagni, Istoria Fiorentina, 
 Firenze, 1728, book i. pp. 8, 9. 
 
 vi. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 The government of the Priori — Rise of the people to importance and power 
 — Giano della Bella — Ordini delta Oiustizia—The object of the code so 
 called — Provisions contained in, the " Ordini" — Disfranchisement of the 
 nobles — First execution under the " Ordini "— Complaints of the nobles 
 — Conspiracy against Giano della Bella — Defects of the " Ordini" — 
 Popular insurrection — Giano is banished — -Prosperity coincident with 
 great disturbances — Ancient commerce less sensitive than modern — 
 Character of the Florentine merchants — Palazzo del Comune — Cathedral 
 of Florence — Cimabue — Giotto — Tuscan language — Dante— Guido Ca- 
 valoanti — Twelve Florentine Ambassadors at Rome in 1300 — Saying of 
 Boniface VIII. 
 
 The pleasant and prosperous state of things described at 
 the close of the preceding chapter did not last long in 
 Florence. The historian Villani expresses the singular 
 opinion, that too great a degree of tranquillity bred — as 
 generally, he says, is the case — a disorderly and aggressive 
 spirit among the people.* Ammirato, however, writing 
 somewhat over two centuries later, says, more in accord- 
 ance with the lessons which the world now conceives itself 
 to have learned from experience, that the habits engendered 
 by long years of nearly constant warfare, had produced a 
 spirit of ferocity, violence, and lawlessness among the inha- 
 bitants of all classes, especially the great and powerful, f 
 All the contemporary accounts agree in representing law- 
 lessness to have been rife in Florence. The last change in 
 the constitution — that which had entrusted the supreme 
 power to the Priori of the Guilds — was not found to work 
 
 * Villani, book viii. chap. i. + Ammirato, book iv. p. 1. 
 
GOYEENMENTAL CORRUPTION. 213 
 
 satisfactorily. " The functions entrusted to them," writes 
 a contemporary historian,* " were, in short to guard and 
 protect the property of the Commune ; to take care that 
 the judges rendered justice to every man, and that the poor 
 and powerless were not oppressed by the great and power- 
 ful ; and had they done so, the service to the people would 
 have been great. But very soon all this was changed ; for 
 the citizens who filled those offices (the Priori) did not 
 strive to observe, but to corrupt, the laws. If any friend 
 or connection of their own incurred the penalties of the 
 law, they contrived, by influencing the magistrates and the 
 officials, to hide their crimes, so that they remained un- 
 punished. Nor did they preserve the property of the Com- 
 mune, but, on the contrary, found means of stealing from 
 it, and drew from the exchequer chamber large sums, under 
 pretext of rewarding public services. The poor were not 
 protected, but the great wronged them, as also did the rich 
 burgesses {popolani grassi) who held those offices, and who 
 were often connected with the nobles by marriage ; and 
 frequently criminals were allowed to purchase impunity : 
 all which caused discontent among worthy citizens of the 
 people, and raised an outcry against the priors, because the 
 Guleph nobles were in power." 
 
 The evils complained of, it will be observed, were much 
 of the same nature as those which had led to the appoint- 
 ment of a foreign Podesta. The Plorentine magistrates 
 could not be trusted to administer justice with purity, or 
 deal honestly with the public money. Provision was made 
 for assuring to the popular element in the body social a 
 
 * Dino Compagni. His valuable chronicle runs from 1280 to 1312. He 
 took a leading part in the politics and government of the city ; and his short 
 record of the facts which fell under his observation has more of the character 
 of history than any other of the chronicles of that period. It has the dis- 
 advantage of being very obscure in style. It has been printed by Muratori, 
 in his great collection, Script. Serum. ltd., and again by D. M. Manni, in 
 4to, Florence, 1728. The latter edition is here cited. For the passage in 
 the text, see p, 5. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1289. 
 
214 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEEKCE, 
 
 A.B. preponderating share of the administrative power : and it 
 turned out that matters were not much mended. They 
 were citizens, indeed, who were in power ; but they were 
 " fat citizens " all of them, — popolani grassi — men who 
 had already begun to intermarry with the nobles ; so that 
 in fact it came to be the same thing as having the Guelph 
 nobles in power, which was only one step better than 
 having the old-time Ghibellines back again. The Ghibel- 
 lines,^ indeed, have been got rid of for good and aU — have 
 dwindled and disappeared from the pubhc life of Florence, 
 to be met with in distant provinces, or here and there, in 
 obscure poverty and proud isolation — harmless fossils — in 
 the retirement of those homes which had been so often 
 ruined and confiscated. The likely men among them — 
 those of the sort who will not submit to be left stranded 
 by the running stream of progress — had changed them- 
 selves into Guelphs; and had barely done so when it 
 already became evident that they must adapt themselves 
 to yet further changes if they would not be left behind 
 the world. The Guelphs were already confounding them- 
 selves with the plebeian citizens, or at least with the fatter 
 sort among them, and were candidates for power and place 
 by virtue of the association. But the tide was running 
 very rapidly, and the thin citizens were now beginning to 
 cry out that their fat fellow-plebeians were little better 
 than nobles ; — that, in point of fact, it was much the same 
 thing as having Guelph nobles in office. Might it be that 
 this backsliding of burgher magistrates into all the evil 
 ways of the nobles was in fact due to that special circum- 
 stance of their fatness ? We have abolished the Ghibellines, 
 and have found the Guelphs very little better than they. 
 We have taken our affairs out of their hands, and have 
 entrusted them to the fattest among ourselves j and now 
 they consort with nobles, intermarry with them, and 
 govern us not a bit better than they did. May it not. 
 
GIAKTO BELLA BELLA. 215 
 
 perchance, be because of their fatness? and may it not a.d. 
 become necessary that we outside thin ones should take ^^^^" 
 the matter into our own hands ? 
 
 It is an awkward corner in its social hfe for a community 
 to turn, when the thin people begin to think and speak 
 thus of the " fat " ones. 
 
 For the present, however, the Florentines were content 
 to hope that the mischief might be mainly due to that 
 mixture of the old patrician element which had crept in 
 and adulterated the pure citizenship of the "popolani 
 grassi." Let us try the result of thoroughly purging our 
 ruling class of all that old leaven ! 
 
 So, in February of the year 1293, a number of the dis- 
 contented procured the election to the Priorato of a nota- 
 ble citizen, named Giano della Bella, a wealthy trader, 
 much respected in the town, who was himself smarting 
 under a gross insult he had received from a Frescobaldi, one 
 who was a stanch supporter of popular government, and 
 who was exceedingly indignant at the abuses and injustices 
 of which preceding governments had been guilty. He 
 seems to have been a thoroughly honest and sincere man, 
 violent in his sentiments, and more courageous than dis- 
 creet or prudent. By his influence, and as it would seem 
 mainly by him, an entire new code of laws was enacted, 
 under the title of Ordinances of Justice — " Ordini della 
 Giustizia" — which were not intended to replace any part 
 of the legislation then in vigour in the city, but to act as a 
 subsidiary code for the special purpose of repressing the 
 violence and overbearing pride of the nobles. A new 
 officer was at the same time appointed, with the title of 
 " Gonfaloniere delta Gimtizia" who was to be the presi- 
 dent of the Board of Priori. A standard bearing the arms 
 of the Florentine people — a red cross in a white field — 
 was given into his care ; and from this symbol of his 
 office — gonfalone — was derived the title which has become 
 
216 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. the best known throughout Europe of all the multiplied 
 magistracies of the Florentine Commonwealth. A thou- 
 sand completely armed soldiers, bearing the same cogni- 
 zance, were placed under his command for the execution of 
 the provisions of that special body of laws which it was 
 his duty to administer. 
 
 The body of laws thus enacted was drawn up in Latin ; 
 but a translation into the vulgar tongue was made for the 
 use of the magistrates and people, which is considered by 
 those best versed in the history of the Tuscan language, to 
 be a very remarkable composition in point of diction and 
 style, and a proof that the use and amelioration of the 
 modern Italian had made greater progress at that early 
 date than has been generally supposed. 
 
 This document has been recently published by Signor 
 Giudici in his History of the Italian Municipalities,* in 
 which work it occupies no less than a hundred and twenty 
 full-sized and closely-printed octavo pages. The scope and 
 animus of the entire code, may, however, be easily stated. 
 The avowed and sole object of the " Ordini della Gius- 
 tizia " was to exclude the nobles from the common rights 
 of citizenship, and to enact new, special, and more sum- 
 mary penalties against any noble guilty of injuring in any 
 way a plebeian. 
 
 AU nobles are to be excluded from the government. 
 Dino Compagni, in speaking summarily of the new pro- 
 visions, says that all the members of every family in which 
 there was any " cavaliere," — any member of knightly rank 
 — were made incapable of being elected. But though the 
 language of the statute is by no means precise or very 
 clear, it seems to me that only " cavaliers " themselves are 
 excluded. Probably the original text may have been 
 altered by some subsequent disposition in the sense given 
 
 * Storia politica dei Munioipii Italian! di Paolo Emiliani-Giudiei ; Firenze, 
 1851. 
 
"ORDINI DI GIUSTIZIA." 217 
 
 by Dino Compagni. Certainly the general intention was a.d. 
 to disqualify all men of noble race. ^^^^• 
 
 All canvassing for election to offices — all meetings with 
 a view to promote the election of any candidate— all 
 requests to any elector for his vote, are forbidden, under 
 the penalty of heavy fines.* 
 
 Any noble killing a man of the people, or wounding 
 him so that he dies in consequence of the wound, shall be be- 
 headed, his house shall be destroyed, and all his possessions 
 forfeited to the Commune. Any noble procuring another 
 person to commit similar acts shall be similarly punished. 
 And there are some singular provisions defining the extent 
 of this liability to the charge of procuring a murderous 
 assault, which illustrate the condition of society at the 
 time in a curious manner. Two individuals only shall be 
 capitally punished in any case for one assassination, 
 namely, one " capitano " — ^ringleader — of the actual per- 
 petrators of the deed, and one " capitano " of the pro- 
 curers or inciters to the deed. And these ringleaders shall 
 be designated, among aU those implicated, by the relatives 
 of the slain man. But should they, when called upon to 
 do so, neglect or decline to exercise such right, then the 
 Podesta — Captain of the People — or other magistrate 
 before whom the matter has been tried, shall name such 
 ringleaders. All other nobles present at the commission 
 of the crime shall be fined two thousand lire. Any noble 
 striking a plebeian in the face, so that blood follows the 
 blow, in such sort that the wound put the injured man to 
 shame,! or wounding or striking him with any iron 
 instrument in any other part of his body, in such sort 
 that weakness of the wounded part shall remain as a con- 
 sequence thereof, shall be fined two thousand hre. And 
 if such fines be not paid within ten days, the right hand 
 
 * Ordini della Giustizia, chap. v. ; Storia dei Municipii, p. 320. 
 t " E la fedita fosse vitupereTole."— Jiirf. chap. iv. p. 323. 
 
218 HISTOKT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 A.B. of the defaulter shall be cut off, " so that it be separated 
 
 1293 1 • • 
 
 from the arm." Procurers of such assaults are to be simi- 
 larly punished. And the same provisions respecting the 
 restriction of principals to two persons, and the designa- 
 tion of these, as in the case of murder, are repeated. 
 
 If the Podesta shall, when informed by the Gonfa- 
 loniere of any such crime committed by a noble, neglect 
 for five days in' a capital case, or for eight days in a less 
 grave matter, to proceed against the guilty, he shall in 
 the former case be deposed from his officCj and in the 
 latter forfeit five hundred silver florins of his salary. 
 And it shall in such case become the duty of the Cap- 
 tain of the People to proceed to execute justice, under 
 similar penalties if he should neglect to do so ; and in 
 the case of such neglect of their duty by either of these 
 officers, all the shops in the city of Florence shall be shut 
 and kept shut, and no business shall, be transacted therein 
 until such time as justice shall have been done in the 
 manner above prescribed ; and all the citizens shall be 
 armed, and- continue so, until execution shall have been 
 done on the guilty parties. 
 
 And further — (1 will translate the passage literally from 
 the original by way of a specimen of the style and animus 
 of this celebrated and characteristic document) — " In order 
 that the felonious audacity of those who are not afraid to 
 commit such deeds may be restrained as it ought to be, 
 and for the honour of the government of Messer la Podesta, 
 and for the conservation of the liberties and good condi- 
 tion of the people, it is provided and ordained, that in 
 case any of the nobles of the city or territory of Florence 
 should, commit or cause to be committed any injury against 
 the person of any man of the people {popoland) of the 
 city or territory, so that from such injury death should 
 ensue, or shameful disfigurement of face, or amputation 
 of limb by reason of any disfiguring wound, Messer la 
 
ANIMUS OF THE " ORDINI." 219 
 
 Podesta of the city of Florence shall he bound and con- 
 strained by his own oath, immediately and without any 
 delay, as soon as the perpetration of any such crime shall 
 be brought to his knowledge, in concert with the Gon- 
 faloniere, to cause his tocsin to be rung, and m,ake pubhc 
 proclamation through the city, in order that the above- 
 mentioned thousand select men-at-arms may run without 
 delay, and make haste to go to the dwelling of the said 
 Gonfaloniere, and that the Gonfaloniere may go with that 
 armed force, and with the Gonfalone de la* Justizia, to 
 the house or palace of Messer la Podesta : and then let 
 Messer la Podesta send, and he is held and bound to send, 
 putting aside all excuse and delay, one or more of the 
 judges or cavaliers,t with such of his officers as he may 
 think fit, together with the said Gonfaloniere and the said 
 armed men, with the strong hand and with force, to the 
 houses and possessions of such noble as shall have com- 
 mitted or caused to be committed any such injury as those 
 hereinbefore mentioned ; and shall destroy and lay waste, 
 or cause to be wholly destroyed and laid waste, such 
 houses and possessions as may be in the city, suburbs, or 
 townships of Florence, utterly from the foundations and 
 from the roots of them, before quitting the spot where such 
 houses and goods are situated." 
 
 The above passage wUl suffice to give the reader a fair 
 notion of the spirit and scope of these celebrated " Ordini 
 di Giustizia ;' but a few other of their characteristic pro- 
 visions may be more briefly cited. 
 
 " If popolani " meddle in the quarrels of the nobles, 
 the consequences will not come under the provisions of 
 this code, but will be subject to the ordinary jurisdiction 
 of the tribunals. 
 
 * Sic. The old Latin form was not yet quite abandoned. 
 t The word is not here used as before to mean nobles, but a title of civic 
 rank. 
 
 A.D. 
 1293. 
 
220 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. Nor shall any provision of this code be applicable to 
 ^^^^" the case of any groom, footman, or maid, beaten by their 
 master or mistress. 
 
 In all cases of injuries done by a noble against a man of 
 the people, the oath of the injured man if he be living, or 
 of his son or other representative if he be dead, confirmed 
 by the testimony of three witnesses to the fact of the 
 public belief in the guilt of the accused, shall be held to 
 be sufficient proof. 
 
 Pines are enacted against any " popolano " who shall 
 receive injury from a noble and not inform against him, 
 and against the representatives of one slain who shall 
 neglect to do so. 
 
 No noble shall be present at the council-board of the 
 Captain of the People, or shall approach the council-hall 
 when the Captain has taken his seat, unless he shall 
 have been specially summoned to do so. 
 
 In cases of any disturbance or tumult in the city, no 
 " popolano " shall enter or be in any house belonging to a 
 noble. 
 
 No noble shall be a member of any council of the 
 Captain of the People, or of the rulers of the guilds. 
 
 Besides the before-mentioned thousand soldiers under 
 the orders of the Gonfaloniere, two thousand others shall 
 be raised and armed as a civic guard, consisting exclusively 
 of " popolani." 
 
 Whenever the Gonfaloniere shall have cause to proceed 
 to any part of the city for the execution of justice in the 
 manner hereinbefore described, no noble shall approach 
 the place where he shall be so engaged. 
 
 As regards the payment of fines, and forfeiture and 
 destruction of property, the father of a condemned noble 
 shall be liable for his son, the son for his father, the brother 
 for his brother, being sons of the same father, the uncle 
 for his nephew, the nephew for his uncle, the grandfather 
 
SECRET DENUNCIATIOK. 221 
 
 on the father's side for the grandson, and the reverse, a.b. 
 On this law it may be remarked, that it would not appear ^^^^" 
 to anybody in Italy at that day, neither to the authors 
 of it, nor to the sufferers by it, so harsh and unjust as it 
 does to modern ideas. The principle of the solidarity 
 of families and communities was, as has been already 
 observed, admitted and universally felt to be reasonable, 
 and acted on. 
 
 No noble shall be permitted to carry arms in Morence, 
 unless he shall have given bail for himself in the sum of 
 five hundred lire. 
 
 Any man of the people who shall be guilty of treason 
 against the Commonwealth, shall, besides incurring the 
 pains and penalties enacted by the common law against 
 such offence, be pronounced and be held to be noble, and 
 his descendants shall thenceforward be considered nobles. 
 
 Any man of the people conspiring with or aiding any 
 noble in the commission of any of the hereinbefore 
 mentioned crimes, shall incur twofold the penalty awarded 
 by the common law to such offence if committed without 
 such conspiracy or companionship. 
 
 No noble shall in any case enter the Palazzo of the 
 Commonwealth, under pain of a fine of one hundred lire. 
 
 Besides all this, the principle of secret accusation was 
 established. Boxes for the reception of such anonymous 
 denunciations were affixed to the official residences of the 
 Gonfalionere and the Capitano del Popolo, which were 
 called tamburi,* and a person thus accused was said to 
 be tamhurato. 
 
 These " Ordini di Giustizia," including various supple- 
 mentary provisions added at different times between the 
 first enactment of them by Giano della Bella in 1293 and 
 1306, are comprised in no less than a hundred and fifteen 
 chapters. But the more salient passages of them which 
 
 * Literally "drums." 
 
222 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. have been given, are abundantly sufficient to enable tte 
 reader to form a very correct idea of the spirit and animus 
 of a legislation unmatched for the audacity of its tyranny 
 in the annals of any other community. 
 
 It wUl be remembered that the men thus utterly disfran- 
 chised and placed at the mercy of another caste, which 
 avowedly hated them, were the owners of the greater part of 
 the real property of the country to be governed; that no no- 
 tion of the duty and policy of moderation in the deahngs of a 
 majority in the ascendant with a subject minority restrained 
 the tendency of the age and people to tyrannise over and 
 crush an adverse faction; and that the class thus subjected 
 to disabilities, and to all the galling injustice of the grossest 
 class legislation, was one long accustomed to look down on 
 those who were now playing the tyrant, and wont to have, 
 to use, and to appeal to arms. And when all this is borne 
 in mind, it wUl hardly be anticipated by any that such 
 legislation should lead to that orderly and tranquil condi- 
 tion of legality and prosperous social life which its authors 
 expected from it. » 
 
 As might have been expected, too, from the spirit of this 
 code, its provisions, stringent as they are, were not suffi- 
 ciently so to satisfy the animosity of the popular party. 
 The first execution which took place under the new laws is 
 a specimen of the animus with which they were worked. 
 The son of a merchant named Benivieni had been killed in 
 a quarrel by one of the noble family of Galigai in Prance. 
 " And I, Dino Compagni," writes that historian,* " hap- 
 pening to be Gonfaloniere di Giustizia in 1293, proceeded 
 to their houses and to those of their family connexions,! 
 and caused them to be destroyed according to the law." 
 
 * Book i. p. 11, ed. oit. 
 
 f " Consorii." A " oonsorteria," a term constantly met witli in the Italian 
 historians, was a collective term, signifying aU the collateral branches of a 
 great family, as well as those connected with them by marriage, so that one 
 " oonsorteria" often included more than one family name. 
 
COMPLAINTS OP THE NOBLES. 223 
 
 Now, as this execution took place in the same year in which a.b. 
 the new law was promulgated, and as the crime which 
 caused it was committed in Prance, it is nearly certain that 
 the law in this case was made to bear on a fact which 
 occurred previous to its enactment. It may also be safely 
 assumed that the Florentine magistrates could have had no 
 such evidence of the deed and the circumstances attending 
 it, as could justify them in condemning the accused. 
 
 A great outcry was raised by the nobles, of course ; 
 and Dino Compagni, a strong supporter of the new order 
 of things, as has been seen, puts into the mouth of the 
 nobles, when he is describing their discontented complaints, 
 which he in no wise represents as unjust, but which seem 
 to show that a severity even beyond the law was meted out 
 to them, such remonstrances as these, — "A horse is galloping 
 and swishes the face of a 'popolano ' with his tail ; or in a 
 crowd one pushes against a man without any evil intention, 
 — are our houses to be destroyed for such trifling matters as 
 these ? " * And again further on, a noble — the same Berti 
 Frescobaldi whose insult to Giano deUa Bella had more than 
 anv other circumstance led to \he" Ordini di Giustizia" 
 — ^is represented as saying at a meeting of his class, " The 
 dogs of the people have taken away from us all the honours 
 and the offices of the state; we dare not even enter into the 
 public palace ; we have no means of causing our grievances 
 to be heard; if we beat one of our own footmen our houses 
 are destroyed ! My counsel therefore, gentlemen, is that 
 we free ourselves from this slavery. Let us seize our arms 
 and rush to the Piazza, and kiU every man of the people 
 we can find, be he friend or foe, to the end that neither we 
 nor our sons be held in subjection by them ! " f 
 
 Wiser heads, however, in that council recommended a 
 policy of treachery and cunning, by which it was hoped to 
 induce the people to undo all that had been done, by per- 
 
 * Dino Compagni, he. cit. t Dino Compagni, book i. p. 14, 
 
224 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OP PLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. suading them that there was danger of a movement on the 
 ■ part of the Ghibellines ; and at least to raise such suspi- 
 cions and jealousies as should afford the means of ruining 
 Giano della Bella. 
 
 But it is remarkable that Dino Compagni does not 
 utter a word to the effect that the complaints of the nobles 
 were unfounded. And yet Messer Frescobaldi complains 
 that a noble dare not beat his own footman for fear of 
 having his palace destroyed; whereas it will be remembered 
 that that valuable privilege was by express enactment pre- 
 served to the nobles. The conclusion therefore would 
 seem to be, that the laws were unduly strained to gratify 
 the popular hatred. 
 
 But the certainty that such laws could not lead to 
 tranquillity and prosperity, was the smallest part of the 
 evil discernible in them. The real misfortune was, that 
 the Florentines should have formed such conceptions of the 
 nature of liberty, and of the best means of preserving it. 
 It could not be otherwise than that a community attempt- 
 ing the arduous feat of self-government on such principles, 
 should be moving on towards a. final and fatal catastrophe. 
 It is not wonderful, indeed, that the citizens of Florence 
 in the thirteenth century, leading the forlorn hope in the 
 great onward march of humanity, attempting to solve that 
 great and crowning problem of self-government which the 
 foremost nations of mankind are, after six hundred years 
 of experience of efforts and of failures, but now beginning 
 to understand and accomplish, — it is not wonderful that 
 those pioneers of civilization should have failed in their 
 noble enterprise. Far more is it surprising and admirable 
 that they should have accomplished all that they did. But 
 it is very important that their descendants should under- 
 stand what were the errors which ensured their failure ; 
 and the urgent need that they should read the lesson of 
 their past aright, is all the greater in that an observer of 
 
FALL OF GIANO BELLA BELLA. 225 
 
 the national character at the present day, will be struck by 
 evidences of the same idiosyncrasy still existing in the 
 race, which caused some of their early errors. There is 
 still that tendency to under-rate the value of a principle, 
 and to proportionably over-rate the importance of any 
 single and immediate object. It was good and desirable 
 that the overbearing tyranny of the nobles should be re- 
 strained, and the people protected from their violence. But 
 the mischief inevitably arising from the disregard of the 
 immutable principles of equal justice and equal rights, was 
 far greater than the utmost good to be obtained by suc- 
 ceeding in the immediate object in hand. It is the perfect 
 conviction that this is and ever must be so, that can alone 
 inspire and keep alive in the public mind that supreme 
 reverence for legality which is absolutely and indispensably 
 necessary to a community capable of attempting to good 
 purpose the high emprize of free self-government. 
 
 The number of families disfranchised and declared in- 
 capable of ever holding any oflice in Florence was seventy- 
 two. The names of them all, with the quarters of the 
 city to which each belonged, have been preserved by an 
 historian of a later date ; * and many of them are still 
 familiar and well-known names in the streets of Florence 
 to the present day. And when it is remembered that each 
 of these represents, not a family in our usual more re- 
 stricted sense of the term, but an entire clan, it will be 
 understood that such a proscription was not likely to be 
 quietly submitted to. A series of conspu-acies, treacheries, 
 violences, and riots were the firstfruits of the new code ; 
 and one of the first victims of these disturbances was, as 
 has happened so frequently in similar cases, the great re- 
 former Giano della Bella himself. Nor were the nobles 
 the immediate authors of his fall, though it is true that 
 
 * Cambi, his history is printed in vols, xx.— xxiii. of the Delizie degli 
 Eruditi Toscani, vol. xx. p. 14. 
 
 VOL. I. ** 
 
 A.E. 
 
 1293. 
 
226 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. they had been sedulously at work to inflame the popular 
 ■ mind against him. There happened a quarrel between two 
 nobles, of whom our old Campaldino acquaintance, Corso 
 Donati, was one. Blood was shed ; the matter came be- 
 fore the Podesta, who without any intention to act unjustly, 
 as it would seem, but purposely deceived by the judge to 
 whom the management of the case had been entrusted, 
 decided, contrary to the evidence and to the justice of the 
 case, in favour of Messer Corso, who was a specially un- 
 popular man in the city. A popular insurrection was the 
 result, in which the Podestk and his wife with difficulty 
 escaped with their lives, and much violence was committed. 
 While the tumult was at its height, Giano, who happened 
 to be at the Palazzo with the Priori, thinking that his 
 influence would suffice to quiet the rioters, went out 
 among them to save the life of the Podesta, whom they 
 were bent on murdering. So far, however, was he from 
 having any influence over them, that he was obliged to 
 return precipitately to the shelter of the palace to save his 
 own life. And the next day the popular feeling, secretly 
 stimulated by the nobles, ran so strongly against him, that 
 he thought it prudent to leave the city. And no sooner 
 was his back turned, than, in obedience to the intrigues of 
 the nobles and the clamour of the " popolani grassi," he 
 was formally exiled ; and the great reformer sought an 
 asylum in Prance, where he eventually died.* 
 
 One of the facts that generally seem most surprising to 
 a modern reader of the histories of the mediseval Italian 
 Commonwealths, is the contemporaneous existence of 
 political disturbance and great social prosperity. After 
 
 * Dino Compagni, book i. p. 15. Ammirato represents these events differ- 
 ently. According to him the M minuto popolo" was in favour of Giano ; but 
 I have followed the contemporary writer's version of the story. Villani, 
 book viii. chap, viii., may be compared; and Coppo Stefani, book iii. 
 rub. cciv. 
 
1293. 
 
 SOCIAL CIRCUMSTANCES. 227 
 
 reading the story of years, the main events of which seem ^^^i 
 to have been vrarfare and violence of all sorts in the streets, 
 the internecine hostilities and proscriptions of civic factions, 
 and the destruction of life and property, he is astonished 
 to find the same period described as one in which the city 
 was prosperous and happy, art and literature flourished 
 and wealth increased. To our notions the two statements 
 seem incompatible. And as the phenomenon is often met 
 with, we are driven to the consideration of certain circum- 
 stances of general diGFerence between those ages and our 
 . own, to find a theory on which such statements may 
 become intelligible. And the first and most widely in- 
 fluential of those circumstances will be found, I think, in 
 the incalculably increased rapidity and continuity of com- 
 munication between country and country, city and city, 
 class and class, and man and man, which characterizes 
 modern society. The first consequence of this is a sensi- 
 tiveness throughout the whole of human society to aU that 
 affects any part of it. This sensitiveness has increased in 
 regular proportion to the increase in communication 
 between individuals and bodies of mankind, until in our 
 days it has come to pass that a popular riot at Naples 
 shall cause fears of consequences and loss of cash on the 
 exchange of London ; and, as Carlyle well says somewhere, 
 that no Indian can quarrel with his squaw on Lake 
 Winipeg without affecting all Europe by the tendency 
 of that event to raise the price of furs. This is the per- 
 fection of that sensitiveness resulting from the perfection 
 of intercommunication. In the phenomena of the mediaeval 
 societies we have the results of the opposite extreme* con- 
 dition. It is difficult to us to realise an idea of the 
 distance, and the consequences of distance, which separated 
 not only city from city, and street from street, but class 
 
 * Not absolutely of the extreme condition, for this -would hare to be sought 
 in the phenomena of the lowest form, of aavage life. 
 
 Q 2 
 
A.D. 
 
 1293. 
 
 228 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 from class, and interest from interest. And this separation 
 made it possible for different conditions of things to exist 
 side by side in the same city to a degree incomprehensible 
 to our notions. The highly organized fabric of our society 
 and our commerce is more easily injured than were the 
 simpler and ruder organizations of the ages in question. 
 A worm may be cut in half and continue to live not much 
 the worse for the accident ; whereas a much lesser injury 
 suffices to kill a man. Panic is a modern malady to which 
 modern commerce is subject, in consequence of the habit 
 of experienced calculation of probable consequences result- , 
 ing from universal intercommunication. The thirteenth- 
 century merchants of Plorence knew little of panics. If 
 a noble was beggared, he was certainly lost as a customer 
 for cloth. But that simple loss was the extent of the 
 mischief. No general paralysis of trade was occasioned ; 
 and while fighting and the destruction of houses was going 
 on in one street, the ordinary business of life was being 
 transacted as usual in the next. 
 
 A second difference exercising a similar influence, was 
 the greater boldness, as well as the less sensitiveness, of 
 the mediseval commerce. It was not only unaffected by 
 risks and dangers which it could neither see nor under- 
 stand, but it was more audacious in braving those which it 
 did see. It was accustomed to exist and transact its 
 business amid the din of arms, and the chances of violence. 
 And it could afford to brave the risks arising from such a 
 state of things, because its profits were large. All mediaeval 
 commerce, including that of money and banking, was based 
 on a system of enormous profits and enormous risks. And 
 besides this, the wealth of Florence at this period was 
 mainly derived from its extensive foreign trade in woollen 
 cloth ; a commerce which, under the simple conditions of 
 the commercial transactions of that time, would be little 
 interfered with by merely local disturbances at home, 
 
A.B. 
 
 ART AND LITERATURE. 229 
 
 It is necessary to allow much weight to such and such- 
 like considerations, if we would comprehend the statements 1^293 
 of the historians as to the prosperity of Florence during 
 these closing years of the thirteenth century. Their testi- 
 mony, however, is decided and consentient. " Never had 
 the city found itself," says Ammirato,* " in a more pro- 
 sperous and happy condition than that which it now enjoyed 
 in respect of population, of wealth, and of credit ; inas- 
 much as the number of citizens fit to bear arms exceeded 
 thirty thousand ; and that of those belonging to the 
 territory was above seventy thousand. Not only was 
 there no city in Tuscany which could give umbrage to 
 Florence ; but the power of Pisa having been greatly 
 diminished, and the name of the Ghibelline faction almost 
 extinguished, that republic, as well as all the other com- 
 munes, had come to be obedient to Florence, either as 
 subjects or as friends. In consequence of the leisure re- 
 sulting from this tranquillity, literature was then in a very 
 flourishing condition ; so that that age produced many 
 men of high excellence; and art began to arise at the 
 same time, having been, as it were, dragged forth from 
 its lurking-place amid the dimmest darkness. The repu- 
 tation of the Florentine merchants, based on their deserved 
 character for industry and integrity, stood exceedingly 
 high, not only throughout Italy, but in every country of 
 the world. And the citizens, following the example of the 
 Commonwealth, were rivalling each other in the construc- 
 tion of magnificent buildings and palaces." 
 
 Machiavelli records the remarkable prosperity of that 
 time in very similar terms, adding, that " if that tran- 
 quillity had not been disturbed by new dissensions within 
 the walls, it could have had no cause to fear disturbance 
 from without. For the city was in such a position, that it 
 was not afraid either of the Imperial power, nor of its own 
 
 * Lib. iv. ad an. 1299. 
 
230 HISTOET OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.. I?, exiles ■ and was well able to hold its own against all the 
 ■^^^^" states of Italy by its own strength. That mischief, how- 
 ever, which no power from without could have accom- 
 plished, was worked by those within the gates." * 
 
 We have, moreover, if further evidence of the correct- 
 ness of those statements were needed, the incontrovertible 
 testimony of those great works in every department of 
 human effort, of which the first-cited historian speaks, and 
 which have formed the imperishable glory of Florence 
 in every succeeding age. 
 
 Then was planned and commenced that grandest of the 
 symbols of the mediaeval communal power and greatness, 
 the " Palazzo del Comune," which still, after five centuries 
 and a half, excites the admiration of the civilized world. 
 •Then were commenced the magnificent churches of Santa 
 Maria Novella, Santa Croce, and Santa Spirito. During 
 the same years the commune, despite the large sums voted 
 for these works, found the means to proceed with and 
 complete the extremely costly undertaking of the new 
 walls, which though decided on and commenced in 1285, 
 had never been carried on. A decree made in 1299 is 
 stiU extant, annulling the wills of those who bequeath 
 nothing in aid of this great national object. 
 
 Above all, it was during those same prolific years that 
 the citizens of Florence conceived the worthy ambition so 
 memorably expressed in the decree of the commune, which 
 orders the creation of that world-wonder the Cathedral of 
 Florence. " Santa Reparata," it was originally called, but 
 afterwards and to the present day "Santa Maria del Fiore." 
 After setting forth the desire of the Commonwealth that 
 the material works undertaken by it should correspond in 
 grandeur of design to the loftiness of its ambition, the 
 instrument directs " Arnolfo, master architect of our Com- 
 mune, to make a model or design for the renovation of 
 
 * MachiaveLi, Istorie Fiorent. book ii. ad an. 1295, 
 
PROGRESS OP LANGUAGE, 231 
 
 Santa Reparata, of such noble and extreme magnificence, a.b. 
 that the industry and skill of man shall be able to invent 
 nothing grander or more beautiful," since, the document 
 goes on to say, it had been decided in council, that no 
 plan should be accepted, " unless the conception was such 
 as to render the work worthy of an ambition, which had 
 become very great, inasmuch as it resulted from the com- 
 bined desires of a great number of citizens united in one 
 sole will."* 
 
 In the more recently revived sister art, Cimabue was 
 astonishing and delighting the eyes of his fellow-citizens 
 by an approach to correctness of design, and a brilliancy 
 of colour up to that time unknown and unimagined ; and 
 Giotto was already beginning to lead the age to demand a 
 yet higher excellence. 
 
 Literature was still more generally and more successfully 
 cultivated. Villani was writing his history, with a purity 
 of style and diction which, taken in conjunction with the 
 terser and less lucid, but still correct and very nervous 
 style of Dino Compagni, and some other prose writers, 
 who already preferred the use of the vulgar tongue to the 
 Latin, rapidly disappearing from the uses of common life, 
 goes far to show that the, century ranging from 1276 to 
 1375 may be more justly held to be the Augustan age of 
 Italian literature, than that more showy sixteenth century,, 
 which to the north of the Alps is very generally considered 
 such. Especially the text of those remarkable documents,, 
 which have been cited, the Ordini della Giustizia and the 
 statutes of the Arte di Calimara, show that the great poet 
 for all time, who was then writing his " Vita Nuova," and 
 building up his wondrous drama of the unseen world, 
 
 * Rioha, Notizie Storiohe delle Chiese Florentine. Firenze, 1757, vol. vl. 
 p 14 We learn from Coppo Stefani, that to meet the expense of the works 
 thus ordered, a poll tax of two soldi annually, and an income tax of twelve 
 thirds percent, were imposed, hook iii. ruhr. cev. Such was the Tuscan 
 financial phraseology. The impost was reckoned by ' ' thuds,' 
 
232 HISTORY OF. THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOKBNCE. 
 A.r. cannot claim so entirely as has been attributed to him the 
 
 1299 
 
 comparatively subaltern merit of being the forger and 
 fashioner of the sweet Tuscan speech. His friend, the 
 melancholy and solitude-loving Guido Cavalcanti, was 
 meditating verse as he walked lonely amid the clang of 
 arms and the confusion of party broils in the streets of 
 Florence. And it is a curious manifestation of the social 
 life of that day, and of the impossibility of taking standing 
 ground outside the fiery circle of its animosities and feuds, 
 or remaining aloof from the whirl of its passions, to find 
 this philosophising and morbidly- sensitive poet-natured 
 man irritated one day in the streets of Plorence into 
 suddenly riding full tilt at the throat of his enemy, Corso 
 Donati, the head of the faction opposed to his own. 
 
 Nevertheless that stormy time was a good and whole- 
 some time. However much opposed to the notions formed 
 from our own orderly, peace-loving habits, we cannot refuse 
 to accept the concurrent testimony of all the witnesses that 
 it was so. The fervid and exuberant vitality, that threw 
 off the plethora of its force in the boils and blains of civic 
 discord, produced also the better fruits of health, and an 
 intense activity of all the social forces. The troubled 
 current which allowed no life to stagnate, " curis acuens 
 mortalia cor da," was more favourable to genius and the 
 products of it, than the slothful ease of calmer times. 
 
 Nor does the prosperity of Florence, and the high posi- 
 tion which she had won for herself among the nations of 
 Europe at the close of the thirteenth and beginning of the 
 fourteenth century, after just two hundred years of inde- 
 pendent existence, rest only on the testimony of native 
 writers, or even on the more undeniable evidence of the 
 works in every kind which those turbulent burghers have 
 left behind them for the admiration and instruction of all 
 subsequent generations. The estimation in which Florence 
 and her citizens were held throughout contemporary 
 
FLORENTINE AMBASSADORS. 233 
 
 Europe is most curiously and strikingly shown by a very a.b. 
 remarkable fact which has been recorded by the pencil * ^^°°' 
 as well as the pen. 
 
 On the occasion of the Jubilee instituted for the first 
 time by Boniface VIII. in 1300, when all the princes of 
 Europe sent ambassadors to the Pope, no less than twelve 
 of those so sent were Florentines. The fact is so remark- 
 able that it is worth while to give their names and those 
 of the powers they represented. There were — 
 
 1. Messer Ugolino daVicchio, for the King of England. 
 
 2. M. Musciatto Eranzesi, for the King of France. 
 
 3. M. Ranieri Lanzeri, for the King of Bohemia. 
 
 4. M. Vermiglio Alfani, for the King of Germany. 
 
 5. M. Simone Rossi, for the ruler of Russia. 
 
 6. M. Bernardo Ernari, for Scala, lord of Verona. 
 
 7. M. Guiscardo dei Bastari, for the Khan of Tartary. 
 
 8. M. Manno degli Adimari, for the King of Naples. 
 
 9. M. Guido Tabanca, for the King of Sicily. 
 
 10. M. Lapo degli Uberti, for Pisa. 
 
 11. M. Cino di Diotisalvi, for the lord of Camerino. 
 
 12. M. Bencivenni Folchi, for the Grand Master of the 
 
 Knights of St. John. 
 Every one of these was a Florentine citizen ; and the 
 Florentine writers are justified in boasting that no similar 
 fact can be produced from the annals of any other nation 
 either before or since. Pope Boniface was greatly struck 
 by the fact ; and declared that it seemed to him that to 
 the four old elements of the world a fifth must now be 
 added, — the Florentines. f 
 
 * A picture of the incident in question exists in the Palazzo Strozzi, and 
 another by Ligozzi in the Palazzo Vecchio, an engraving from which forms 
 the frontispiece to the Ritratti d' TJomini Illuslri Toscani, four Vols. fol. 
 Firenze, 1766. 
 
 t See the " Ritratti " cited above, where the facts are given, with an in- 
 dication of the MS. which originally recorded them. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Feud of tlie BiancU e iVeri— Real motives of the quarrel— Origin of the 
 names Neri and Bianchi—Chieh of parties brought from Pistoia to 
 Florence— The Cerchi family— Vieri de' Cerchi— Constituent parts of 
 the BiancU party— Guelphism in Florence— Dante a member of the 
 Bianchi—CoT:s,o Douatir-Popolani grassi — Popolo minuto — Professions 
 of the Neri— Private enmity between Vieri de' Cerchi and Corso Donati 
 — Causes of jealousy — The two parties break out into open quarrel 
 Scene at a funeral— Scene in the Piazza Trinita— Outrage by Simone 
 Donati— Neri make application to the Pope to interfere in Florence- 
 Partisanship of Pope Boniface— His bankers, the Spini family— Nero 
 Camhi— Vieri de' Cerchi summoned to Eome— The Pope sends Cardinal 
 Acquasparta to Florence— Riot on the eve of St. John's-day — Chiefs of 
 both parties banished : Neri to Citta della Pieve : Bianchi to Sarzana — 
 Popular feeling strong against Cardinal Acquasparta — He leaves 
 Florence, pronouncing the interdict against the city — The Bianchi 
 return from Sarzana— Death of Guido Cavaloanti— Neri send again to 
 Pope Boniface — Dino Compagni — Dante goes on a mission to Rome — 
 Corso Donati also goes to Rome — They plead against each other before 
 the Pope— Boniface invites Charles of Valois into Italy— He arrives 
 near Rome, in September, 1301. 
 
 So great was tlie prosperity, power, and reputation of the 
 Commonwealth, that, as MachiaveUi has told us, no danger 
 could have threatened it, save from within. But internal 
 discord had been a chronic evil in Morence. Prosperity- 
 had grown up by the side of, and in spite of it. And the 
 new party feuds, which mark the opening of the new 
 century, were not in themselves more dangerous to the 
 public weal than the old feuds had been, and would have 
 produced no deeper-seated mischief than they had done, 
 had they not led to the far more dangerous evil of inviting 
 the interference of foreign potentates. Already the greatest 
 
BIANCHI AND NERI. 235 
 
 dangers to the Commonwealtli had arisen from the same 
 source, and had been escaped rather by the good fortune 
 than the good conduct of the citizens. But the lesson 
 had not profited them, for party hatred was a stronger 
 passion than patriotism ; and though the fourteenth-cen- 
 tury Florentines loved Florence much, they hated their 
 fellow-citizens of an opposite faction more. 
 
 The fourteenth century opened in Florence on a new 
 scene of partisan strife, with new actors, new names, new 
 party cries, and a fresh distribution of the various classes 
 of society among the adverse factions. The curtain rises 
 on the new drama of " I BiancM e iNeri"- — the White 
 and the Black party. But inasmuch as habits of thought 
 and of tongue do not become suddenly obsolete, as party 
 watchwords and names remain long after the real things 
 first signified by them have vanished into the past, and as 
 mankind will not so live that their history can be written 
 with that consistency, entireness, and accuracy which would 
 make the writing of it more easy and satisfactory, we find 
 the old party designations still extant, and constantly in 
 their wrong places, associated with social elements with 
 which we should not have expected to see them mixed, 
 and thus producing a degree of confusion which renders 
 the period of the BiancM e Neri feud the most difficult to 
 understand of any part of Florentine history. 
 
 The true key to the right conception of it will, however, 
 be found in remembering that the real quarrel is from 
 century to century the same, whatever may be the names 
 attached to the leading combatants. As usual we are told 
 that this new Bianchi and Neri feud arose from one, or 
 from one or two small incidents, which are carefully re- 
 corded by historians from age to age. And doubtless 
 these things happened, and gave rise to the names of the 
 factions said to have arisen from them. But whether the 
 rallying cry in vogue be Guelph and Ghibelline, or Bianchi 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1300. 
 
236 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. and Neri, the real gist of the contest is between the 
 '^^'"^" encroachment of the popular element and the. attempted 
 repression of it by the classes above it. Not that the 
 Bianchi and the Neri partisans cut each other's throats 
 because one was a poor man and wanted to rise, and the 
 other a rich man and wanted to keep him down. Por 
 men hate each other more bitterly for words and names 
 than for things. The Neri hated the Bianchi because they 
 were Bianchi ; and vice versa. But at bottom the real 
 ground of contest, the real interests which caused a per- 
 sonal quarrel between two branches of a powerful family 
 to be adopted by the masses of the body politic, the 
 sympathies, opinions, and feelings, which led one man to 
 be a Bianco, and another a Nero, turned, in truth, upon 
 the great social question which has been stated. 
 
 The original feud between the Bianchi and Neri, which 
 gave its name to the great social contest in Florence, was 
 imported into that city from Pistoia. Among all the tur- 
 bulent, violent, and bloodstained municipal communities 
 of mediaeval Italy, Pistoia had the reputation of being the 
 most turbulent, the most violent, and the most blood- 
 stained. Por some time back the most prominent, 
 wealthy, and powerful family in that faction-torn little city 
 had been that of the Cancellieri, which, on the occasion of 
 a family quarrel, and, as Villani says, "from over-fatness 
 and inspiration of the devil," had become divided into two 
 great septs, sprung one from the first, and the other from 
 the second wife of the same common ancestor. And as it 
 chanced that one of these ladies had been called Bianca 
 her descendants took that distinctive appellation, and the 
 other branch of the family called themselves by the name 
 most naturally opposed to it. Every offence committed by 
 any member of either branch against one of the other gave 
 rise to a retaliation of increased gravity, to be followed in 
 due course by a yet more violent revenge ; till at last the 
 
CANCELLIEEI BROUGHT TO FLORENCE. 237 
 
 city became a mere fighting-ground for the lawless bravoes 
 of these noble ruffians, and civil life became well-nigh im- 
 possible there. Under these circumstances, Florence, in 
 the year 1300, with the consent of the Commune of 
 Pistoia took into its own hands the government of the 
 city ; and with a view of putting an end to the strife, com- 
 manded the chiefs of either faction to come and live in 
 Florence.* 
 
 A more unwise and improvident step could hardly have 
 been devised. The great and singularly numerous f family 
 of the Cancellieri had intermarried with Florentines, and 
 had numerous friendships and aUiances in Florence. And, 
 as if to make the result which ensued still more inevitable, 
 the Cancellieri Bianchi were consigned to the hospitality of 
 their friends and connections the Cerchi, and the Neri to 
 that of their relatives the Frescobaldi. The consequence 
 that of course immediately followed was that, instead of 
 civil war being extinguished in Pistoia, Florence was in- 
 oculated with the virus, which with wonderful rapidity 
 spread itself through the entire body of a social system so 
 thoroughly disposed to receive it. 
 
 There was probably no period during the centuries 
 under consideration at which Florence would not have 
 been perfectly ready to divide itself and take sides in so 
 pretty a quarrel as that now presented to its notice. But 
 the moment in question seems to have been specially well 
 chosen for setting the whole city in a sudden blaze of civil 
 war. 
 
 There were then in Florence two heads of great families, 
 
 * Villani, book viii. chap, xxxviii. ; Coppo Stefani, book iv, rubr. coxvii. ; 
 Machiavelli, book ii. ad an. 1300 ; Ammirato, book iv. ad an. Gonf. 44. 
 Henceforward citations from Ammirato are made to tbe Gonfaloiiieri, who 
 are -noted in numeric order from the establishment of that office in the 
 margin of the best editions. 
 
 t There were at that time one hundred and seven men belonging to the 
 family, Coppo Stefani, he. cit. 
 
 A.V. 
 
 1300. 
 
238 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.p. who by every circumstance of position, personal character, 
 and connections seemed cut out for enemies and leaders of 
 opposite factions. We have met with them both before, 
 fighting on the same side on the field of Campaldino 
 One of these was Vieri de' Cerchi, who, on that occasion 
 led the band of "feditori," and the other Corso Donati, 
 who commanded the reserve, and who as, at that time 
 Podesta of Pistoia, had already had an opportunity of 
 acquiring a bias on one or the other side of the Cancellieri 
 quarrels. The Cerchi were merchants and "popolani;' 
 the Donati nobles. 
 
 Vieri, the head of the Cerchi family, was a trader to the 
 back-bone ; cautious, narrowly prudent, unambitious, un- 
 polished in .his manners, averse from putting himself in a 
 position of risk and responsibility. Not that he was 
 physically a coward. His conduct at Campaldino is 
 abundantly sufficient testimony to the reverse. But of 
 moral cowardice it seems impossible to acquit him. His 
 race were like him. They were all popular in Florence, 
 both with high and low. Extremely wealthy, they were 
 liberal, kind to all, ready to do a service ; frank, open- 
 hearted, open-handed, easy men; all the race of them 
 remarkably handsome, though heavy and lymphatic in 
 temperament. But they weye not gentlemen. They were, 
 says Villani, essentially nouveaux riches ; and the unpo- 
 lished awkwardness of their manners is more than once 
 alluded to both by him and by Dino Compagni. Messer 
 Vieri himself was specially noted as deficient in the gentle- 
 man's accompHshment of an easy and graceful delivery. 
 Though by no means wanting in sense, he was no 
 speaker.* 
 
 Notwithstanding these disadvantages, however, their 
 great wealth, real worth, good repute, numerous aUiances 
 
 * Villani, book viii. chap, xxxix, ; Dino Compagni, book i. p. 20, td. 
 Fioren. 
 
NEW DIVISION OF PARTIES. 239 
 
 with families of high standing, and many friends, caused ^•^• 
 them to be one of the leading families of Horence, and 
 in so causing them, placed them — ^in the difficult times 
 which were coming upon the city — in an essentially false 
 position. 
 
 The account which is given by the historians of the 
 various elements which made up the body of the Cerchi 
 adherents, and placed Messer Vieri in the position of chief 
 of the Bianchi faction, will show how entirely the landmark 
 of the old parties had been removed, and the previous 
 divisions of society broken up. 
 
 In the first place, the remnant of the old Ghibellines 
 were all among the Cerchi adherents, — the proud old 
 Tory gentlemen followers of the upstart rich citizen ! 
 Times were changed with these reduced and diminished 
 descendants of the haughty old races, so often decimated, 
 exiled, and proscribed. They had been long swimming 
 hard against the current of the times ; and the inevitable 
 result was that most of them had ended by sinking beneath 
 the waters, and the rest had been thrown on the shore 
 exhausted, and incapable of further exertion. In fact 
 GhibeUinism was extinct in Florence. The name re- 
 mained, and was occasionally put to use by the new 
 parties in their struggles; but the thing had ceased to 
 exist. The old word will meet the reader of the Floren- 
 tine historians for many a year yet. For names in such 
 cases always long outlive the things they were first used to 
 designate; and such names, as the experience of every 
 political community shows, are apt to be unduly evoked 
 from the graves in which they ought to he, and made to 
 walk the earth like other ghosts, as bugbears for the 
 frightening of those who do not know the nothingness of 
 them. 
 
 All the pohtical world in Florence was now Guelph, as 
 a matter of course, — as all the English world was Hano- 
 
240 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. verian in the latter half of the last century. They did not 
 talk or think much about being Guelphs, except when 
 some political capital was to be made by raising the cry 
 of Ghibellinism against an opponent. They talked and 
 thought more of newer and more really living party 
 divisions. And the remnant of the representatives of the 
 old Ghibelline families attached themselves to the Guelph 
 Bianchi, under Vieri de' Cerchi, rather than to the 
 equally Guelph Neri under Corso Donati, partly because 
 the Cerchi had never been noted as persecutors of the 
 fallen party in the old times ; partly because these high- 
 born gentlemen were almost all very poor, and Messer 
 Vieri had a very large purse and a liberal hand ; partly 
 because his kindly, though under-bred manners and cha- 
 racter, and his frank avowed bourgeoisie grated less 
 harshly against the susceptibilities of their pride, than the 
 arrogant haughtiness of their fellow noble and hereditary 
 political foe, Donati. 
 
 In the next place, the masses of the populace, the 
 " popolo minuto," were all with the Cerchi and the White 
 party ; and this, because Messer Vieri and his family had 
 been strongly opposed to the ingratitude with which Giano 
 della Bella had been treated, and to his exile. And the 
 "popolo minutO'" had long since discovered how great a 
 mistake they had made in allowing themselves to be 
 seduced into becoming the momentary accomplices in that 
 injustice. 
 
 Lastly, many powerful families and men of mark ranged 
 themselves on the "White" side, from purely personal 
 reasons. Berto Frescobaldi, though the rest of the family 
 were all on the other side, and were the hosts of the 
 Cancellieri Neri, when they arrived in Florence, was among 
 the adherents of Messer Vieri, because he was heavily in 
 debt to him. Messer Goccia Adimari, because he had 
 quarrelled with his own family ; others, because they were 
 
DANTE AS A PARTY POLITICIAN. 241 
 
 connected with the Cerchi in commerce; and many a.d. 
 others for various such motives swelled the faction of the ^^°°- 
 Bianchi.* 
 
 Besides all these classes of adherents, which together 
 assured to the Bianchi the decided preponderance in the 
 city, one man may be nartied,— of course, without 
 intending to exclude all others from the same category ; — 
 who belonged to that party, passionately and with intense 
 exclusiveness (for that was the nature of the man), from 
 motives of large political expediency and far-sighted 
 patriotism. . This was Dante Alighieri. 
 
 Such was the party of the Bianchi. And the reader 
 will observe, that httle as it was homogeneous, and inca- 
 pable as were the great majority of its members and its 
 leaders of appreciating justly their position, or so shaping 
 the destinies of the country as to forward it on a path of 
 durable prosperity ; yet this party, including the progres- 
 sive elements of society, was more in accordance with the 
 spirit of the time than its adversary ; and would have 
 inherited the future, if there had been sufficient wisdom 
 in its ranks to render possible any future worthy of the 
 inheritance of a free people. 
 
 In strong contrast to the constitution of this party was 
 that of the Neri. Its leader was Messer Corso Donati, a 
 noble of Guelphic race, who is thus described by Dino 
 Compagni ; — an historian, it is fair to add, who was a 
 violent partisan of the opposite faction :--- 
 
 " He was a cavalier," says Dino,f " much resembling 
 Catiline the Roman, but more cruel than he. He was of 
 noble race, handsome in person, a good speaker, of elegant 
 manners, and of a subtle intelUgence, allied to a heart 
 always intent on evil. To such ends he got together a 
 numerous band of hirelings, and went with a great 
 
 * Dino Compagni, book i. p. 22. t Book ii. p. 43. 
 
 VOL. I. n 
 
242 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. following. He committed many deeds of arson and 
 ^^"^' robbery in the city, and did much mischief to the Cerchi 
 and their friends. In this way he amassed considerable 
 sums, and became very powerful. Such was Messer Corso 
 Donati, who from his arrogance was nicknamed the Baron; 
 so that as he rode through the city, the people would cry, 
 ' Hurrah for the Baron ! ' He behaved as if the city were 
 his own. Vainglory was his pole-star, and led him to 
 engage in many great affairs." 
 
 This is the account of an enemy. But'there is sufficient 
 evidence to assure us, that the chief of the Neri was an 
 extremely haughty overbearing man, tyrannical in his 
 disposition, lawless in his conduct, and corruptly self- 
 seeking in his politics. Those who adhered to him and 
 mainly composed the Neri party were the class, largely 
 increased during the late years of material and commercial 
 prosperity, of the "popolani grassi," — the rich citizen 
 families ; men, who having belonged to the progressive 
 party in the old noble-ridden days, before they became 
 "grassi," were now of opinion that progress had gone far 
 enough, — that things were well as they were, and that 
 there was no knowing what the world would come to, if 
 all those thin outside ones, the " popolo minuio," wanted 
 to become fat also. 
 
 Most of the nobles of the old Guelph families, the men 
 who had been the quickest among their class to see which 
 way the wind was blowing, had two, three, or more 
 generations ago attached themselves to the popular party, 
 and had formed intimacies and intermarriages with the 
 uppermost strata of the fat commonalty. The Neri, in 
 short, were essentially a Whig party, with oligarchical 
 feelings, and a tendency to monopolize and secure the good 
 things of place and power to the members of a restricted 
 number of powerful families. They made loud professions 
 of being pure old Whigs — only using, of course, the word 
 
THE CERCHI AND DONATI. 243 
 
 Guelphs in the place of the English party name, — and a-'d- 
 strove to make capital of the element of effete Ghibellinism, ^^°°" 
 which was to be found in the ranks of the opposite party. 
 Whenever an attempt was to be made to excite the masses 
 against their opponents, a cry of " Ghibellinism ! " was 
 raised. And it was true that, though Ghibellinism was 
 dead in Florence, it was not so entirely extinct in some 
 of the other municipalities of Tuscany. The favourite 
 accusation, therefore, against the Bianchi was, that they 
 were entering into relations with the Ghibellines of foreign 
 States, with the view to the resuscitation of the party in 
 Florence. There is, however, no evidence whatever to be 
 found of the truth of these charges ; and Dino Compagni 
 expressly declares that they were wholly destitute of 
 foundation. 
 
 It Mvill be seen at once from this account of the com- 
 ponent elements of the two parties that the original Pistoia 
 quarrels of the two branches of the Cancellieri had nothing 
 whatever to do with the principles of the great feud which 
 divided Florence, and exercised an influence on the politics 
 of every part of Italy, beyond giving to the two factions 
 their names ; and that the adoption of these by either side 
 was settled by the mere accident of the one branch of the 
 family having been connected by marriage with the Cerchi, 
 and the other by friendship with the Frescobaldi. 
 
 There were, however, motives of private enmity between 
 the Cerchi and the Donati; but these were rather con- 
 sequences than causes of the great party feud. All 
 Florence did not range itself suddenly into two hostile 
 camps from sympathy with the petty bickerings of two 
 men. The real motives to dissension are to be seen in the 
 composition of the parties. Circumstances made those 
 two individuals the chieftains of their respective factions ; 
 and that position led to the acts of hostility and offence 
 which some writers put forward as the causes of the 
 
 S 2 
 
A.B. 
 
 1300. 
 
 244 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF F.LORENCE. 
 
 all-absorbing political divisions wbicli fill the history of the 
 ensuing years. 
 
 Several stories of these mutual jealousies and wrongs and 
 retaliations have been recorded by the chroniclers of the 
 period, as if they vi^ere so many causes of the events that 
 followed. But in truth, if worth preserving, it is only as 
 illustrations of the life of that time. 
 
 They were near neighbours unfortunately, these two 
 curiously contrasted partisan chieftains. The Cerchi had 
 bought a fine old palace that had belonged to the great 
 Ghibelline family of the Guidi, close to the less magnificent 
 dwelling of the Donati, who were far from wealthy ; and 
 there the rich upstart family spent the large profits of their 
 prosperous trade in building and improving, and keeping 
 many horses and servants, and living in great style. They 
 had a taste for splendour too in their personal habiliments, 
 those young Cerchi, with their handsome, large-limbed, 
 gawky bodies, good-natured plebeian faces, and awkward 
 bearing. And all these things were gall and wormwood to 
 the poor proud nobles, who felt themselves extinguished by 
 all this splendour close by the side of them. Then again, 
 that no element of hatred might be wanting between the 
 two families, there was a distant connection by marriage 
 between them. For needy Messer Corso, after the death 
 of his first wife, had married, against the will of all her 
 family, an heiress who was a connection of the Cerchi 
 family. And then there was litigation and an attempt to 
 keep the lady's fortune from him, which, it may be sup- 
 posed, did not improve "the Baron's" temper, though he 
 succeeded in possessing himself of the property by the 
 strong hand. "The Baron" had a caustic tongue too: 
 and had ever some new insulting jest at the expense of his 
 rich neighbour, whose habits and manners offered but too 
 frequent occasions for attacks. And the jesters and buf- 
 foons who frequented great folks' houses were sure to carry 
 
ENMITY BETWEEN CIjRCHI AND DONATI. 245 
 
 to Palazzo Cerclii a full, and often exaggerated, report of a.b. 
 all that was said in such sort at Palazzo Donati. " The 
 Baron" nicknamed also the respectable but unrhetorical 
 Messer Vieri. He rarely spoke of him save as "the 
 donkey of the ward ! " And when the worthy man spoke 
 in the council, would ask if the ward donkey had brayed 
 that day ? 
 
 . Florentine party hatred, however, was not wont in those 
 days to exhale itself in such little amenities as these ; and 
 as the animosity between the families became from day to 
 day more exasperated, the manifestations of it soon began 
 to assume a darker dye. Upon one occasion it happened 
 that two young men of the Cerchi, having been imprisoned 
 by the Podesta for some trifling matter, an infamous crime, 
 which resulted in the death, by poison of some other 
 persons, as well as of the two young Cerchi, was strongly 
 suspected to be the work of Messer Corso Donati. 
 
 Things soon came to such a pitch that it was almost im- 
 possible for the members of the two parties to meet in any 
 way in the city without riot and fighting as the immediate 
 result. Upon one occasion a very large number of the 
 citizens were assembled at the funeral of a lady of the 
 Prescobaldi family ; both the Cerchi and the Donati were 
 there in considerable numbers. Now the usage at similar 
 assemblies was, as Dino Compagni tells us,* that those 
 who were noble should sit on benches, while those who 
 were not so sat on reed mats on the ground. And it so 
 chanced that the two rival famihes were placed exactly 
 opposite to each other,— the Donati in all the dignity of 
 their privileged seats, and the plebeian Cerchi on the 
 ground in front of them. The position was abeady sufii- 
 ciently tempting to the insolence of the one party and 
 irritating to the pride of the other. No doubt looks and 
 
 * Book i, p. 19. 
 
246 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE, 
 
 A.D. gestures eloquent of insult and defiance passed between 
 them ; and when, presently, one of the Cerchi rose from 
 his seat on the ground — perhaps only, as the Bianco 
 historian suggests, for the purpose of arranging the folds of 
 his dress under him as he sate, — the Donati, imagining, or 
 pretending to imagine, that violence was intended, imme- 
 diately clapped their hands to their swords, and rose to 
 their feet also. The movement was more than enough to 
 make the smouldering passions burst into flame. It could 
 hardly be expected that the Cerchi would remain sitting on 
 the ground at the feet of their enemies standing over them 
 with their swords in their hands. They also sprung to 
 their feet, and the two parties rushed on each other, in the 
 church, while the corpse on its low bier in front of the 
 altar was yet awaiting the rites of sepulture. The solem- 
 nity of the place and the occasion caused the assembly to 
 regard the unseemly struggle with more of disapprobation 
 than such matters ordinarily excited ; and a number of 
 citizens rushed between the rioters and separated them. 
 The parties returned to their several dwellings, leaving the 
 dead to the empty church and the priests, either faction 
 accompanied by a large number of the citizens. When the 
 Cerchi and their friends reached the palace of that family, a 
 powerful band of the younger men would have at once 
 organised an attack upon the neighbouring house of the 
 Donati ; but the design was overruled by the greater pru- 
 dence and moderation of old Messer Vieri. 
 
 Another affair of the same sort occurred at the beginning 
 of May in that same year,* and ended worse. The early 
 days of May were, ever since the great victory of Campal- 
 dino, always devoted to festivities and amusements, in the 
 manner described in a previous Chapter. It was at night 
 in the Piazza di Santa Trinita on the 1st of May. A party 
 
 *.1300. 
 
STEEET BRAWLS. 247 
 
 of ladies were dancing* on the Piazza, and a crowd of 
 cavaliers and citizens were standing around and looking at 
 them. Among the lookers on were a party of the Cerchi 
 young men and their friends on horseback ; when, as ill- 
 luck would have it, a number of the Donati, who had been 
 supping together, and had after supper mounted their 
 horses to ride through the city and see what fun was going 
 on, came up, and began pressing their horses forwards to 
 get a sight of the ladies in the circle. In doing this they 
 pushed against some of the Cerchi party. Then both sides 
 began reining and spurring their horses so as to hustle the 
 others. Of course but one result could follow. Out came 
 the swords; the frightened women ran off, leaving their 
 al fresco ball-room to become a battle-field, and a fierce 
 fight ensued, in which one of the Cerchi had his nose cut 
 off" by the stroke of a sword. Had he been killed, the fact 
 would have contributed less potently to exacerbate the hate 
 and passionate desire for revenge, which such a permanent 
 memento of wrong and outrage was calculated to keep 
 alive, f 
 
 Some months later, on the eve of Christmas-day in the 
 same year, a large crowd of citizens were listening to a 
 friar preaching on the Piazza in front of the church of 
 Santa Croce ; and Simone, son of Messer Corso Donati,. 
 was there piously listening to the exhortations adapted to^ 
 that celebration of " peace on earth and good-will among, 
 men," when Messer Niccola de' Cerchi came riding by on 
 his way to a viUa a few miles from the city. It does not. 
 appear that the latter provoked, or even took any notice of 
 
 * It may be observed that both Villani and Dino Coinpagni speak of 
 "ladies dancing;" and say no word of men dancing with them. And 
 when in another place Villani speaks of couples joining in such revels 
 together, he seems to imply that promenading through the streets in pairs, 
 to the sound of music perhaps, but not dancing, was the amusement in 
 hand. 
 
 t Yillani, book viii. chap, xzxix. j Dino Compagni, book i. p. 22. 
 
 A.B. 
 
 1300., 
 
248 HISTORY OP THE COMMOKWEALTH OF TLOKENCE. 
 
 A.n. the young Donati in any way. But the sight of one he 
 ^^°°" hated, off his guard and unprotected, was a temptation too 
 great to be withstood. So leaving the friar's sermon in 
 the midst he rode after Messer Niccola, came up with him 
 a little outside the city, and there murdered him. The 
 dying man, however, as he fell gave Messer Simone a stab 
 in the side with his dagger, from the effects of which the 
 aggressor died in the course of the next day, very much 
 regretted, says Villani, " for he was one of the most accom- 
 plished and virtuous* young men in the city, and the 
 hope and treasure of his father, Messer Corso." 
 
 Things in Florence being in the deplorable condition 
 indicated by such incidents as the above, which are merely 
 specimens of many others of like kind, the leaders of the 
 old Guelph party determined on the step of applying to the 
 Pope to mediate between the hostile factions and restore 
 peace to the city. Such a step would hardly under any 
 circumstances have been a wise one, involving, as it did, 
 a dangerous admission of the incapability of the Florentine 
 citizens to rule their own city. Nevertheless, looking to 
 the theory of the Papal office, a really impartial mediation 
 undertaken at the instance of both parties in the contest, 
 might have been useful at least for the nonce, and for 
 enabling the city to get over its immediate difficulties. 
 But this application to Boniface VIII., and that Pope's 
 acceptance of, and action on it, were, in no wise what he 
 and his friends in Florence would have wished them to 
 appear. The application to Rome was a mere party move, 
 by which the Neri hoped to wrest from the hands of their 
 opponents that preponderance in the city which the large- 
 ness of the Bianchi party, and the popular element in it 
 assured to them. And the part which the Pope was to 
 
 * Villani, book viii. chap, xlix., " il piii compiuto e virtudioso donzello 
 di Firenze." Virtudioso means "virtuous," not, as might perhaps be 
 imagined, "valorous." 
 
THE POPE'S BANKERS. 249 
 
 play in the matter had already been arranged behind the a.d. 
 scenes with his Holiness. ^^^^' 
 
 The Papal bias would naturally be in favour of the 
 party which specially put forward and stood upon its 
 Guelphism. But the Neri had, besides this advantage, 
 special means of approaching the papal ear, and influencing 
 the papal mind. 
 
 The Spini family, who were leading members of the 
 Neri oligarchy, were the Pope's bankers ; for already the 
 Plorentines had begun to be known, not only throughout 
 Italy, but beyond the Alps, as the principal money-dealers 
 and money-lenders of Europe. Florentine bankers of 
 subsequent generations found various later Popes terribly 
 given to overdrawing their accounts ; and the probability 
 is, that the Spini books showed a permanent balance 
 against their infallible customer. At all events their 
 influence with his Holiness was great ; and was exercised 
 chiefly through the instrumentality of a humble agent, a 
 mere clerk in the office of that member of the flrm who 
 lived at Rome, and managed that branch of the business 
 of the house. This clerk — Nero Cambi — must have been 
 a remarkable man. The son of a Florentine silver refiner, 
 put into the great Spini house, and by them sent to Rome 
 as clerk in their counting-house there,* he, by sheer force 
 of inteUect, unaided even by pleasing address, for he was 
 harsh and disagreeable in his manners, had acquired such 
 an influence over the mind of the Pope, as to have led him 
 to become strongly hostile to the party of the Bianchi in 
 Florence. 
 
 WheUj accordingly, the application which has been 
 mentioned, and which was probably aU previously arranged 
 and agreed upon before hand, was made to Pope Boniface, 
 he began by summoning Messer Vieri to Rome, and 
 
 * Dino Compagni, book i. p. 20. 
 
250 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEEBTGE, 
 
 A.D. exhorting him to reconcile himself with his enemies. The 
 ^^^^' blunt old merchant, whose iincourtliness on the' occasion is 
 remarked on with disapprobation by all the historians, 
 answered that he wished to have no enmities, and had 
 therefore need of no reconciliations. At which reply his 
 Holiness was much offended, and certainly no better 
 inclined to the party of the Bianchi than he had been. 
 
 It was then determined that the Pope should send an 
 envoy to Florence, to act as mediator between the parties. 
 Villani says that the Neri sent to the Pope begging him to 
 interfere. Dino Compagni represents the holy father as 
 induced to do so by Messer Nero Cambi, the banker's 
 clerk. In any case it. is pretty clear that the measure was 
 decided on in concert by the Pope and the party of the 
 Neri. The man chosen for the embassy was the Cardinal 
 Matteo d' Acquasparta, who accordingly arrived in Florence 
 in the June of that same year, 1300, on the 15th of which 
 month Dante entered office as one of the Priori. 
 
 Florence was, during those months, in a condition to 
 make the task of ruling the city in no small degree an 
 arduous and anxious one. And the Priori of those summer 
 months, of whom Dante was one, were not long in office 
 before they were called on to act, for the preservation of 
 the city from anarchy, with an energy and boldness of 
 patriotism that was too rarely manifested by the magis- 
 tracy of the Commonwealth. On the eve of St. John's 
 day, the representative bodies of the guilds, led by their 
 Consuls, went in procession, according to yearly custom, 
 to celebrate a solemn service in the church of the patron 
 saint. It was a great day in Florence ; and all the civic 
 pomp of the municipal government was put in requisition 
 to solemnise the occasion. All the citizens were in the 
 streets to witness the show ; the procession was winding 
 its way with its huge wax lights, its banners, and its 
 ecclesiastical and civic ceremonial, when suddenly an armed 
 
CHIEFS OF BOTH PARTIES BANISHED. 251 
 
 party of nobles of the faction of the Neri fell upon them, a.b. 
 throwing all into confusion, beating the magistrates of the ^^°''' 
 guilds, and crying out, " We are the men who conquered 
 at Campaldino ! and are such as you to take from us the 
 honours and dignities of the city ? " 
 
 It was impossible to pass over such an outrage as this, 
 if any semblance of law and order was to be preserved in 
 the city. And yet the Signory was reluctant to exasperate 
 animosities, and to incur even the appearance of partiality 
 by an act of severity against their political opponents. 
 The measure adopted in this difficulty by the government, 
 affords curious proof how readily the most enlightened and 
 patriotic statesmen of the time sacrificed legality to expe- 
 diency ; how easily they lost sight of principles which the 
 more matured experience of mankind has recognised as 
 fundamental and indispensable ; and how little they were 
 aware that, in doing so, they were sapping the foundations 
 of liberty and making self-government impossible. 
 
 The Neri were guilty. The Signory, composed of men 
 of the opposite party, wished honestly and patriotically to 
 be impartial ; they feared to be just, lest they should draw 
 upon themselves accusations of injustice; and so they 
 determined on punishing both parties alike. The historian 
 Dino Compagni was one of several citizens of note whom 
 the Signory, of which Dante was one, called to assist them 
 with their advice, when this measure was determined on ; 
 "and it was decided," he writes, "to banish * a certain 
 number of either party," , whom he proceeds to name. 
 Corso Donati, the chief of the Neri, appears on the list ; 
 but not so Vieri de' Cerchi, the corresponding man among 
 the Bianchi. The former was a man likely enough to have 
 been personally engaged in the outrage which had been 
 committed. But it was out of the question to suppose 
 
 * For a time, is to be understood, not for life. 
 
252 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.-n. that the cautious and respectable old merchant Messer 
 °" Vieri could have anything to do with such proceedings. 
 Citta delle Pievi, a small town just beyond the modern 
 frontier of Tuscany, in the direction of Rome, was named 
 as the place of exile for the Neri ; and Sarzana, also just 
 beyond the recent frontier of Tuscany in the opposite 
 direction, towards Genoa, as that assigned to the Bianchi. 
 
 The latter, who were unjustly condemned, obeyed at 
 once, and left the city. The Neri resisted for awhile, but 
 eventually yielded before the energetic attitude of the 
 government. Had they not done so, says Dine Com- 
 pagni ; had they, on the contrary, openly rebelled at that 
 moment, they would assuredly have succeeded in over- 
 throwing the government, and producing a revolution 
 which would have thrown the city entirely into their hands. 
 For an arrangement had been made, with the connivance 
 of the Cardinal Acquasparta, to bring up a strong body of 
 Lucchese, and by their assistance overpower the authori- 
 ties. Fortunately they hesitated till the moment at which 
 the blow might have been successfully struck was passed. 
 For the Signory, having discovered what was intended, took 
 prompt and energetic measures to prevent the march of 
 any such band from Lucca to Florence. 
 
 But, as Dino remarks,* this incident completely tore the 
 mask from the face of the Cardinal : and if there were anv 
 who before doubted as to the real nature of his errand in 
 Florence, they could now doubt no longer. Professing to 
 come in the character of peace-maker, and the impartial 
 friend of both parties, he was really sent there as an 
 accomplice and fellow-conspirator of the Neri, with the 
 perfectly understood and pre-arranged purpose of revo- 
 lutionizing the city in their favour. 
 
 The popular feeling on this occasion was so high in the 
 
 ♦ Book i. p. 21, 
 
CARDINAL ACaUASPARTA. 253 
 
 city, that strong demonstrations of hostility to the treacherous a. d. 
 Cardinal took place ; and one foolish fellow committed the ^^'^°' 
 imprudence (says Dino) of shooting an arrow through the 
 window of the apartment in the Bishop's palace in which 
 Acquasparta was lodged. Of course his Eminence made a 
 huge outcry, said he was in danger of his life in Florence, 
 and went to lodge for greater safety in the palace of the 
 Mozzi, on the other side of the Arno. The Signory waited 
 on him there, with excuses and apologies for the affront 
 which had been offered him, and with a present of thirteen 
 hundred florins, of which they begged his acceptance, re- 
 gretting the smallness of the sum, and explaining to his 
 Eminence that it was not in their power to dispose of a 
 larger amount without making it appear in the public 
 accounts. " The Cardinal," says Dino, " looked very hard 
 at the money, but declined it." 
 
 Of course, after what had taken place, it was clear to 
 the Cardinal that he had no chance of inducing the 
 Signory to grant him those powers of regulating the 
 offices and honours of the Commonwealth, in the hope of 
 obtaining which he had come to Florence in the assumed 
 character of peacemaker. So he retm'ned in anger to 
 Rome, leaving the city under interdict. 
 
 The Bianchi who had been exiled to Sarzana were soon 
 allowed to return, in consequence of the deadly malaria 
 prevailing there.* Of course it would be said that this 
 was due to the favouritism of a government of their own 
 political colour. But the much-lamented death of Guido 
 Cavalcanti, who was among the exiles, and who returned 
 to Florence only to die of the malaria fever contracted at 
 his place of banishment, was a sufficient proof that the 
 Bianchi had endured at least their share of the evils of 
 
 * Sarzana is perfectly healthy now. The circumstance in the text men- 
 tioned by the historians, is one of many indications that the reign of malaria 
 in the Tuscan maremma has been greatly reatrioted in the course of ages. 
 
A.D. 
 
 1300. 
 
 25 1 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 exile, and that tHe motive assigned for their recall was no 
 mere excuse. 
 
 But those of the Neri who had remained in Florence 
 thought otherwise ; and being stimulated to action by the 
 return of their enemies, they called a secret party meeting 
 in the Convent of Santa Trinita, in which it was deter- 
 mined to send messengers to Pope Boniface, with a view 
 of inducing him to invite some powerful prince from 
 beyond the Alps, by whose assistance a revolution might 
 be brought about in Florence, with the effect of securing 
 for the Neri oligarchy the government of the city. No 
 blacker treason than this could it enter into the heart of a 
 Florentine to conceive. No baser bartering of his birth- 
 right of liberty for the miserable pottage-mess of place and 
 power under the rule of a foreign tyrant could the citizen 
 of a free Commonwealth be guilty of. No more short- 
 sighted suicidal folly could an Italian fall into. 
 
 Dino Compagni did not at first think that any such 
 treasonable resolution had been decided on at the meeting. 
 But the assembly in itself was in contravention of the 
 Ordini di Giustizia, and the more violent members of the 
 Bianchi party were clamorous that the Signory should 
 punish those who had been engaged in it. Messer Dino, 
 therefore, anxious above all things as a good citizen and a 
 patriot to heal the party feuds which were ruining the 
 Commonwealth, and to calm down the passions on either 
 side, took upon himself the office of mediator, and went to 
 and fro between the Signory and the conspirators, receiving 
 from the latter assurances that their meeting had been held 
 with no evil purpose whatever, and persuading the former 
 to abstain from taking any steps against them in the matter, 
 and, as he says of himself, giving both parties an abun- 
 dance of smooth words. But while he was thus engaged 
 in striving to make peace, circumstances were discovered 
 which conclusively proved the real nature and scope of the 
 
DANTE'S EMBASSY TO ROME. 255 
 
 meeting. And it is to be remarked that Villani, who a.d. 
 equally with Compagni was writing of what passed under ^^*'^- 
 his own observation, either never was the dupe of the pro- 
 fessions of innocence which deceived his fellow-historian, 
 or else speaks of what was subsequently known as if it 
 had never been doubted. Por he simply states, that at 
 the meeting in the convent of Santa Trinita, it was decided 
 to send messengers to the Pope, with the treasonable pro- 
 posals above described. 
 
 Great was the disturbance and anger in the city when 
 the truth of the matter was known; the Signory con- 
 demned the leaders of the Neri to heavy fines ; and the 
 attitude of the two parties towards each other became from 
 day to day more hostile. 
 
 The Signory also sent an embassy on their own behalf 
 to Pope Boniface, consisting of three citizens, of whom 
 Dante was one. Of the other two, one was a weak easily- 
 led man, who was of no use at all ; and the other a mere 
 creature of the Pope.* Boniface received them in a private 
 audience ; protested that his only wish and intention was 
 to pacify Florence, and assist in restoring her to tran- 
 quillity and prosperity; and bade two of the envoys 
 return home and assure their government that such and 
 no other were his intentions. The two who were thus 
 dismissed were those above characterised, and the third, 
 whom the Pope chose to retain at Rome, was Dante. 
 But it is very remarkable that Dino Compagni, neither in 
 speaking of the sending of the embassy, nor when he 
 relates the dismissal of the two, and retention of the third,! 
 by the Pope, mentions the name of Dante at all. 
 
 The messengers from the other party were received by 
 Boniface in a very different spirit. And Corso Donati, 
 "breaking his ban," which means illegally quitting the 
 
 * Misserini, Vita di Dante, cap. xviii. 
 t Dino Compagni, book ii. p. 30. 
 
256 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. place assigned to him as his residence during exile, went to 
 ^^^^- Rome himself, to back their representations and requests. 
 Considering the special relations between Pope Boniface 
 and the Neri, which were well known to the Signoria, and 
 the abundant proofs the government had already had of the 
 Pope's wish to favour them at the expense of the Bianchi, 
 it was injudicious to send the Neri into exile Rome-wards, 
 and the Bianchi in the opposite direction. Prudence 
 would have counselled an exactly opposite arrangement. 
 But during the whole of this difficult and thorny period, 
 and the troubles that followed, the Bianchi manifested 
 throughout all that lack of statesmanship, prudence, and 
 energy with which Dante so bitterly reproaches them. 
 
 In Romq. the cause of Florence was now being pleaded 
 at the holy feet of that Vicar of Heaven, the Pontiff, " who 
 crept into his sacred office by the arts of the fox, ruled 
 while he occupied it with the ferocity of a lion, and quitted 
 it by the death of a dog ; " and the opposing pleaders 
 were Corso Donati and Dante Alighieri; but the cause 
 was already prejudged. In vain the great man prostrated 
 himself at the feet of the Httle one. And such phrases 
 were not mere figures of speech in those days. Who can- 
 not picture to himself that scene; — the poet philosopher 
 in his Florentine " lucco," — the long graceful robe which 
 the picture of him has made familiar to our eyes — kneel- 
 ing before the Pontiff's footstool, and with upturned look, 
 while every feature of that wonderfully expressive and 
 strongly-marked face was working with intense anxiety 
 and passion, pleading for the right of his native Common- 
 wealth to manage its own affairs, and to be allowed to 
 work out unimpeded the great problem of self-govern- 
 ment ; urging on the dull ears of the worldling in St. 
 Peter's chair considerations of far-seeing prudence and 
 policy, and venturing, with words of burning eloquence, 
 to remind the Simoniacal pastor, who little heeded or com- 
 
DAKTE BEFORE POPE BONIFACE. 257 
 
 prehended such considerations, of the lofty theories of his a.d. 
 office, which should lead him to seek only the advent of ^^^^' 
 peace on earth and goodwill among men. 
 
 Boniface, with his hard worldly face, sardonic nose, 
 sensual mouth, double chin, and cold shrewd eye,* sat 
 and heard him, and deluded him with specious professions, 
 seeking to detain him at Rome. But the fate of Florence 
 was decided. And when Corso Donati, in addition to the 
 Pope's private motives f for taking part with the Neri, told 
 him that the Bianchi were in fact but a resuscitation of the 
 old anti-papal GhibeUine party ; that, if they were not put 
 down, Guelphism, and papal influence with it, would be 
 at an end in Florence ; and ended by proposing that the 
 Pope should induce some foreign potentate to cross the 
 Alps and accept the government of Florence in connivance 
 with the Neri, and to the utter destruction of their ad- 
 versaries ; the scheme fell in, and adapted itself so exactly 
 to another which Boniface was bent on, that it needed 
 little persuasion to induce him to adopt it eagerly. 
 
 The Pope, in fact, had been already scheming to invite 
 Charles de Valois, the brother of King Philippe le Bel, into 
 Italy, for the purpose of putting him up as an opponent to 
 the Arragonese dynasty in Sicily. And now there was a 
 double inducement to offer him, and a twofold motive for 
 bringing him. And of course either one would have sufficed 
 to bring the hungry Frenchman across the mountain fron- 
 tier of the land of corn, wine, and oil. 
 
 Charles of Valois waited for no second invitation, but 
 came at once ; and, having landed at Pisa, and journeyed 
 thence to Lucca, passed by Pistoia and Florence, but with- 
 out entering either city, to join the Pope in the neighbour- 
 hood of Rome, at Anagni, which he reached in September, 
 1301. 
 
 * See portrait in Gresta Pontifionm, auotore So. Palatine. Venice, 1687. 
 t His money relations with the Spini, which have been explained already. 
 VOL. I. s 
 
258 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.n. Dante had seen that his efforts were vain ; and had left 
 
 ' Rome with rage and gloomy foreboding of coming calamity 
 
 in his heart, to experience in various wanderings "the 
 
 bitterness of the bread of charity, and the weary labour of 
 
 passing up and down a stranger's stairs," 
 
 " Si come sa di sale 
 Lo pane altrui, e com' e duro calle 
 Lo scendere e '1 salir per 1' altrui scale." * 
 
 * Paradise, Cant. xvii. v. 59. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Incapacity of the Biauchi — Elements of power ia their hands — The Bianohi 
 not Ghibellines — Cowardice of the Cerehi — Sciatta de' Cancellieri, 
 Capitano — Charles of Valois sends a messenger to Florence — " II gran 
 rlfluto" — Dante alluded to Vieri de' Cerehi— Charles admitted to the 
 city — The Guild of Bakers — The arrival of Charles, in Florence — His 
 treachery — Tumult in the city — Doubts and indecision of the Signory — 
 Impotency of the government — Summons of the people — Disregarded — 
 Charles occupies the Oltrarno quarter — Symptoms of anarchy — Corso 
 Donati forces his way into the city— Falsehood of Charles — Tocsin 
 sounded — Portents — Anarchy in the city for six days — -Charles connives 
 at it — His rapacity — The Neri established in power — Cardinal Acqua- 
 sparta sent a second time to Florence — His attempts to reconcile the two 
 parties — Florence again placed under interdict — Ecclesiastical censures 
 disregarded by the Florentines — Bianchi banished — Charles quits 
 Florence. 
 
 It was decided between the Pope and his protege 
 Charles, that the latter should start on his Sicilian enter- 
 prise in the following spring. The autumn and winter 
 therefore were free for the Florentine part of the work for 
 which he had been invited. The Bianchi party, who were 
 in power in Florence, had for some time past known that 
 the Neri were conspiring with the Pope and with the French 
 prince; and even after his arrival in Italy, they had nearly two 
 months in which to bestir themselves in providing against 
 the misfortunes which they must have seen were about to 
 fall upon them ; — which at least they ought to have fore- 
 seen, and which the best men among them unquestionably 
 did foresee. Dante had no doubt about the fate that was 
 in store for Florence, when his efforts failed to avert the 
 doom that was to hand it over to the "pacification" of a 
 
 S 2 
 
260 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOREITCB. 
 
 A.D. French prince. Dino Compagni, — who remained in the 
 city, and energetically strove to the last to organise a 
 party, which, forgetting their past feuds and jealousies, and 
 acting in a spirit of patriotic compromise, might be able to 
 defy the wiles and the force of the stranger, — Dino Com- 
 pagni, as his chronicle abundantly informs us, knew well 
 the nature of the danger which menaced the Common- 
 wealth. But the Bianchi were not equal to the position 
 they held in the state. They ingloriously failed in their 
 duty as rulers, as statesmen, and as patriots. All the 
 authorities agree in stating, and in showing yet more 
 clearly than they state, that the Bianchi, had they been 
 equal to the occasion, might have saved the country. 
 They had assuredly a finer opportunity than had ever yet 
 fallen to the lot of any party in Florence. The leaders of 
 the Neri were in banishment. Their opponents had the 
 masses of the people heartily with them, — the whole of 
 that '^ popolo minuto," who hated the Neri for the insolent 
 violence with which they had attempted to set themselves 
 above the law ; who were jealous of those " popolani 
 grassi," the fat whig burghers who wanted to monopolise 
 Guelphism and the profits of it, and the honours of the 
 state ; and who abhorred the notion of being handed over 
 to the mercies of a foreign ruler with that instinctive 
 patriotism of the soil that often exists more strongly among 
 the children of the soil than among their more cosmopolitan 
 superiors. They had some of the wealthiest men in the 
 city for their leaders ; and they had almost all those noble 
 descendants of the old Ghibelline families, who, though 
 doubtless very different men from their high-handed sires, 
 and though the old name of their extinct political faction 
 was in one sense a source of weakness and embarrassment 
 to the Bianchi party, inasmuch as it gave the Neri a cry 
 against them which had not yet lost all its old power, 
 nevertheless ought to have possessed enough of the old 
 
GHIBELLINISM EXTINCT. 261 
 
 military efficiency of their race to have served as available 
 captains ; and finally, they had possession of the city. Yet 
 they allowed the tide and the time to run by them, and 
 did nothing. 
 
 The cry against them as Ghibellines was, after aU, not 
 worth much. Very few probably were the dupes of it. 
 Pope Boniface, even if he was sufficiently ignorant of the 
 real state of pohtics in Florence to be persuaded that there 
 was any possibility of the old anti-church-temporalities 
 Ghibellinism again becoming dangerously in the ascendant, 
 would, nevertheless, have acted exactly as he did without any 
 such persuasion. What we have seen of his real motives in 
 the matter leaves no possibility of doubt on this point. And 
 though some modem writers have been led into the mis- 
 take by paying more attention to names than to things, 
 and by forgetting that party names, above all others, are 
 apt to survive the ideas and principles and aims which 
 they originally designated, the reader who bears in mind 
 what has been said in the last chapter of the composition 
 of the Bianchi and Neri parties, will not fall into the same 
 error. So far from nourishing any hopes of the resuscita- 
 tion of their old party were those descendants of the old 
 GhibeUine races, that there was not a man among them 
 who did not prefer to forget the antecedents of his family 
 and call himself Guelph. The Guelphs had long since 
 beeL recognised on aU hands as the definitively winning 
 party. Florence was Guelph. Everbody was Guelph. 
 Guelphism was orthodxoy at Florence. And, though some 
 people accused their neighbours of heterodoxy, nobody 
 claimed or admitted heterodoxy to be his creed. Family 
 names even had been changed by those who bore them, to 
 get rid of the taint of Ghibellinism which hung about them. 
 But the great mark of distinction, which puts not only all 
 identity but all similarity between the old GhibeUine party 
 and the modern Bianchi party out of the question, is this, 
 
 A.D. 
 1301. 
 
262 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP ELORENGE. 
 
 A.B. —that the Bianchi had the people with them. I'hey were 
 ^^°^' essentially the popular party ; the party by and through 
 which the great outside people might hope to move for- 
 ward to that attack on the barriers of the exclusivism of 
 their superiors, which was the ever-constant object of the 
 Florentine ' populace, and the steady progress of which 
 furnishes the key to the right understanding of all this 
 period of Florentine history. 
 
 So strong was the party of the Bianchi ia the attach- 
 ment of the people, that it was thought that at that 
 moment the Cerchi might have had the entire command of 
 the city and the government, if they had only had the energy 
 and courage to put themselves at the head of the people. 
 But the Cerchi had neither the courage nor the ambition 
 to accept any such pre-eminence. " They refused," says 
 Dino Compagni,* " more from cowardice than from virtue." 
 The position which Dino Compagni would have had 
 them assume was an illegal ursurpation of power, which, 
 under other circumstances, would have constituted the 
 highest treason against liberty and against the State. 
 And in such a case it is hardly just to assume that the 
 man who adopts the determination to act according to 
 law, does so from cowardice, and not from reverence for 
 legality. But there can be little doubt that the refusal of 
 the Cerchi to assume, at that crisis, the reins of a vigorous 
 authority, which the city was willing to entrust to their 
 hands, was the cause of all the deplorable evils that 
 followed. Florence, united under and guided by com- 
 petent leaders, would, in the opinion of those who were 
 most able to form a judgment upon the point, have been 
 well able to defy Charles and his small band of French 
 cavaliers. But without leaders of any kind the people 
 could do, and did, nothing. 
 
 * " Piu per vilti, che per pieta," book i. p. 26. 
 
SCIATTA DE' CANCELLIERI. 263 
 
 When the Cerchi refused to come forward and put a.d. 
 themselves at the head of the city, the Signoria appointed ^'^^^' 
 a Messer Sciatta de' Cancellieri, a leader of the Bianchi in 
 Pistoia, Capitano in Florence, investing him with ample 
 military authority. But he was very far from being the 
 man needed for the emergency. " He was a conscientious 
 man," says Dino Compagni,* "but timid, and averse to 
 war. He did not take the city into his hands as he ought 
 to have done, nor in any way make himself feared by the 
 enemy. The soldiers were not paid. There was no money 
 in the exchequer ; and the Signory had not courage to 
 impose taxes to recruit it. The Capitano took no ener- 
 getic measures ; he did not banish any of the traitors from 
 the city. He talked big, and threatened, and did nothing. 
 The generality of the citizens who did not know the real 
 state of matters had a blind confidence in the Cerchi ; and 
 reflecting on their great stake in the county, and their re- 
 putation for prudence, flattered themselves that all would 
 go well. But the wiser men, who saw behind the scenes, 
 had sore misgivings, and said to one another, ' They are 
 but tradesmen, after aU ; and naturally cowards. f Their 
 enemies are men of violence, and masters of the art of 
 war. 
 
 To the end the Cerchi manifested the same utter inca- 
 pacity and imbecility ; and when Charles of Valois was 
 but a few hours distant from the gates, — when even then 
 a bold attitude and an energetic determination to defend 
 the city might have saved it from all the miseries that 
 • followed ; and when a portion of the citizens earnestly 
 desired to adopt such measures, and nothing but a leader 
 
 * Book i. p. 26. 
 
 t A coward, in the most ordinary sense of the term, old Vieri de' Cerchi 
 assuredly was not. But he had not the moral courage to assume the 
 position of pilot at the helm when the vessel of the State was drifting among 
 the breakers. 
 
264 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.n. of influence was needed to unite the masses of the people 
 ■ in a determined resistance to the entrance of the foreigner 
 within the walls, — the Cerchi utterly refused to take the 
 place of such leader, and finally voted for replying to the 
 messengers sent by Charles from his halting-place, a day's 
 journey from Florence, that he would be allowed to enter 
 the city. They still trusted to a spontaneous rising of the 
 people against him, ignorant that a populace may rise in 
 revolt under the smart of evils which it has felt, but never 
 does so unled, as a measure of precaution against ills which 
 have not yet been experienced. The people were willing 
 to be led ; nay, asked for a leader ; but Vieri de' Cerchi 
 refused that post of danger, difficulty, and honour, and 
 Florence was lost for want of the one good man at least 
 within its walls, without whom, even as in the parable of 
 Holy Writ, the city could not be saved. 
 
 And surely it is impossible to read the history of those 
 days, especially as it is set forth in the pages of Dino 
 .Compagni, Dante's colleague and political friend, without 
 feeling convinced that Vieri de' Cerchi and no other was 
 he whom the poet-politician condemns for having made 
 " per viltade il gran rifiuto " — that memorable cowardice- 
 counselled refusal, which has so much and so long 
 exercised the learning of the commentators.* 
 
 * The •well-known and much-disputed passage stands thus at verse 58 of 
 the 3rd canto of the Inferno : — 
 
 "Posoia ch' io v' ehbi alcun riconoseiuto, 
 Guardai, e vidi 1' ombra di colui 
 Che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto. 
 Incontanente intesi, e certo fui 
 Che quest' era la setta dei eattivi 
 A Dio spiaoenti ed a' nemici sui." 
 
 " As soon as I could recognise any one, I looked and saw the shade of him 
 who made from cowardice the great refusal. Suddenly I understood and 
 was certain, that this was the band of caitifis, odious alike to God {i.e., to 
 that part of the Florentines who held Dante's political opinions) and to his 
 enemies [i.e., to the adverse party, the Neri)." This band of caitiffs wag 
 
"IL GEAN RinUTO." 265 
 
 Marching northwards by Siena, Charles came to the a.-d. 
 Castle of Staggia, now an extremely picturesque ruin among 
 the oak woods traversed by the railway between Siena and 
 Poggibonzi, and, halting there, sent messengers to Florence. 
 They were instructed to assure the Florentines that the 
 French prince was coming among them wholly for their 
 good, and induced by no other motive than his great 
 affection for the city of Florence.* They requested of the 
 Signory 'to be allowed to address the people in council 
 assembled ; and they were permitted to do so. They had 
 brought a Volterra lawyer with them as spokesman, a 
 foolish, false man, says Dino, who talked a quantity of trash 
 about " the Blood-Royal of France having entered Tuscany 
 solely to make peace between Holy Church and the parties 
 in Florence," and how " the citizens might implicitly trust 
 him, because the Blood-Royal of France never deceived 
 either friend or foe." 
 
 And then a whole crowd of citizens rushed to the tribune, 
 each anxious to be the first to speak in favour of admitting 
 the prince, — some, Neri, who were his accomplices and 
 inviters, — others, again, timeservers, who were anxious to 
 
 surely those who, by their cowardice ia the hour of need, made themselves 
 hateful to the wiser part of their own party, and who were of course hateful 
 to the Iferi. The most common explanation of the passage, which supposes 
 Celestin, who refused the Papacy from motives of conscience, to be alluded 
 to, is in my mind wholly inadmissible. How is it possible to suppose that 
 the meek, pious recluse, who refused the Papal tiara because honestly 
 he thought he was not fitted for it, should for that act be placed by 
 Dante among those displeasing alike to God and his enemies ? I think 
 the passage in the poem, and the passage in the history of Florence, 
 so mutually throw light on each other, that there can be little doubt that 
 the explanation in the text is the true one. But I must not allow the 
 reader to suppose that the merit of having discovered the sense of this long 
 disputed passage is ia any wise mine. It belongs to a far more competent 
 Dantean scholar. Dr. H. C. Barlow, whose admirably reasoned pamphlet 
 on " B Oran jRifluto" (Triibner & Co., 1862) first suggested to me the 
 truth. I much recommend the reader to consult Dr. Barlow's pamphlet, 
 which excellently elucidates this passage of Florentine history. 
 * Villani, book viii. chap, xlix.; Dino Compagni, book ii. p. 31. 
 
266 HISTORY OF THE COMMOSTWEALTH OE ELOE.ENCE. 
 
 A.B. curry favour with the new power, — some cowards, who were 
 ^^°^' desirous only to avoid all chance of fighting. The Signory 
 declared that, in a case so new and grave, they would not 
 take upon themselves to decide on the answer to be given to 
 the messengers, but that each of the city guilds, should be 
 severally consulted on the subject. They were so ; and every 
 one of the major guilds — arti maggiori — and every one of 
 the minor, with the exception of that of the bakers, voted 
 that the prince should be admitted to the city. The stout 
 bakers alone returned their vote to the Signory, that " he 
 should neither be received or any mark of respect paid to 
 him ; for he came only to ruin the city." 
 
 Of course this one dissenting voice was of no avail ; and 
 the answer returned to Staggia was, that Charles might 
 come. 
 
 On the 4th of .November, 1301, he entered the city,* 
 and went to lodge in the house of the Frescobaldi ; on 
 the site of that immense and magnificent building now 
 standing at the foot of the Trinita bridge, on the further 
 or southern side of the river, and on the left hand of one 
 crossing the bridge in that direction, but which has ceased 
 to belong to the family still extant in Florence, having 
 some centuries since become a convent. The Signory had 
 wished to lodge him on the other side of the river, where 
 Charles of Anjou had dwelt. But the Neri preferred to 
 carry him to the quarter beyond the Arno, that they might 
 fortify themselves there, and hold that part of the town by 
 force, in case any rising of the people should drive them 
 from the other quarter of the city. 
 
 The French prince entered Florence with his retinue 
 ostentatiously unarmed. The poor citizens were at once 
 persuaded that their magnanimous ally- — (it was the second 
 trial of French disinterested friendship this time) — really 
 
 * Dino Compagni, book ii. p. 34. 
 
CHAELES'S ENTRY INTO FLORENCE. 267 
 
 had the welfare of their city at heart. And when on the a.d. 
 
 • • • 1301 
 
 morrow of his arrival the formal inauguration of Charles in 
 his office of peacemaker — " pacierio " — was to take place, 
 they formed a magnificent cortege to do him honour. A 
 numerous band of horsemen, splendidly arrayed as for a 
 tournament, with flags flying, and all the horses with silken 
 housings, escorted him, and all the city was on foot to see 
 the sight. 
 
 There were many men in Florence who looked on that 
 pageant with anxious misgiving, and suspiciously watchful 
 glances gleaming out from under the shelter of their long- 
 peaked hoods. Many also — the whole party of the Neri, 
 indeed — were perfectly aware of the plot of the drama 
 about to be played, in which they were performing well- 
 understood parts. But, with the masses of the people, all 
 was confidence and well-pleased enjoyment of the spectacle. 
 " Why should we trouble ourselves with talk of fighting ? 
 Does this look like fighting ? We shall have peace, and 
 all will go well." * 
 
 So- Charles and his retinue, and his escort of citizens, 
 went in grand procession through the gala-day-looking 
 streets to the church of Santa Maria Novella. And there 
 were assembled "the Podesta, and the Captain, and the 
 Priors, and all their councillors, and the Bishop, and all 
 the notables of Plorence," f to receive him. Then Charles, 
 after his toady J spokesman had set forth the scope and 
 object of his coming, made formal demand that plenary 
 authority in the city should be confided to him, for the 
 purpose of reconciling the parties at feud, and distributing 
 the places and honours of the government equally among 
 them. He also promised, on the honour of a king's son, 
 
 * Dino Compagni, book ii. p. 31. t Tillani, book viii. chap. xlix. 
 
 X Villani's word is " aguzzetto," an inciter, or prompter. But it was 
 always used in a bad sense, and is very difficult to translate. It means his. 
 " earwigger," bis suggester of misebief. 
 
268 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. and solemnly took oath to, preserve peace and free govern- 
 ■^^°^' ment in the city. " And I, who write these words," cries 
 the ordinarily impassive historian,* in a burst of indig- 
 nation, " heard him with my own ears thus swear. Yet 
 instantly the exact contrary was done by him and by his 
 creatures ! " 
 
 In truth " the Blood-Royal of France " did not retain 
 the mask of dissimulation one instant longer than was 
 necessary to his purpose. The powers he had asked for 
 were confided to him ; the assembly broke up ; and even 
 as those who had been present in the Church left it to 
 return to their homes, they found the aspect of the city 
 most ominously changed. The soldiers, whom Charles 
 had brought into Florence with him unarmed, were now 
 seen suddenly with armour on their backs and arms in 
 their hands. An alarming number of strange faces 
 appeared in the streets, and among them some not wholly 
 strange, but which had not for some time past been seen 
 there. Before long it was first rumoured, then ascertained, 
 that large numbers of Lucchese, Sienese, and others had 
 been quietly introduced into the city by twos and threes at 
 a time. More ominous of evil still were those not wholly 
 unknown faces, mixing here and there among the crowds 
 of strangers, — the faces of exiled Neri, whose sudden 
 presence in Florence at that critical moment was strangely 
 suspicious, to say the least of it. Altogether it soon became 
 known that the French prince had twelve hundred armed 
 men in the city at his orders. 
 
 Charles returned to his quarters in the Frescobaldi 
 palace, and bided his time. The remainder of that day 
 was remembered for many a long year afterwards. The 
 people, as quickly alarmed at the sudden change which 
 had been brought about in the state of things in the city, 
 
 * Villani, he. cit. 
 
PERPLEXITY OP THE SIGNORY. 269 
 
 as they had an hour before been unreasonably confident a.b. 
 and unsuspecting, hurried to their homes, and prepared as '^^°^- 
 best they might to defend them, and raised barricades in 
 various parts of the city. The Priors, among whom was 
 Dino Compagni, either as in office, or as one of the leading 
 members of their Council, were sitting in permanence in 
 the Palazzo Publico, dismayed, divided in opinion, and 
 utterly at a loss what to do. The remaining hours of the 
 day wore away in unprofitable talking ; the night was near, 
 and nothing was done. The Signory were distracted by a 
 succession of interviews with all kinds of people. Some 
 urged one thing, some another. Some, as the Priors well 
 knew, were traitors, who, under the hypocritical semblance 
 of friendly advice, were seeking to promote their treason- 
 able designs. Among other proposers of nostrums for the 
 occasion, a holy man, one Pra Benedetto, held by the 
 people to be a saint, came to them, and, begging for a secret 
 audience, assured the Priors that the only plan to save the 
 Commonwealth was to issue immediate orders to the Bishop 
 to make a procession through the city. " We followed his 
 advice," says Dino Compagni,* " and got well laughed at 
 for our pains ; for people said, it would have been more to 
 the purpose to sharpen our swords." " The Signory," he 
 says again, " were goaded on all sides. The loyal part of 
 the citizens came imploring them to look well to their pro- 
 tection and that of the city. The traitors impeded them 
 by questioning the legality of every measure.. And 
 between the demands made upon them and the answers 
 to these, the day melted away. The Barons in Prince 
 Charles's retinue occupied the Priors' time with long 
 speeches ; and so they passed the hours in great trouble 
 and perplexity. « « * * * "We passed strong resolu- 
 tions, and severe laws, and gave the executive authorities 
 
 * Book ii. p. 37. 
 
A.D. 
 
 1301, 
 
 270 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 summary powers for repressing tumult and street broils. 
 We enacted capital punishments, and caused the block and 
 the axe to be placed on the Piazza for the execution of 
 them against the disobedient. We increased the powers 
 of Messer Schiatta, the Capitano, and exhorted him to 
 do his duty. But all was to no purpose. For even the 
 officers, and messengers, and bailiffs attached to the 
 Signory were traitors. It was discovered that twenty of 
 the tipstaffs had agreed for a thousand florins to murder 
 the whole Signory. These traitors were forthwith turned 
 out of the palace. The government strove hard to save 
 the city from the evil designs of the enemy. But all was 
 of no avail, because they used mild and pacific means, 
 when what M^as needed was promptness and energy. 
 Against thorough perversity, moderation is of no avail." * 
 
 Meanwhile, despite the headsman's block and the axe 
 displayed on the Piazza, the city was filled with riots and 
 hostile encounters between the adverse parties ; and among 
 the notices recorded of such occurrences we meet for the 
 first time with the name of Medici, certain "powerful 
 popolani," of which family one is stated to have attacked 
 and left for dead a citizen of the " White " faction. The 
 Medici therefore, it seems, were, on this their first appear- 
 ance, in arms adverse to the freedom and legal government 
 of their country. 
 
 As things were evidently becoming worse and worse, the 
 Signory, a little before nightfall, as a last effort, sent 
 messengers through all the wards to summon the city 
 bands to come armed to the palace at the dawn of day. 
 But the city was already too much demoralised. There 
 were no chiefs to rally the people. Very few came to the 
 Palazzo, " although the Gonfalone di Giustizia — the great 
 civic standard — was exposed from the window of the 
 
 * Dino Compagni, book ii. p. 38. 
 
CONFUSION IN THE CITY. 271 
 
 palace." Those who did come, and displayed their flags a.d 
 for a few minutes, very soon slunk off to their homes. ^^^^- 
 The Podesta did not send his posse of troops, nor even 
 arm them, but left all his duty to the Priors ; " instead of 
 proceeding, as he might have done, at once to the houses 
 of the disaffected, with fire and sword," '.The Priors, 
 " who were not versed in warlike matters, were fully 
 occupied by the numbers of people who insisted on 
 audiences. And again, the night closed in,"* As soon 
 as it was dark, all the people withdrew from the Piazza to 
 their houses, and spent the night in making them as far as 
 possible capable of defence, and in constructing barricades 
 of timber in the streets. 
 
 The' next day, matters were yet worse, Prince Charles 
 had demanded that the " Oltrarno " quarter of the city — 
 that on the southern bank of the river — should be wholly 
 given up into his keeping ; — that the Florentine guards at 
 the gates should be changed for French soldiers, and the 
 keys of the city given up to him. Of course the pretext 
 for such a demand was, that he feared treason from the 
 citizens, and that his safety required these precautions. 
 
 Two other facts also came that morning to the knowledge 
 of the Signory, which seem to have well-nigh brought them 
 to the point of giving up their hopeless task in despair. 
 The circumstances attending the first of these show indeed 
 the utter imbecility and confusion to which the govern- 
 ment was reduced. A rich and powerful private citizen 
 had come to the palace, warning the Priors that they would 
 do weU to fortify one of the gates of the city, which was in 
 a bad state of repair. The Signory told him to do as he 
 pleased in the matter, and placed at his disposition a gang 
 of workmen, who were sent with the banner, indicating 
 that they were engaged on the public service. But news 
 
 • Dino Compagni, book ii. p. 39. 
 
272 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.D. was brought in that the Tornaquirici, a powerful family, 
 * with many retainers in their pay, had attacked the party 
 of workmen — wounding some, and putting them to flight 
 — in which they were joined by the soldiers on guard at 
 the gate. The last time we heard of these Tornaquinci 
 was when the old father of the race and his sons were 
 spending their lives for their country in defence of the 
 Carroccio at Montaperti ! But civil war and party passions 
 had changed many things and persons in Plorence, besides 
 the Tornaquinci. 
 
 The other tidings, which greeted the baffled, bated, and 
 despairing government, were, that a man had been arrested 
 in the course of the night, who, in the disguise of an 
 itinerant vendor of drugs, had been going round to the 
 houses of all the leaders of the Neri, warning them to be 
 prepared and armed the next morning early, for that a 
 blow was about to be struck. 
 
 "From all this, what with tidings coming in from one 
 quarter and from another, the Priors saw that they could 
 no longer stand against the storm."* 
 
 It soon became manifest, too, what the blow to be struck 
 that morning was ; nothing less than the entry into the 
 city of the banned and banished rebel Corso Donati, with 
 a band of armed followers. He had found the gates shut ; 
 but with axes and fire had forced his way in by a postern 
 in the immediate neighbourhood of his own palace. 
 Messengers came from Charles to the Priors, sitting dis- 
 mayed and helpless in the Palazzo Publico, in their council- 
 chamber where no council was, assuring them on his royal 
 word that he had only permitted Donati to enter the city 
 in order to take the more signal vengeance on his audacity. 
 He said that his — the prince's-^intention was, that the 
 authority of the Signory should be preserved intact ; that 
 
 * Dino Compagni, book ii. p. 40. 
 
FK.ENCH TEEASOSr. 273 
 
 he would hang Messer Corso as a traitor and a rebel ; and a.d. 
 that if he, Charles, did not execute on him such vengeance ^'^°^* 
 as should satisfy them, they were welcome to take his own 
 head off. Meantime, he said, it would be best for the 
 maintenance of order and tranquihity in the city, that all 
 the leading partisans of both sides, whose names were 
 written on a list he gave them, should be sent to him, to 
 be retained for the present, till the crisis was past, in his 
 custody. 
 
 To this also the perplexed and frightened Priors were 
 weak enough to assent ; and the Bianchi chiefs were either 
 sufficiently cowed, or sufficiently consistent supporters of 
 legality, to put their heads into the trap. At the command 
 of the Signory, they, and those of the Neri named in the 
 list sent in by the traitor Frenchman, went to the 
 Oltrarno quarter, and gave themselves up to him. The 
 Neri were dismissed in a few hours : the Bianchi retained 
 in close custody. 
 
 This overt act of treachery seems at last to have opened 
 the eyes of the masses of the people. But it was too late. 
 The city was too thoroughly disorganised and demoralised. 
 The Signory ordered the tocsin bell to be sounded. But 
 no one heeded its summons. Not a man came into the 
 Piazza, save three or four of the Adimari family. And 
 when they saw that they were alone, they returned to their 
 palace, and the Piazza was left empty; a dreary and 
 hopeless outlook for those poor Priors from the windows of 
 their palace, while the tocsin bell over their heads kept 
 ringing out its angry call to the citizens, ineffectually for 
 the first time in the history of the Commonwealth. 
 
 The populace were now persuaded that the French 
 prince was come among them, not as a peacemaker, restorer 
 of order, and friend of the government ; but as an enemy, 
 and patron of licence and confusion. And the result of 
 their persuasion, though it might a few days before have 
 
 VOL. I. ^ 
 
274 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOKENCE. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 A.D. been different, was now only to induce the timid and the 
 ^^°^- quiet to shut themselves into their houses, and the ill-dis- 
 posed and the turbulent to profit by the anarchy into 
 which the city had fallen, and the time of licence and law- 
 less violence which they judged to be at hand. 
 
 But the last drop in the cup which over-filled the 
 measure of the misfortunes of the unhappy Priors, was the 
 appearance in the heavens of a fiery cross immediately over 
 the Palazzo Pubhco. It remained visible for some minutes, 
 " so that all those who saw it, as I myself saw it clearly," 
 says the cultivated and shrewd statesman and historian 
 Dino Compagni, "might understand that God was very 
 grievously angry with the city." * After this phenomenon 
 the unhappy Priors gave the matter up, and resigned their 
 offices. 
 
 Then began a time of utter anarchy, which lasted for six 
 long days. Every kind of horror and abomination which 
 evil passions of all sorts, long restrained by force of law, 
 but now suddenly unbridled and licensed to satiate their 
 appetites to the utmost, could suggest, were perpetrated in 
 every part of the city. Rich shops and magazines were 
 plundered, and private houses gutted. Old grudges were 
 fed fat, and many a patient hatred satisfied at last. 
 Murders were done on men, and worse than murders on 
 women, in every street and almost every house throughout 
 the city. Corso Donati, immediately on entering Plorence, 
 went round to the different prisons and released all those 
 confined in them. He then rode through the city, his 
 naked sword in his hand, furiously seeking for the mem- 
 bers of the Cerchi family, and loudly challenging them 
 to meet him. But the Cerchi remained shut up in the 
 fastness of their fortress home. 
 
 All this time the false traitor Charles remained inactive 
 
 * Dino Compagni, book ii. p. 42. 
 
FRENCH RAPACITY. 275 
 
 in the isolated quarter of the city which had been given up a.d. 
 to him; and when a citizen, in the midst of all these ^^°^- 
 horrors, waited on him in the vain hope of moving his 
 compassion, and represented to him that he was permitting 
 a noble city to be destroyed beneath his eyes, he replied 
 that he knew nothing about the matter. Incendiary fires 
 were raging in many parts of the city and the country 
 around the walls. And Charles would affect to ask from 
 time to time, "what that great light was?" And those 
 about him would answer, that it was occasioned by the 
 burning of some thatched cottage; when all knew very 
 well that the flames were destroying some rich palace. 
 
 At the end of six days of this horrible condition of the 
 city, the victorious party appointed new Priori from among 
 the chiefs of the Neri. And then the hungry Frenchman 
 began to show himself in his true aspect. " Being a noble- 
 man," says Dino Compagni, " of great and disorderly 
 extravagance," money was his great object, and he began 
 to use all sorts of means to wring it from the people. 
 He inveigled the members of the Signory, who had just 
 quitted office, into his power, under pretence of an invita- 
 tion to dine with him ; and then detained them, demamding 
 money as a recompense for a variety of insults and injuries 
 which he declared he had received from them. The honour 
 of France, he declared, had been offended by their ingrati- 
 tude, and could only be healed by large money payments.* 
 Perhaps the reader may require to be reminded that the 
 historian who records this wrote in the fourteenth century. 
 A great many other rich citizens were arbitrarily imprisoned 
 by this French peacemaker, and threatened with being sent 
 as prisoners into the south of Italy if they did not ransom 
 themselves with large sums ; and in this manner " the 
 Blood-Royal" succeeded in squeezing a very considerable 
 
 Dino Compagni, booli ii. p. 43. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 AB. sum of money out of the city.* All which was so well 
 ' understood between the Church and this, her " eldest son," 
 that when, after having established the Neri in power, 
 Charles returned to Rome, and asked the Pope for money, 
 the Pontiff rephed that he had already placed him at the 
 very fountain head of gold ! ," 
 
 The Pope, however, professed to think that matters had 
 been carried rather too far in Piorence ; fearing that 
 Europe, or rather Italy, might in some degree be scan- 
 daUsed at the proceedings of the "peacemaker," sent by 
 him to that unhappy city, and thinking moreover that 
 the change in the position of the parties, which he had 
 been earnest to bring about, was now sufficiently achieved, 
 he a second time despatched Cardinal Acquasparta on a 
 mission of reconciliation, f And upon this occasion it 
 seemed as if his real object was to restore peace to the 
 city. When he had previously come to Plorence, he found 
 the Bianchi in power : and his first care had been to assist 
 the Neri in supplanting them. Now that the latter had 
 effectually accomplished that object, his aim was to induce 
 the Bianchi to acquiesce quietly in their defeat ; and in 
 this sense he came in earnest to make peace. But, as it 
 has been remarked in a former chapter, no party in these 
 mediaeval Italian civic contests was ever utterly crushed. 
 Assassinations, imprisonment, exile, confiscations, legal dis- 
 abilities, destruction of homes and properties, failed to 
 accomplish this. And low at the bottom of Fortune's 
 wheel as the Bianchi were now, they were not prepared to 
 acquiesce in a deprivation of all share in the government 
 of the city; nor were then: enemies prepared to behave 
 towards them with any such moderation and abstinence 
 froni all that seemed to them the sweets of triumph, as 
 could only make peace and reconciliation tolerable to the 
 
 * Yillani, book viii. chap. xlix. ; Dino Compagni, book ii. 
 t Yillani, book viii. chap. xlix. 
 
INTERDICT UNHEEDED. 277 
 
 vanquished party. The Cardinal succeeded, indeed, in A.r. 
 bringing about two or three marriages between members ^^°^' 
 of the rival colours, attaining thereby, as might have been 
 anticipated, no result except the addition of a mass of 
 domestic misery and discord to the other evils of the time. 
 He attempted also to induce the Neri to admit some mem- 
 bers of the Bianchi to share in the ofSces of the Common- 
 wealth ; but this they utterly refused to do. It would 
 have appeared to them to be absolutely throwing away all 
 the fruits of the victory it had cost so much to win. The 
 object for which an Italian civic party always contended 
 vras just this, and no other ; to have the monopoly of the 
 "ofl&ces," the honours, power, place, and station in that 
 which they nevertheless pretended to call the " commune." 
 
 The Neri would hear of nothing of the kind. And a 
 second time the Cardinal departed from the stiff-necked 
 city in high dudgeon, shaking the dust from his shoes 
 in prelatical fashion by again leaving the town under 
 interdict. 
 
 It was a very remarkble and peculiar feature of old 
 Florence, the duck-like impassibility of its back to the 
 ecclesiastical rain of censures and excommunications, and 
 interdicts. The present is the fourth or fifth occasion on 
 which we have already seen the city laid under that terrible 
 ban. How terrible it was to other communities ; how 
 great nations have been thrown into distress, and almost 
 dissolution, by it ; no reader of history needs to be re- 
 minded. But whether it were that the Florentines had 
 incurred the penalty so often that they had become 
 hardened to it, or whether the exceeding and exuberant 
 vigour of the communal life had established so . strong a 
 hold on the heart of every Florentine, that even eccle- 
 siastics on the bank of the Arno were citizens before they 
 were priests, certain it is that nothing further is heard of 
 these repeated interdicts, and that the consequences of 
 
278 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.D. them must have been very unimportant. In one or two 
 
 1302 . 
 
 cases there'i still remain documents, showing that the city 
 authorities laid their commands on all priests to discharge 
 regularly' all their functions in spite of the inhibition of 
 Rome. And it ' would seem that the Signory had no 
 difficulty in causing its authority to be paramount in the 
 matter. 
 
 We shall have some further opportunities of observing 
 that the Florentines were in' several respects less priest- 
 ridden than other people of Italy. The inquisition was 
 always of the mildest there. And in those cases in which 
 persecution was permitted, it is in every instance evident 
 that there were political reasons for the exercise of it. 
 
 After the Cardinal's departure, a continual series of 
 quarrels and outrages' showed the futility of his endeavours 
 to bring, about any approach to a reconciliation between 
 the parties. But still the Bianchi did not quit the city in 
 a body. And it would seem as if the Neri did not feel 
 their triumph to be complete till that should have been 
 accomplished. And the object was attained at last by 
 treachery. One'of the nobles in the train of Charles con- 
 certed with some of the Neri to get up a pretended 
 conspiracy against the French prince, in which a few of 
 the Bianchi were induced to join, by promises that, if he 
 were once got rid of, the Neri would make no difficulty of 
 sharing fairly with them the offices of the Commonwealth. 
 Compromising letters were obtained from them, or, as 
 Villani says,* were fabricated, and were forthwith carried 
 to Charles, who, whether he were an accomphce in the plot, 
 as is most probable, or were the dupe of it only, proceeded 
 at once to pass sentence of banishment on all the leading 
 men of the Bianchi party. They quitted Florence on the 
 4th of April, 1302, and found refuge, some at Arezzo, 
 
 * Villani, loc. cit. 
 
DEPARTUKE OP CHARLES. 279 
 
 some at Pisa, and some at Pistoia ; and, as usual, their a.d. 
 houses were destroyed and their property laid waste. 
 
 In the same month Charles de Valois, having, as Villani 
 says,* " performed that for the doing of which he had 
 come to Florence," also departed southwards, bound for 
 Sicily. There his arms were so little successful, that he 
 was shortly constrained to make a not very creditable 
 peace ; so that men said,t " Messer Charles de Valois 
 came to Tuscany as peacemaker, and left it in a state of 
 war, and went to Sicily to fight, but made instead a dis- 
 graceful peace." 
 
 * Book Tiii. otap. 1. t Villani, ibid. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 War with Pistoia— GMbeUinism out of Florence— Expeditions against the 
 TJbaldini— Evils of inviting foreign princes to intervene in the affairs of 
 the city— Temper of the populace— Courted by Corso Donati— His cha- 
 racter — Accusations against Dante — Anecdote of Corso Donati — He 
 liberates the prisoners in Florenee- Scarcity in 1302-3— Corso demands 
 the revision of the accounts of the Signory — Civil war in the city — Law- 
 lessness of Florentine society — Bishop heads the party of Corso — Pre- 
 ference of the Florentines for a foreign to a native ruler— Street war— 
 The Lucchese invited to reduce the city to order — They do so — Anecdote 
 of Ponciardo de' Ponci— Benedict the llth sends the Cardinal NJocolo 
 da Prato to Florence— His policy at Florence— His endeavours to restore 
 the Bianchi to the city frustrated by trick— The Cardinal goes to Prato 
 — Fails to pacify that city — Again pronounces the city under interdict, 
 and leaves it — Anecdote of a scenic representation on the Arno — Feel- 
 ing of parties in the city— Street broils— Second mention of the Medici — 
 Weri Abate fires the city — Bianchi foiled in seizing the city — Neri en- 
 deavour to set aside the popular constitution of the government — Twelve 
 of the Neri summoned by the Pope to Perugia — Plot of the Cardinal di 
 Prato — The Bianchi attempt to seize the city — Again foiled in their 
 attempt — Kobert, Duke of Calabria, general of the Tuscan forces — Siege 
 of Pistoia — Accoun^ of it by Dino Compagni — Duke of Calabria quits 
 the siege in obedience to the Pope — Pistoia taken — Expeditions against 
 Ghibelline castles — Effects of exile on the Bianchi — Consequences of the 
 existence of fuoruseiti — Monte Acinigo taken — Cardinal Napoleone 
 Orsini makes war on Florence with a Ghibelline army — Tricks the 
 Florentines by a stratagem — Excommunicates Florence yet again — 
 Florentines reply by taxing church property — Monks of the Badia di 
 Firenze resist— The convent sacked by the people— The party thus 
 acting against the Church were Guelphs. 
 
 The thrusting out of the Bianchi — the losing party — 
 from the city, and the destruction of their goods and 
 homes, was all according to usual Florentine ways and 
 habits. And the ordinary course of things after such a 
 
GHIBELLINISM OUT OF FLORENCE. 281 
 
 proscription was a series of quarrels with, and expeditions a..b. 
 against, the cities in which the exiles were received. Nor ^^'^^' 
 was the usual march of events altered in this respect on the 
 present occasion. The year did not pass without war with 
 Pistoia, the nearest of the cities in which the exiled Bianchi 
 had found refuge. Lucca, as a Guelph city, joined Florence 
 in this war, the result of which was the conquest and dis- 
 mantling of Pistoia, and the division of its territory between 
 Florence and Lucca. The Guelphism of Lucca, it will be 
 observed, caused it to join Florence, then under the 
 government of the Neri, in this war against Pistoia. And 
 it may seem that this is not in accordance with what has 
 been said of the extinction of Ghibellinism in Florence. 
 The fact is, however, that Ghibellinism was not so dead in 
 other cities as it was in Florence, and the name, as a party- 
 cry and a means of rousing the prejudices and passions, 
 was not obsolete in Florence. Hence the Neri, who most 
 affected pure Guelphism, reviled the Bianchi, who had 
 among them many descendants of the old Ghibelline 
 families, as Ghibellines ; and the Bianchi, when in exile, 
 were thrown into alliance and association with the real 
 Ghibellinism still existing in the other cities. 
 
 Expeditions against the Ubaldini in the Mugello, and 
 against some others of the old feudal families still remain- 
 ing in remoter districts of the country, followed the exUe of 
 the Bianchi quite in the old style, after any turn in the 
 ever-revolving wheel of Florentine politics, which brought 
 the Guelphs uppermost. 
 
 But two new elements had come into play among the 
 forces which had the fashioning of Florentine fortunes in 
 their hands ; and their presence serves to complicate very 
 considerably the simple ups and downs of the two great 
 parties, the alternations of which have hitherto made so 
 large a portion of this history. 
 
 One of these two new elements was the influence and 
 
A.D. 
 
 1S02. 
 
 282 HISTOBY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 growing power of the " popolo minuto," as distinguished 
 from the "popolani grassi " of the " Arti maggiori ; " and 
 the other was the fatal habit of calUng in foreign potentates 
 to assist the citizens in preserving " order " in the city ; 
 or, in other words, to enable one party of them to get their 
 feet on the necks of the adverse faction. The free burghers 
 ought to have been more apt at learning the lesson so 
 luminously taught them by the earliest of these princely 
 "peacemakers," "protectors," and "restorers of order," 
 and reiterated in constantly identical terms by each one of 
 the unhappily prolonged series even to the end of the 
 chapter. Two French magnanimous allies have already 
 been tried. Charles of Anjou, in 1267, was bad ; Charles 
 of Valois, in 1301, very much worse. It will be seen that 
 the warning which these two cases of putting their trust 
 in princes gave so loudly, but gave in vain, was one 
 which it was fatal to neglect. " I see the time," writes 
 Dante : — 
 
 " Tempo veggh' io, non molto dopo anooi, 
 
 Che tragge un altro Carlo fuor di Franoia 
 Per far oonosoer meglio e se, e i suoi. 
 Senz' arme n' esce, e solo con la laccia 
 Con la qual giostro Giuda." * 
 
 Truty, there was more of prophecy in the words than 
 their inspired author dreamed ! 
 
 But of the two new elements to which the attention of 
 the reader has been called, it was the first that began to 
 exercise an influence on the history of the Commonwealth 
 immediately after the departure of Charles de Valois. 
 
 Notwithstanding the old antagonism between the Ghi- 
 bellines and the people, and the fact that the remains of 
 
 * " I see a time, not mucli later, wMcIi brings with it another Charles out 
 of France, to make better known to us himself and those of his nation. 
 Without arms he sets forth, save with that same lance which Judas used." 
 — Purgatorio, canto 20, v. 70. 
 
CORSO DONATI. 283 
 
 the old Ghibelline party belonged, for the reasons which a.d. 
 have been explained, to the white party, that party also ^^°^' 
 for the most part comprehended, as has been seen, 
 the " popolo minuto." Their anger against the rich and 
 aristocraticising bourgeoisie, which had plotted against 
 Giano della Bella, and had in some degree betrayed the 
 people into clamour against him, and their respect for Vieri 
 de' Cerchi, who had been Giano's supporter, were much 
 stronger than their hereditary enmity to the Ghibelline 
 party. 
 
 But when the chiefs of the Bianchi had been banished ; 
 when the populace was thus left without any leaders to 
 whom to attach itself, and when Messer Corso Donati 
 began to bid in many ways for the adherence and support 
 of the masses, a change in the fickle affections of the multi- 
 tude began to manifest itself. The association with the 
 Ghibellines of foreign cities into which the Bianchi were 
 naturally and necessarily thrown by their misfortunes and 
 exile, may also have contributed to the same result, which 
 was doubtless also yet further fostered by a growing cold- 
 ness between Corso Donati and the other Guelph nobles, on 
 the one hand, and the " popolani grassi," who had 
 formed an important portion of the Neri party, on the 
 other. 
 
 Corso Donati was a man eminently calculated, both by 
 his good and evil qualities, to make an able and dangerous 
 mob-leader. He was daring, powerful in body, a ready 
 speaker, handsome in person. The pride of birth and 
 station, for which he was so notorious, and which came into 
 unpleasant collision with the antagonistic pride of the 
 wealthy burghers who constituted the most sohd strength 
 of the Neri party, was less personally offensive to the popu- 
 lace, whom the haughty " baron " well knew how, and 
 by no means disdained, to court. He was reckless, un- 
 scrupulous, violent, and had all those instincts of lawless- 
 
284 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D- ness, which find sympathy, and may be made to pass for 
 "' heroism, with that part of every population to which law is 
 less known as a protection and a security, than as a re- 
 straint. He was a man, too, endowed with native power of 
 intelligence above the average. And the reader, who has 
 known him only such as he became, when troubled and 
 anarchical times had given opportunity for all the worser 
 quaUties in his character to develop themselves, hears, with 
 some surprise, that in earlier years Dante, who was nearly 
 connected with the Donati family by his marriage with 
 Gemma, was much attached to Messer Corso, who was 
 several years his senior, and took great pleasure in his con- 
 versation.* It is needless to say, that later in life, when 
 the patriot poet and the reckless democrat noble found 
 themselves ranged under hostile political banners, this inti- 
 macy ceased ; and when the former had taken a prominent 
 part in efforts to avert the curse of foreign domination from 
 his country ; and the latter had shown himself the unprin- 
 cipled abettor of that domination, and fosterer of the law- 
 lessness which resulted from it, implacable enmity took the 
 place of former friendship. And Corso Donati was mainly 
 instrumental in procuring those decrees of banishment, 
 confiscation, and death by fire, if he should fall into the 
 hands of the Florentine government, which have been felt 
 through every succeeding age to be a disgrace to Florence, 
 and one of the blackest blots on her history. 
 
 The falsehood of the trumped-up charges of peculation 
 and malversation during his period of ofiice, on which the 
 poet was condemned, are too well known to need insisting 
 on here. But it is well to omit no opportunity of making 
 known a most curious and important discovery of the 
 learned antiquarian, Lami, which informs us, on contempo- 
 rary authority, of the real cause of the implacable persecu- 
 tion against the poet. In a volume of the state papers of 
 
 • Missirini, Vita di Dante, chap. 21. 
 
A.r. 
 
 PICCARDA DONATI. 285 
 
 the period, in which a statement is made of the sums 
 paid by the Signory to Charles de Valois, a contemporary ^^^^ 
 hand has written on the margin : " The true and secret 
 cause of Dante's exile was his opposition to these pay- 
 ments." * 
 
 To return to Corso Donat-i. 
 
 There is an anecdote on record respecting him which is 
 sufficiently characteristic of the nature of the man, and 
 therefore worth telling. He had a very beautiful sister, 
 named Piccarda; 'whom he and his brothers had promised 
 in marriage to Rosellino della Tosa, as a means of strength- 
 ening a pohtical aUiance. But the unhappy girl, to avoid 
 a marriage which was hateful to her, escaped to the con- 
 vent of St. Clare, and there took the vows. Messer Corso 
 was at Bologna at the time. But on the news reaching 
 him, he instantly came to Florence with twelve ruffians in 
 his train, and going straight to the convent, scaled the 
 wall, dragged his sister by force from her asylum, despite 
 her vows and the protests of the community, and consigned 
 her to the man to whom he had promised her. But terror 
 of the scene she had passed through, and the horror of her 
 present position, were too much for the hapless girl, and 
 poor Piccarda Donati, at the end of a few days, found a 
 refuge beyond the reach of brutal husband or ruffian 
 brother. 
 
 It had been a special object with the well-meaning but 
 weak Bianco government, which had been in power at the 
 time of Charles de Valois' arrival in Florence, to prevent 
 this dangerous and lawless man, then in exile, from 
 returning. It has been seen how the mission of the 
 French prince to Florence as " peacemaker " was plotted 
 for by Donati, and how the return of the latter to the 
 city was connived at, despite his oaths to the Signory, by 
 the false Frenchman. It will be remembered also that the 
 
 * Missirini, chap. 22, 
 
286 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. first care of Messer Corso, on entering the city, was to go 
 ^^°^' round to all the prisons, and liberate without distinction all 
 their inmates. The men thus turned loose on the city 
 formed the nucleus of that popular party which Donati was 
 desirous of forming in the city as a basis for his ulterior 
 designs. Of course, this act of compendious gaol delivery 
 was an eminently popular one with a certain portion of the 
 citizens ; and was equally distasteful to those well-to-do 
 owners of rich warehouses and shops, who formed so impor- 
 tant a portion of Donati's party. His haughty insolence 
 and overbearing disregard for law made him from day to 
 day more distasteful to, and distrusted by, the " popolani 
 grassi" and the growing breach between them was yet 
 another title to the favour of the " popolo minuto." Besides 
 all these things, this Florentine Catiline, as Dino Compagni 
 calls him, was sure to be seen active in every street riot 
 to which the general disorder of the times' and the increas- 
 ing turbulence of the populace gave rise ; and was equally 
 sure to be heard on the popular side in all the questions to 
 which this temper of the people gave rise. 
 
 It was impossible that the state of feeling which had 
 grown up between Donati, supported by the Guelph nobles, 
 his fellows, and the " popolani grassi," could continue long 
 without breaking out into open disturbances. And an oc- 
 casion soon presented itself. The winter of 1302-3 had 
 been one of great scarcity. Wheat, says Villani, was sold 
 at half a golden florin the bushel,* and had it not been 
 that the government had made large and timely importa- 
 tions from Sicily and Apulia, there would have been famine 
 in Florence. This importation of corn, and the transactions 
 attending the distribution of it necessarily caused very 
 large sums of money to pass through the hands of the 
 government, composed of those wealthy plebeians whom 
 Messer Corso was bent on ruining. With this object he 
 
 * The sixteentli part of an ounce of pure gold. 
 
CIVIL WAR IN FLORENCE. 287 
 
 insisted that the accounts of the government should be a.d. 
 submitted to revision ; and spread accusations of fraudulent ^^°^' 
 dealing and peculation against the Signory. They, whether 
 from the indignation of conscious innocence or the fears 
 of conscious guilt there are no means of knowing, abso- 
 lutely resisted all such supervision. The Bishop, Messer 
 Lottieri della Tosa, took a conspicuous part on the side 
 of Donati and the nobles ; and four noble families, among 
 whom were the Spini, the great bankers, joined the party 
 of the people. And the entire city divided itself into two 
 hostile camps to fight out the dispute. 
 
 Truly a strange state of society, and one as little calcu-r 
 lated as can well be imagined for the feat of successful self- 
 government, in which such a dispute could lead to such a 
 means of arbitrament ! Surely, if any pohtical question 
 whatever were to be decided by appeal to recognised law, 
 it might have been expected that such a point as this 
 would have been so. But the war to the knife which 
 blazed forth in an instant throughout the entire city on 
 this question of the auditing of some accounts is very 
 characteristic of the singular readiness with which a highly 
 policied community may at any moment ignore all that 
 centuries of political existence have achieved for it, and re- 
 solve itself into an elemental condition theoretically anterior 
 to the primal social contract, where the body politic is on 
 so small a scale, that all the members of it have a direct 
 and immediate share in the governing of it. It is well, — 
 nay, it constitutes the very ideal of civil government, — 
 that every portion of the society to be governed should 
 exercise an influence on the business of governing. But 
 it would seem that that indirectness of action and compli- 
 city of forces putting one another into motion, like the 
 different parts of the mechanism of a complex machine, by 
 which in large states it is alone possible for the body of 
 the society to act on the governing power of it, is abso- 
 
288 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. lately necessary for the regularising and tempering tlie 
 ^^°^' action of forces, which, allowed to operate primarily and 
 simply on the social machinery, would throw it out of gear. 
 The Enghshman, who is habituated to the idea, that any 
 portion of the law under which he lives can only be changed 
 by putting into motion a complex series of social forces 
 and influences, readily comprehends that the law, however 
 objectionable to him, must be obeyed meanwhile. But 
 the old Florentine's conception of self-government imphed 
 that, if any part of the law or constitution which governed 
 him was amiss, it was the duty as well as the right of a 
 majority of the society forthwith, and by simple primary 
 action, to change it. And of course the question, as to 
 what was " the majority " had to be decided by wager of 
 battle. For there was far too much of the aristocratic ele- 
 ment, even in that most republican of republics, and far 
 too little patriotic virtue, for the acceptance of a decision 
 based on universal suffrage, even if a perpetual recurrence 
 to such a test had been either practicable or desirable. 
 
 Clubs and all sorts of associations of men constantly 
 come to an unsuccessful end, and are broken up, because the 
 social bond cannot stand being brought under the direct 
 action of the primal forces of society. And the constantly 
 recurring dangers that rendered the political existence of 
 Florence so turbulent, and so often menaced it with dissolu- 
 tion, arose from a similar cause. It was an experiment of 
 self-government under circumstances the most difficult, and 
 demanding for the possibility of success a very exception- 
 ally high degree of political knowledge and civil virtue ; a 
 perfection of civilisation which Florence did not, and 
 hardly could have been expected by any possibility to, 
 possess. 
 
 The state of tumult and anarchic confusion to which 
 this dispute respecting the accounts of the Signory gave 
 rise, was worse and more desperate than any of the more 
 
SUSPICIONS OF CORSO DONATI. 289 
 
 partial street riots, which had recently been so rife in the ^'^• 
 city. Barricades were erected ; the principal palaces of the 
 city were turned into fortresses ; mangonels were erected 
 on the roofs and towers, and the whole city became a 
 battle-field of civil war, as it used to be, says Ammirato,* 
 in the old times, during the contests between the Uberti 
 and the citizens, or between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. 
 
 It was not without crafty design that Corso Donati had 
 induced the Bishop to make common cause with him in 
 heading this disturbance. Already murmurs were becom- 
 ing rife in the city which hinted at the danger that this 
 powerful, popular, able, and unscrupulous man might have 
 conceived the thought of making himself absolute master 
 of the Commonwealth. Such a danger was ever before 
 the eyes of the mediaeval Italian Communes ; and the his- 
 tory and fate of numbers of the once independent commu- 
 nities around them, especially to the eastward of the Apen- 
 nines, abundantly justified the jealous vigilance and appre- 
 hensions of every popularly constituted government. This 
 was a point on which every class of the population was 
 even morbidly susceptible. No popularity-hunting ma- 
 noeilvres, no pandering to other less deeply rooted passions 
 of the masses would have enabled a man to hold his 
 ground at that time in Florence, against such an accusation 
 once generally believed. And it is curiously characteristic 
 of the degree to which civic and personal jealousy was 
 stronger than patriotism, or the real love of liberty in the 
 hearts of these people, to observe how much less detestable 
 and more tolerable to them it was to submit themselves to 
 a foreign than to a native tyrant. It is an ugly blot on the 
 character of those energetic life-abounding Florentines in 
 whom there is so much to admire. If we absolutely can- 
 not succeed in governing ourselves, — if we must, to save 
 us from cutting each other's throats even to the last man, 
 
 * Book iv. Gonf, 67. Villani, book viii. chap. 68. 
 
 TJ 
 VOL. I. 
 
290 HISTORY OF TPIE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 f-gjg set a ruler over us, let it at least not be one of ourselves ; 
 ■ — not a fellow-citizen, Vk'ho is our equal, and whose eleva- 
 tion would be a party triumph ! Any scrap of foreign 
 nobility rather ! Any crowned, or coroneted grandee, 
 possessor of the genuine " blood-royal of France," or other, 
 whom we can believe to be not altogether of the same flesh 
 and blood as ourselves ! let him come and rule us, and, if 
 he oppress us, at least oppress all equally. It is impossible 
 to avoid seeing a taint of the servile nature in this, an 
 absence of nobility of sentiment, a want of any real appre- 
 ciation of and love for liberty, or at least a subordination 
 of that love to other and stronger passions, which goes far 
 towards explaining the catastrophe in which the great 
 Florentine experiment in polity ended. 
 
 Corso Donati had laboured hard, and had succeeded 
 well in attaching to him the lower portions of the Floren- 
 tine populace. But the suspicion that he was aiming at 
 supreme power, if once credited, would have been enough 
 to ruin him. His great object therefore was to avoid 
 standing alone, or too preeminently as the leader and 
 mover of the civil war he was raising. And the adherence 
 of the Bishop gave the contest just that appearance of 
 being a national struggle for a public cause, which was so 
 essential to his views. To make this the more conspicuous, 
 he fortified the Bishop's palace, and made that the prin- 
 cipal head-quarters and rallying point of his partisans, as 
 the Palazzo Pubblico was that of the government. And 
 the fighting was carried on between these two fortresses, 
 just, says Ammirato, as if it had been two independent 
 communes at war with each other, The Signory in their 
 Palace fortalice felt that they were defending their lives. 
 For they doubted not that Corso, having pushed matters to 
 such extremity, would have sent them all to immediate 
 execution, had he got them into his hands. The condition 
 of the city, and of the territory around it, was meanwhile 
 
1303. 
 
 THE LUCCHESE INVITED.' 291 
 
 one of pure and simple anarchy. Murder by open violence, a.d 
 assassination by the secret stab of private enmity, pillage' 
 burnings, and violence of every kind filled every street and 
 every hour. 
 
 In the midst of this terrible state of things came the 
 time for a new Gonfaloniere and Priori to enter office. 
 The latter were appointed in double number, in considera- 
 tion of the dangers of the time. And the step they took 
 on coming into power, as the sole means open to them of 
 staying the absolute ruin of the city, was a remarkable one. 
 They sent messengers to the friendly government of Lucca, 
 entreating the Lucchese to come in force, and put down 
 the disturbances for them. The Lucca rulers, however, 
 considering that the danger of interfering between two 
 such combating parties might be very like that which pro- 
 verbially attends interference between man and wife, 
 replied, that although they were willing, for the sake of 
 good-will towards Plorence and good neighbourhood, to 
 expend their toil and their means freely in the Florentine 
 service, yet it appeared to them that they could not do so 
 to any good effect, unless very ample powers of exercising 
 unlimited authority at "Florence were conferred on them. 
 It may easily be conceived that matters in the haughty 
 City of Flowers must have come to a very desperate pass, 
 when we find that this humiliating proposal was at once 
 assented to. The most ample and extraordinary powers 
 under the seal of the Commonwealth were at once de- 
 spatched to Lucca ; and a large Lucchese force of horse 
 and foot was immediately sent to Florence, and the gates 
 of the city, the public buildings, and all the most important 
 defensible points of the town were given into their keep- 
 ing. All rule and authority was delivered into their hands, 
 and all pubhc documents, orders, or proclamations were to 
 run in the name of the Government of Lucca. 
 
 The Lucchese acted happily with good sense and good 
 
 ir2 
 
292 HISTOEY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 j^gjg faith. They declared that it was no part of their office to 
 inquire into the past, or to blame, and much less to punish, 
 either party, or any individual for aught that had been 
 done. Their sole business, they said, was with the present 
 time, and their sole object to put down all violence. All 
 the decrees and proclamations which had to be published 
 for this purpose were formally put forth, and proclaimed 
 by the heralds and criers, "in the name of the Republic of 
 Lucca ! " And it must be owned that the hearing of such 
 words in the streets of Florence must have been bitter 
 enough to Florentine pride. It was intolerably so, as the 
 record tells us, to one Ponciardo de' Ponci ; who, while a 
 crier was making proclamation in the above form, slashed 
 him with his rapier across the face, exclaiming as he did so, 
 " Is it come to this then with us in Florence ! " The Luc- 
 chese took no further notice of the outrage, than for the future 
 to suppress the irritating formula which had led to it. By 
 such moderation and firmness they succeeded entirely in 
 putting down all disturbance, and reducing the city to tran- 
 quillity. They remained sixteen days in Florence ; took 
 part before they went in appointing the new Gonfaloniere and 
 Priori, who were to succeed those by whom they had been 
 summoned ; and then quietly returned to Lucca, leaving 
 an example probably quite unique of a foreign power 
 invited to interfere in the concerns of an independent State, 
 and quitting it after accomplishing the object for which 
 they were called, without seeking either to retain power, or 
 to make profit in any way out of the interference.* 
 
 In the meantime Benedict XL had succeeded to Boni- 
 face VIII. in 1303 ; and when the news of these remark- 
 able events at Florence reached him, he determined that he 
 also would send a peacemaker to Florence to complete the 
 good work done by the Lucchese, being induced thereto 
 either by jealousy of a success so greatly contrasted with 
 
 * Ammirato, book iv. Gonf. 68. Villani, book yiii. chap. Ixviii. 
 
CARDTlSrAL DA PRATO AT FLORENCE. 293 
 
 the failures in the same field of previous papal envoys; or a.d. 
 by a desire of keeping up a certain prestige which former ^^°*- 
 Popes had gained by making themselves the arbiters of 
 I'lorentine quarrels ; * or possibly even by a desire of doing 
 what he deemed his duty. So he despatched a Dominican 
 friar, named Niccolo da Prato, whom he had recently raised 
 to the Cardinalate, to Florence with instructions to see 
 what could be done towards laying the foundations of a 
 lasting peace in that distracted city. 
 
 The Cardinal arrived on the 10th of May, 1304, and 
 was received with all honour and welcome. And full 
 power and authority was given him to make such regula- 
 tions as he might deem necessary for the business in hand. 
 The Dominican, however, who is represented as having 
 been a very shrewd and able man, soon perceived that 
 little permanent good could be done, unless he could not 
 only reconcile those who had so recently been fighting in 
 the city, and who both sides of them belonged to the Neri 
 party, but could also bring back the exiled Bianchi, and 
 reconcile them with "their fellow-citizens. He also shortly 
 discovered that the feeling of the nobles in the city and 
 that of the people on this subject was by no means the 
 same. The latter, comprising both the " popolo minuto" 
 who, it will be remembered, had on the first breaking out of 
 the Bianchi and Neri feud attached themselves to the 
 former, and the "popolani grassi," who were disgusted 
 with Corso Donati's arrogance, and began to conceive fears 
 as to his ultimate designs, were not disposed to make any 
 objection to the restoration of the exiled faction. But the 
 Guelph nobles of the Neri were as bitter as ever against 
 their old rivals ; and were evidently prepared to oppose to 
 the utmost the Cardinal's scheme. He, therefore, used all 
 the authority which had been entrusted to him to 
 strengthen the hands of the popular government, and 
 
 • Ammirato, book iv. Gonf. 69. 
 
294 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OE FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. restore to its pristine vigour the influence of the popular 
 ^'^'^^' element in the State, which had suffered much since the 
 establishment of the " Arti " and the " Priori," both by the 
 intermarriages of nobles with the upper bourgeoisie, and 
 by the natural results of a period of turbulence and 
 violence. 
 
 And the Cardinal had already brought matters so far as 
 to have procured the attendance of twelve representatives 
 of the exiled Bianchi in Florence to discuss the terms of 
 their restoration ; several meetings for the arrange'ment of 
 these had already taken place, and the negotiation seemed 
 on the point of being successful, when all was broken off 
 and thrown into confusion by a treacherous stratagem of 
 the nobles, who had Watched the progress of the Cardinal's 
 scheme with the utmost disgust and displeasure. 
 
 Enough has been said in a previous chapter to explain 
 — (what is absolutely necessary to be understood for the 
 right comprehension of this intricate portion of Florentine 
 political history) — the degree in which the Bianchi were 
 in truth Ghibellines, and the more substantial points in 
 which they differed from them. It will be remembered 
 also, that real old Ghibellinism, as has been said, was not 
 by any means so nearly extinct in some other of the cities 
 and provinces of central Italy, as it was in the more 
 vigorous and popularly constituted Commonwealth of 
 Florence and its territory. It will, therefore, readily be 
 understood, that the leaders of the Bianchi, forced by their 
 exile to consort with the Ghibelline partisans in the cities 
 in which they found a refuge, finding among them in right 
 of their hereditary Ghibelline connection a friendly recep- 
 tion and support which they could meet with nowhere else, 
 and separated from that popular portion of their own party, 
 as it was constituted at home in Florence, their connection 
 with which mainly prevented them from being, and proved 
 that they were not, Ghibellines, — separated from them in- 
 
STRATAGEM OP DONATI. 295 
 
 asmuch as the body of the people of course did not share the a.d. 
 exile of the party chiefs ; — it will readily, I say, be under- ^'^°** 
 stood that, under such circumstances, it was likely enough 
 that these exiles should in some degree fall back into 
 the principles and politics of real Ghibellinism, and plot 
 schemes of restoration to their country by the aid of Ghi- 
 belline intrigue. But though Ghibellinism in Florence was 
 so nearly obsolete and dead, that the Bianchi notwithstand- 
 ing their Ghibelline blood had been a popular party, the 
 name of the old feudal sect and the ideas connected with it 
 were still sufficiently remenibered and sufficiently hated in 
 Florence, for it to be very easy to rouse the enmity of the 
 people against anybody to whom a suspicion of real old 
 Ghibellinism could be attached. And yet more fiercely 
 was the popular indignation sure to be excited by any 
 apparent danger of a return to old Ghibellinic times and 
 principles to be brought about by letting in a tide of foreign 
 Ghibellinism to swamp the constitutional government of 
 the city. 
 
 On this popular susceptibility was based the trick by 
 which the chiefs of the Neri, with Corso Donati at then* 
 head, succeeded in frustrating the plans of the Cardinal. 
 Letters purporting to be written by him, and sealed with 
 his seal, addressed to the Ghibelline leaders at Bologna and 
 other cities of Romagna, were forged, and produced in 
 Florence as having been intercepted by the patriotic vigi- 
 lance of the Neri chiefs. In these letters a large scheme of 
 re-establishing Ghibellinism in its old ascendency every- 
 where in Italy was revealed, and the Ghibellines were 
 invited to march in force on Florence to assist in restoring 
 the Florentine Bianchi to their homes by force, as the first 
 step in the plan. A certain degree of plausibility was given 
 to the fraud by the fact that the connections of the Car- 
 dinal were, and his sympathies were supposed to be, Ghi- 
 belline. And nothing more was needed to rouse the fury 
 
296 HISTOUT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOKENCE. 
 
 A.D. of a population on whom the cry of " Ghibellinism " pro- 
 ^^'-'^' duced during many generations exactly similar effects to 
 those which the cry of " Popery " could once excite among 
 ourselves. 
 
 The success of the fraud was complete and instantaneous. 
 The twelve representatives of the Bianchi, fortunately 
 lodged near the St. Nicholas gate, escaped for their lives 
 from the city, and succeeded in reaching Arezzo. The 
 Signory, feeling that they were powerless to protect the 
 Cardinal, and fearing violence even to his sacred person, 
 advised him at once to leave the city under the decorous 
 pretext of proceeding to Prato, his own native place, for 
 the purpose of reconciling the parties which divided that 
 little city also. 
 
 It was hoped that the good results which he should 
 accomplish there might be the means of convincing the 
 Plorentines that their suspicions were unfounded. But 
 the Cardinal sped worse at Prato than even at Plorence. 
 He managed there to make men of one mind only, in so 
 far as all agreed in reprobating his interference and driving 
 him from the city. He returned thence to Florence ; and 
 finding there the attitude of the people rather more than 
 less hostile than before, he finally took his departure on the 
 4th of June, 1304, pronouncing, as his predecessors on 
 similar missions had done, a fresh interdict on the city, and 
 " uttering again and again terrible menaces that a people 
 which had refused to receive benediction and peace 
 at the hands of the Legate of the Vicar of Christ should 
 remain under the eternal malediction of God and of Holy 
 Church."* 
 
 An incident is recorded by the chroniclers as having 
 happened in the earUer days of the Cardinal's sojourn at 
 Florence, while he was still in favour with the people, and 
 
 * Ammirato, book iv. Gonf. 69. 
 
1304. 
 
 SPECTACLE ON THE ARNO. 297 
 
 they were anxious to make liim welcome to the city in all a.b 
 ways, which was noted in the fourteenth century as a re- 
 markable warning and intimation of the wrath of heaven at 
 the events which were to signalise the departure of the 
 holy guest from Florence, and which the nineteenth cen- 
 tury may find amusing as an illustration of the manners 
 of the time. 
 
 The ward of St. Frediano, — that part of the city which lies 
 at the foot of the Ponte alia Carraia on the further side of 
 the river, and is still marked by the name given up to the 
 present day to the city gate which opens on the Leghorn 
 road, — wished to distinguish itself by offering a fete to the 
 Cardinal, which should be magnificent and at the same time 
 specially adapted to the sacred character of the guest 
 whom they wished to honour. So it was determined to 
 regale the dignified Dominican with a representation of 
 hell and the torments of the damned depicted " to the hfe." 
 The river at the Carraia bridge was selected as the scene 
 of the show, and the spectators were assembled in crowds 
 on the bridge above, then constructed of wood. A vast 
 quantity of artificial fire of all the most orthodox hues was 
 prepared as the main ingredient of the scenery. And in the 
 midst of this, on boats and rafts on the river were seen 
 scores of demons busily engaged in inflicting divers kinds 
 of torments on " the naked souls," represented, it is to be 
 supposed, by naked bodies, which raised a ti*uly infernal 
 clamour of shrieks and cries and groans. The scene 
 was at its height, and the interest and satisfaction of the 
 beholders proportionably intense, when all at once the 
 bridge, burthened beyond its strength by the vast crowd of 
 the spectators, fell with a crash into the hell beneath, over- 
 whelming the devils and their victims, and the crowd of 
 gazers in°one common ruin and indescribable mass of inex- 
 tricable confusion. What with the fall and the injuries 
 from the timber's of the ruined bridge, and drowning in 
 
298 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH' OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.-D. the water, and crushing one another, few either of the 
 ■^'^"^' actors or spectators of the scene escaped with their 
 lives. 
 
 Of course it was vain to hope that the city, under the 
 circumstances in which it was left at the departure of the 
 Cardinal da Prato, could return to order and peace. The 
 Bianchi, excited by the near prospect that had been held 
 out to them of returning to their country, and by the 
 certainty that the Pope's Legate, and the belief that the 
 Pope himself, was their partisan, would assuredly make 
 renewed attempts to regain their situation in the city by 
 force since negotiation failed them. And the use of force 
 implied reliance on the assistance of foreign Ghibellines. 
 And such aid implied a danger of the renewal of Ghibel- 
 line ascendency in the city. The Neri and Guelph nobles 
 stood therefore anxiously on their guard against any such 
 catastrophe, and strove to rouse the fears and enmity of the 
 masses against the exiles. The people hardly knew to 
 which side to attach themselves. The "popolani grassi," 
 of whom they were jealous, belonged mainly to the Neri 
 party, the chiefs of which, whether nobles or plebeians, of 
 the " fat " class, having the government in their hands, 
 were continually transgressing those " Ordini di Giustizia," 
 which the populace still fondly looked to as their Palladium 
 and Magna Charta. On the other hand, they were fright- 
 ened by calculated and assiduous representations of the 
 GhibeUinism of the Bianchi. A vague and uneasy suspi- 
 cion of the intentions of their social superiors of either party 
 kept them in a state of perpetual excitement, eagerly on 
 the look-out for each day's fragment of news, ready to give 
 credence to every alarming report, and prepared at every 
 minute to rush with arms in their hands into the street, and 
 take part with small knowledge of the cause for which they 
 were fighting in any broil that might fall out. 
 
 And broils in such a state of things were of course 
 
NERI ABATI. 299 
 
 abundant. And now again, for the second time, we meet a.b. 
 with the name of the Medici as powerful popolani, unhke ^^^^' 
 most of their class, popular among the masses ; but sup- 
 porting the party to which the wealthy bourgeoisie was for 
 the most part attached ; and prominent in the street fights 
 which were frequently taking place, on the Neri side. 
 
 Very shortly after the departure of the Cardinal a party 
 of the Bianchi, aided by those of their faction within the 
 city, and on this occasion supported by the greater portion 
 of the populace, very nearly succeeded in getting possession 
 of the city by a coup-de-main ; and would probably have 
 done so, but for an act of rare atrocity, which seems to 
 have been perpetrated not with any view to aiding either 
 party, but from mere wantonness of wickedness. A 
 priest, the Prior of San Pietro Scheraggio, one Neri Abati, 
 " a man void of every virtue, and in whom every vice had 
 its home," * in the midst of the confusion arising from the 
 raid of the Bianchi, fired the city in two places, at San 
 Michele in Orto, and in the narrow street in the very heart 
 of the city, still as then called Calimala, from being a prin- 
 cipal seat of the guild of merchants so named. A strong 
 north wind was blowing at the time. The fire spread with 
 uncontrollable fury, and consumed the almost incredible 
 number of one thousand and seven hundred houses and 
 churches ; in short, as Ammirato says, " the whole centre 
 and heart of the city." The quantity of property 
 destroyed was utterly incalculable. Many families were 
 entirely ruined. The Cavalcanti and the Gherardini were 
 specially sufi"erers by the calamity. The former "lost 
 everything, and sweated blood that day, as they looked on 
 the burning of their houses and palaces and shops which 
 enriched them by the high rents paid in that quarter, where 
 space was so restricted and so valuable." f A.ncl as those 
 two families were the main supporters of the Bianchi inside 
 
 • Ammirato. t Dino Compagni, book iii. p. 
 
 63, 
 
300 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 A-D. the city, and the abettors of the present attempt, the 
 sudden diversion of all their attention and all their energies 
 to the care of their own burning property, had the effect 
 of turning the scale of the struggle against the Bianchi, 
 who were driven in flight from the city. 
 
 The dreadful state of confusion, distress, and depression 
 in which these struggles and calamities left the city threat- 
 ened to give rise to yet more fatal misfortune, which was 
 only averted by a menace from the opposite quarter of the 
 political sky, in such sort that the two storms neutralised 
 each other. 
 
 Corso Donati had been kept quiet during the late events 
 by a fit of the gout. But his restoration to health and ac- 
 tivity, and his return to the city was, as ever, the signal for 
 new disturbances and trouble. The disheartened and demo- 
 ralised condition of Florence seemed to the chieftains of the 
 Neri to offer an opportunity for setting aside the " Ordini 
 di Giustizia," and ousting the people from all share 
 in the government, so as to change the constitution to a 
 purely oligarchic one. It might have been very safely 
 predicted, that no such attempt would have permanently 
 succeeded in Florence at that time. The political educa- 
 tion of the people, and the events which were resulting 
 from it, and at the same time contributing to it, were pre- 
 paring them, as any competent student of social science 
 might have seen, for eventual submission to tyranny. But 
 that stage in their national life had not yet been reached. 
 It was still far off in the future. The Neri chieftains, 
 however, thought otherwise, and were preparing for the 
 attempt. 
 
 But the Cardinal da Prato, whose indignation at his 
 ill success at, and humihating departure from, Florence we 
 have witnessed, was at the same time preparing a scheme 
 intended both to avenge the aff"ront he had received, and 
 to promote his own political views. Representing to the 
 
CARDINAL DA PEATO'S STRATAGEM. 301 
 
 Pope, M'ho was then at Perugia, the turbulence and dis- f;-^' 
 obedience of tlie Plorentiues in the darkest colours, and 
 assuring him that there could be no hope of peace or 
 tranquillity in Plorence unless the Neri leaders were re- 
 moved from the city, he induced Benedict to summon 
 twelve of these, with Corso Donati at their head, to appear 
 before him at Perugia, and give an account of their 
 conduct. As it did not enter into their policy to venture 
 on an open quarrel with the Papacy, they all obeyed, 
 travelling to Perugia with a retinue of more than a hundred 
 and fifty horsemen, a pomp which, says Ammirato, " was 
 felt at the papal court to exceed the modesty of the usual 
 Tuscan simplicity." Their absence from Plorence, how- 
 ever, was all that the Cardinal desired. For he had plotted 
 to do in reality exactly that which the Neri had unjustly 
 accused him of doing when he was in Florence. He sent 
 letters round to all the Ghibellines in Pisa, Arezzo, 
 Pistoia, Bologna, and the cities of Romagna, telhng them 
 that now or never was the time to strike a blow for the 
 restoration of the Bianchi to their country, that the Neri 
 chieftains were absent from the city, and that the Pope 
 had called them to him expressly to afford the Bianchi an 
 easy opportunity of seizing the city. The Bianchi and 
 their Ghibelline friends acted at once on the hint with 
 such readiness that a very large force was assembled 
 at La Lastra, about seven miles from Florence in the 
 direction of Pisa, before the Florentines had received the 
 slightest intimation of the movement. When the tidings of 
 the vast assemblage at La Lastra reached the city, "there 
 was confusion such as there has rarely been in Florence, so 
 that when it was known that so large a body were m such 
 close vicinity to the city, the citizens occupied themselves 
 during the night before the day on which the Bianchi 
 and Ghibelline army should reach Florence in hidmg 
 away their goods in places of security, instead of m takmg 
 
302 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 1304 ^^^ouglit for the defence of the walls. But the large forces 
 collected did not arrive before Plorence as expected ; for 
 they wasted a day at La Lastra in waiting for other allies 
 to join them, and thus lost the chance of surprising the 
 city." 
 
 But the manner in which this danger neutralised, as has 
 been said, that other threatened by the domestic treason of 
 the Neri, was by necessitating an union and good under- 
 standing between them and the people for the defence of 
 ' the city. And this was produced by the fears of either 
 class. The people feared that the Bianchi leaders, if 
 victoriously entering the city by force of arms, and backed 
 by the despotically -incUned Ghibellines of other com- 
 munities less free than their own, might be as much 
 inclined as their rivals the Neri to destroy the popular 
 constitution, and might perhaps join with them in doing 
 it. There seems indeed to have been some whispered 
 report in the city that such a coalition between the rival 
 leaders against the people was in contemplation. The 
 chiefs of the Neri, on the other hand, feared that the 
 Bianchi, if successful, especially with such a backing of 
 poor Ghibellinism behind them, would keep whatever they 
 could snatch for themselves alone, and would be contented 
 with nothing less than such an unlimited ascendency in the 
 city as could be secured only by driving the Neri out of it 
 in their turn. 
 
 The people, therefore, and the Neri combined to defend 
 the city from the attack of the Bianchi forces; and owing to 
 the delay at La Lastra in the first instance, aiid to the sin- 
 gular want of judgment and ability with which the attempt 
 to seize the city was made in the second, they succeeded 
 in doing so. The Bianchi effected an entrance into the 
 city by the Porta St. Gallo, but placed the main body of 
 their forces in a manifestly untenable position in the im- 
 mediate vicinity of the Piazza San Marco, on the ground 
 
FAILURE OF THE BIANCHI. 303 
 
 now occupied by tlie royal stables, where the men were ^•"• 
 exposed to the full violence of the midsummer sun, and 
 no water was to be had. A smaller detached body, which 
 made its way further into the city, was entirely routed ; 
 and tidings having at the same time reached the main 
 body that an anxiously expected troop of allies from 
 Bologna had on nearing the city, and perceiving the un- 
 promising position of matters, turned back ; the dis- 
 couragement produced by this, and the prospect of having 
 to hold their ground shelterless and waterless during the 
 hottest hours of the day, proved too much for the fortitude 
 of these civic warriors. The men began to slink away 
 from their standards, as the Florentines pressed on them 
 from the front ; and very shortly an uncontrollable panic 
 seized the entire body, which was now only eager to 
 escape from the city by the way it had come. For awhile 
 the Florentines, unable, as Ammirato says, to conceive 
 such disgraceful cowardice, and supposing that it was 
 a stratagem to draw them out of the city, made no 
 attempt to pursue the fugitives. Later in the day, how- 
 ever, some mercenaries, moved rather by the hope of 
 booty than by any necessity of fighting, went out of the 
 city after the retreating force, and killed and plundered 
 many of the hindmost of them. Several also were brought 
 prisoners into Florence and were summarily hanged on a 
 high gallows in the Piazza St. Gallo, and on the trees 
 along the road outside of it, where they were allowed to 
 remain for many days. This battle took place on the 30th 
 of July, 1304.* 
 
 The accord between the Neri leaders and the people, 
 which resulted from their united action and common 
 success against the Bianchi, permitted the Florentines to 
 
 * Ammirato, book iv. Gonf. 70. There is reason to believe tbat Dante 
 was among the Biauchi on this occasion. 
 
304 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 ^^gj- employ the remainder of that year, 1304, in sundry expe- 
 ditions, quite in the old style, against various fortified 
 castles and towns, which exiled chiefs of the Bianchi, 
 putting to profit the opportunity afforded by the internal 
 troubles of Florence, had caused to rebel against the 
 Commonwealth. In all these they were successful. But 
 as it was very clear that the Bianchi, after their late dis- 
 graceful failure, united as they now were in alliance with 
 the GhibeUines of other cities, and favoured by the Pope, 
 would not remain long quiet, or abstain from organising 
 other attempts to regain their homes and obtain the 
 mastery of the city by force ; and as it was judged to be 
 wisest to anticipate rather than to wait for such attacks 
 by crushing the Bianchi faction in the friendly cities, in 
 "which its chiefs found a refuge ; it was decided by the 
 government in the last days of 1304, to seek the aid of 
 some foreign leader of reputation, competent to command 
 their forces in the larger enterprises which this policy 
 would necessitate. 
 
 Unwarned by their ample experience of the consequences 
 of putting their trust in princes, the Commune entered 
 into arrangements with Charles II. of Naples, for the 
 services of his son Robert, Duke of Calabria, as general of 
 the allied Tuscan forces.* The duke arrived in Elorence 
 in the following April, bringing with him, according to 
 the terms of his bargain, three hundred mounted cavaliers 
 and a considerable force of infantry ; and on the 20th of 
 the following May led them, together with the Morentine 
 and Lucchese forces, to besiege Pistoia, then the principal 
 stronghold of the Bianchi faction. The siege which fol- 
 lowed was one of the most remarkable for the obstinate 
 
 * The " Taglia," of whioli mention is so frequently made by the Italian 
 historians, was a permanent league of such of the Tuscan cities as could 
 agree on a general course of policy. The " Taglia," whose forces the Duke 
 of Calabria was to lead, consisted mainly of Florence, Lucca, and Siena, 
 
SIEGE OP PISTOIA. 305 
 
 courage, pertinacity, and dreadful sufferings of the de- a.b. 
 fenders, and for the atrocious cruelties practised by the "' 
 besieging force, of all those of which the Italian mediaeval 
 annals are full. Long details of the horrors of all sorts by 
 which it was characterized, might be compiled from the 
 pages of the contemporary historians; but the following 
 striking passage from Dino Compagni, who is absolutely 
 roused by the subject out of the impassive calm with 
 which the ItaUan historians generally narrate every event 
 however moving, will suffice to give an idea of what the 
 siege of a walled city might be in those days. 
 
 "How beautiful, excellent, and abounding a city are 
 they destroying!" he exclaims. "Its citizens, a hand- 
 some and well-grown race beyond all other Tuscans, the 
 possessors of so delightful a home, surrounded by lovely 
 streams, fertile hills, and abundant plains, weep, and 
 wring their hands. Brave and warlike as its men are, 
 but given to discord, and of fierce passions,* the city had 
 become well-nigh desolate from the consequences of these 
 qualities. Whence it came to pass, that in a brief space 
 of time its fortunes waned ; and it was besieged by the 
 Florentines till the distress was such in the town that men 
 ate human flesh, and submitted to the amputation of their 
 own limbs that they might be used as food. * * * When 
 this dreadful time was passed, and the cruelty of cutting 
 off the noses of the women and the hands of the men, who 
 driven by famine essayed to escape out of the city, was 
 brought to an end, the conquerors turned their rage on 
 the beautiful city itself, which was destroyed as though it 
 had been but a single farm-house. Of the particulars of 
 the siege, of the dangers and famine endured, of the various 
 assault!, of the deeds of daring that were done by those 
 shut up within the walls of the fortresses which were lost 
 
 * The universal testimony of those times attributes this character to the 
 Pistoians above all other Tuscan cities. 
 
 X 
 VOL. I. 
 
306 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. by treason, I do not intend, to write. For all this some 
 ■ other will no doubt tell, who, if he tell it well, will have no 
 dry-eyed readers."* Again he writes : " The rulers of the 
 city, for want of food, turned out of the gates the poor, 
 the children, the widows, and nearly all the women of low 
 condition. Alas ! how much the most cruel thing of all 
 to the citizens must it have been, to see their women and 
 cliildren led to the city gates and turned out into the 
 hands of the enemy, while the gates were shut behind 
 them ! And unless any one of them chanced to Have 
 powerful relatives outside the city, they were shockingly 
 treated. And the exiles from Pistoia, who knew them, 
 and recognised in them the wives and children of their 
 enemies, misused them terribly. * * * But the piteous 
 sight was to look on those who had been mutilated in the 
 camp, and were laid with the bleeding stumps of hands 
 and feet at the foot of the wall, in order that their fathers, 
 brothers, and sons might see them and not have the possi- 
 bility of helping them. * * * Far more tolerable doom had 
 Sodom and Gomorra, and the cities of the plain which 
 were swallowed up in a moment, than that which was 
 awarded to Pistoia ! Ah ! how awfully did the anger of 
 God visit them ! what untold and dreadful sins could they 
 have been that merited such a judgment ! " f 
 
 But while Florence was engaged in this terrible and 
 savagely-conducted siege, the Cardinal da Prato was not 
 forgetful of his grudge against the excommunicated city, 
 
 * Dino Compagni, book i. p. 25. The reader who consults Dino Compagni 
 •must be on his guard against being led into confusion by him on points of 
 chronology. The passage in the text refers to an event posterior to the time 
 of which the historian is apparently speaking in the context. And such 
 instances occur so frequently in Compagni's chronicle, that I am inclined to 
 suspect that the existing MSS. must have been disordered, or not reduced 
 to order by the copyists. And the editor, Manni, who was more encyclo- 
 pedically than critically learned, has done nothing for the work in this 
 respect. 
 
 •j- Ibid, book iii. p. 68. 
 
A.B. 
 
 THE DXJKE OF CALABRIA. 307 
 
 and his plans for restoring the Bianchi to their ascendency 
 in the government of it. Benedict XL had died in 1303 ^^*'^ 
 and after an interregnum of more than a year had been 
 succeeded in the Papacy by the Frenchman, Bertrand de 
 Goth, Archbishop of Bordeaux, under the title of Clement 
 v., who transported the Papal seat into Prance, and com- 
 menced the " Babylonian Captivity " of tlie Church. The 
 new Pope, at the instigation of the Cardinal da Prato, 
 sent two legates into Tuscany, one to the government at 
 Florence, and one to the camp before Pistoia, command- 
 ing the first to recall the army, and the second to raise the 
 siege. But none of those to whom these behests were 
 addressed paid the slightest regard to them, except the 
 Duke of Calabria ; who, as the Florentine historians seem 
 to think, acted shabbily in looking after the safety of his 
 own soul, instead of sticking to his word and his flag, and 
 doing the work for which he took their pay. The duke, 
 however, contented himself with taking care of his own 
 private soul and body, by quitting the camp himself, 
 while he left his troops to continue the siege at their own 
 personal risk and peril of all kinds, which they for their 
 parts were very desirous of doing, for when Pistoia should 
 fall there was prospect of good plunder. 
 
 Pistoia did fall on the 10th of April, 1306, with the 
 results that have been described in the above extract from 
 Dino Compagni, and the further consequence of dividing 
 the entire territory, which had belonged to it, between 
 Florence and Lucca. 
 
 This great work having been successfully accomplished, 
 the Florentines resumed their operations for the repression 
 of the Ghibelline friends and allies of their exiles the 
 Bianchi in various directions. The accounts of these ex- 
 peditions against the fortified castles of Ghibelline barons, 
 seem to the reader as if he had gone back in the history 
 a hundred years. It is exactly the old work, which the 
 
 x2 
 
308 HISTORY OF THE COMMON"WEALTH OF FLOKENCE. 
 
 A.D, 
 
 growing Commune was then perpetually engaged in, and 
 which it appeared to have done so thoroughly. And it 
 seems extraordinary that the necessity in which it found 
 itself of again crushing the bruised head of Ghibelhnism 
 did not lead Florentine statesmen to reflect on the natural 
 operation and consequences of the fatal system of party 
 proscriptions, which made every political contest in the 
 Commonwealth culminate in the expulsion of one half of 
 the leading men in the city, who were thrown for every 
 hope of restoration, not only to political power but to 
 their homes and property, on the sympathy and alliance 
 of foreigners and enemies. Whatever were the political 
 errors and prejudices of the exiled party, they were sure 
 to return with them more exaggerated and more obsolete. 
 Lengthened exile, especially from a community more ad- 
 vanced to one less advanced in social civilization, can 
 never fail to make the victims of it more unfit for their 
 own country than they were when they left it. And 
 this mischief, less immediately obvious^ but perhaps even 
 more eventually fatal than the primary and evident one of 
 constant wars, is very notably illustrated by the condition 
 of matters in Florence at the crisis in question. 
 
 The Bianchi were not Ghibellines when they were driven 
 from Florence. A.t least they were such, as has been 
 explained, in no mischievous sense of the term. Their 
 Ghibelhnism did no harm, and would never more have 
 done any harm to Florence. They had been swept 
 onwards by the strong stream of Florentine progress 
 beyond that. And in Florence there was no danger 
 that they should float backwards against that strong and 
 rapid current. But in exile the case was difi"erent. Every 
 nionth of exile, of forced association with, and reliance 
 on the real Ghibellines of foreign cities, of identification 
 in the eyes of Italy, and in interest with the great Ghibel- 
 lirje name and party, was throwing them back on the 
 
EFFECTS OP EXILE. 309 
 
 ancient ideas and principles of the real old Ghibelline ^■^• 
 Toryism, was destroying all that the political atmosphere 
 and popular associations of Florence had done for them, 
 and was making them more and more not only a present 
 embarrassment but a future danger to their country. 
 
 The operation, in short, of the system of political pro- 
 scriptions was much as it would be with us, if on every 
 fall of a Tory Ministry, every Tory of note in the kingdom 
 were forthwith sent to find sympathy for his grievances, 
 make political friendships, and plot wars in Paris or St. 
 Petersburg, or other such atmosphere of despotism. 
 Under the influence of English air and soil the Toryism 
 of a Castlereagh is improved into the Toryism of a Peel, 
 as under the influence of those of Plorence the Ghibel- 
 linism of an Uberti was modified into that of a Guido 
 Cavalcanti. But in exile the process was reversed. 
 
 And the remarks which have been here made are appli- 
 cable to the entire course of the history to be narrated in 
 these volumes. The violence of political animosity, the 
 misfortune inseparable from a state of miniature propor- 
 tions, which caused political opposition to be synonymous 
 with personal enmity, the want of political principle, or at 
 least of political intelligence, which prevented Florentine 
 statesmen from ever recognising the rights of a minority, 
 or the duty of legislating for the entirety and not for a 
 section only of the nation, — these radical vices continued 
 to make the existence of a body of " fuorusciti," —oi pro- 
 scribed exiles, that is to say, as much a matter of course 
 and an institution in the Commonwealth as " the Queen's 
 opposition " is with us. And the difference in the opera- 
 tion of the two systems may be described as pretty accu- 
 rately that which exists between a mild tonic alterative, and 
 a recklessly violent series of bhsterings and bleedings, 
 which in due course brought the patient to his dissolu- 
 tion » 
 
A.D. 
 
 1306. 
 
 31Q HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 The Plorentines were, as in the old time, for the most 
 part successful in these httle wars against castles and forti- 
 fied " harbours of our exiles." In one case the owner, — : 
 one of the Ubaldini in the Mugello, — betraying the exiles 
 to whom he had offered refuge in his castle, a vast and 
 very strong fortress, we are told, called Monte Acinigo, 
 built by a cardinal of the family, proposed to sell the place 
 to the Florentine Signory. And those worthy merchants 
 being, as Ammirato says,* very shrewd accountants, having 
 calculated that a campaign would cost the city more than 
 the sum asked, at once struck the bargain, and having duly 
 received possession of the place, utterly razed it to the 
 foundations, and built in the neighbourhood the little 
 town of Scarperia, as a home for the unhoused vassals and 
 tenants of the Ubaldini, as well as a means of holding in 
 check any future attempt of those nobles to re-establish 
 themselves in the district.! 
 
 It was not to be supposed, however, that the Holy See, 
 and especially the Cardinal da Prato, would quietly submit 
 to the open disobedience and contempt with which Florence 
 had treated the Pope's commands in the matter of the 
 siege of Pistoia. Yet it was difficult to know what to do 
 with such a people. They had been anathematised, excom- 
 municated, interdicted, and cursed in every possible form 
 and manner till they had come to care little or nothing 
 about it. It was useless to heap fresh curses on people 
 already cursed as deeply as candle, book, and bull could do 
 it, and not seeming to mind it in the least. The case was 
 evidently one for the secular arm. So the Cardinal Napo- 
 leone Orsini, as Papal Legate in Tuscany, was ordered to 
 raise an army among the Ghibelline cities, and see what he 
 could do to chastise the Florentines. He succeeded in 
 gathering together 1700 cavaliers and " an innumerable 
 
 * Ammirato, took iv. Gonf. 82. 
 
 + Ammirato, loc. cit, Villani, book viii. chap. 86. 
 
OESINI'S ARTIFICE TO SAVE QARGOJiTZA. 311 
 
 quantity " of foot soldiers, at Arezzo • while the Floren- a.d. 
 tines in nowise dismayed, under the guidance of Ardingo ■^^°^' 
 de' Medici, then Gonfaloniere for the second time, and very 
 popular, got together a force of 3000 cavaliers and 15,000 
 infantry, with which, preferring to carry the war into the 
 enemy's territory, they marched to the south-west of 
 Arezzo, and having destroyed many castles on their way, 
 undertook the siege of a strong fortress called Gargonza. 
 But while they were thus engaged, the Cardinal, " seeing 
 that they cared no more for the Pope's arms than for his 
 curses, and fearing that as soon as Gargonza was taken he 
 should be attacked himself, bethought him of a scheme by 
 which, if he could not succeed in inflicting any punishment 
 on the Florentines, he might at least get them back again 
 to Florence before they had an opportunity of assuming 
 the offensive towards him. With this view he managed 
 that letters of his, prepared for the purpose, should be in- 
 tercepted by the Florentines encamped before Gargonza, 
 by which they learned that the Cardinal purposed suddenly 
 marching upon Florence in concert with the Bianchi, while- 
 all its forces were absent at the camp. To make the de- 
 ception perfect, he did move all his forces suddenly bj 
 Bibbiena and the Casentino towards the city. The trick 
 was entirely successful. The Florentines raised the siege- 
 of Gargonza, and moved towards Florence by the other- 
 road of the Valdarno with such haste and precipitation, andi 
 in such confusion, that had the Cardinal attacked them om 
 their march he might easily have inflicted on them a severe 
 defeat. But the baffled churchman limited his wishes to> 
 being rid of the troublesome hornet-swarm which he hadl 
 unadvisedly provoked, and getting them back again into, 
 their nest. And this he accomplished. Gargonza was. 
 for the time saved, and its existence prolonged for another- 
 century and a quarter. It was eventually destroyed by 
 order of the Signory in 1433. But the tough old kernel- 
 
312 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.T). of it, the square tower or " cassero," is there yet on a 
 ^^°^* rising ground overlooking the Val di Chiana, and serving 
 for many a generation past the peaceful office of a farm- 
 house. 
 
 The Cardinal was thus liberated from the danger of 
 being attacked by the Florentine forces. But he found 
 himself in the rather false position before the Tuscan 
 world of having made great and ostentatious preparations 
 for crushing the disobedient citizens, only to show himself 
 heartily desirous of letting them alone as soon as ever they 
 replied to his provocation. 
 
 Under such circumstances, what could a puzzled and 
 baffled churchman do but recur once again to the arms 
 which were more familiar to him, and try if any arrow in 
 the spiritual armoury could be found sharp enough to 
 pierce the thick skin of Florentine irreligious indifference. 
 He launched a fresh excommunication and interdict against 
 the city, making the third, piled one on the top of the 
 other, under which Florence now lay. It would be a nice 
 point probably for the schoolmen to decide, whether a man 
 or a city were worse off under three excommunications 
 than under one. But the Cardinal Legate strove to add 
 an extra sting to this last fulmen, by naming every mem- 
 ber of the Florentine government, and making his curse 
 specially and personally applicable to each individual of 
 them.* 
 
 A Cardinal Legate driven to bay could do no more, 
 and perhaps could do no less. But Holy Church must 
 have felt that it was a heavy and damaging blow when 
 these curse-proof republican traders replied to this last 
 ecclesiastical thunder by forthwith laying a heavy tax upon 
 all church property and revenues within their dominions. 
 The Commune, they said, was in great need of cash ; and 
 as, do what they would, their spiritual position could not 
 
 " Ammirato, book iv. Gonf. 88. Villani, book viii. cKap. 89, 
 
TAX ON THE CLERGY. 313 
 
 be worse than it was, tliey had a fine opportunity of getting a.d. 
 a supply gratis out of the jealously guarded preserves of ^^°^' 
 ecclesiastical wealth. In this, view of the case there was 
 nothing to induce them to hold their hands ; and the impo- 
 sition laid on the clergy was a heavy one. Immense was the 
 outcry and the resistance. But as the historian curtly re- 
 marks, " They had to pay."* The monks of the "Badia di 
 Firenze" went to the length of shutting their convent 
 gates against the city tax-gatherers, and ringing their beUs 
 backwards in the hope of stirring up the people to support 
 them. They did stir up the people. But the popular feeling, 
 curiously similar in Plorence in that far distant day to what 
 it still is in such matters, showed itself in a very different 
 manner from what the monks had expected. Par better 
 citizens than churchmen, and indignant at the notion of a 
 convent daring to resist the majesty of the Commune, they 
 broke open the convent doors and proceeded to levy con- 
 tributions on their own private account. The convent 
 indeed was well-nigh sacked ; and besides having to pay 
 the sum, at which it had been originally rated, was con- 
 demned to lose its tower, which was destroyed accordingly, 
 as a penalty for having turned its bells into a tocsin. 
 
 It is remarkable to find that, as the historian specially 
 records,! every class of the citizens, the nobles, the "popo- 
 lani grossly and the " pcypolo minuto " were all united, if 
 not absolutely in the acts of the mob, at least in the 
 sentiments which prompted them. The populace were 
 urged on, he says, by both of the classes above them. 
 And this outburst of anti-ecclesiastical feeling is probably 
 the first occasion on which a case of unanimity so rare 
 in Florence had ever been seen within its walls. 
 
 Not a little worthy of note is it also, that during aU this 
 period of defiance of the Papal power, disobedience to the 
 Papal behests, and disregard of the Papal anathemas, the 
 
 * VUlani, book yiii. oh. 89. t Villani, loc. cit. 
 
314 HISTORY OE THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. out-and-out Guelph party, — the party -whose "cry" was 
 " Church for ever!" as against the Imperial pretensions, — 
 was in power at Florence ; while the exiles, with whom the 
 Church was leagued against these Guelphs in power, were 
 branded in the city as Ghibellines. So entirely were the 
 party names and party cries mere names and cries, serving 
 purposes totally differing from and often at variance with 
 their professed meanings. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Divisions in the Neri party — Suspicions excited by Corso Donati — His 
 marriage — Accusation against him — His condemnation — He defends 
 himself against all the power of the city — He is overpowered — His 
 death — Expedition against the Venetians — Against Arezzo — Duke, of 
 Calabria in Florence — Is lodged by the Peruzzi — Festivities in Florence 
 — Money present to the Duke— The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg 
 expected in Italy — ^Dante's views with respect to the Emperor — His 
 letters to the Emperor, and to the Florentines — The Emperor's coming 
 to Italy led to no lasting results — Betto Brunellesohi — His reply to 
 the Emperor's ambassadors — Henry crowned at Rome — His ambassa- 
 dors robbed at La Lastra — Florence prepares for war with the Emperor — • 
 Sentence against Dante — Pisa sends money to the Emperor — Murder of 
 Betto Brunelleschi ; and funeral of Corso Donati — The Emperor ap- 
 proaches Florence — Fails in attacking the city — Retires to San Casciano 
 — Goes thence to Poggibonzi — And thence to Pisa — Attempts, but fails 
 to take Castel Fiorentino — Encamps on the field of Montaperti — Is 
 there taken ill — Goes to the Baths of Macereto — Thence to Buoncou- 
 vento— Dies there — Results of his death — Suspicions of poison. 
 
 The last failure of the Ghibellines, backed as they had 
 been by the Papal aid and authority, sufficed to liberate 
 Florence for awhile from any fear of ulterior machinations 
 on their part. The city, therefore, should have been tran- 
 quil. The late successful expeditions, in which the leading 
 Neri, the higher bourgeoisie, and the masses of the people, 
 had been united against an enemy equally detested by all 
 these classes, should have been a means of insuring the 
 domestic peace of the city. The enemy against whom 
 these successes had been won, may be considered as having 
 been equally obnoxious to all classes of the citizens, be- 
 cause although the people had not been hostile to the 
 Bianchi, when they were driven from the city, they had 
 
A.D. 
 
 316 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 the same animosity as ever against the old name and the 
 ^^°^' old idea of Ghibellinism. And it cannot be denied, that 
 the Bianchi with their present associations, allies, and aims, 
 gave abundant confirmation to the representations of the 
 Neri party, whose object it was to make the people see 
 in them only the champions and representatives of pure 
 Ghibellinism. Even in that latest affair of the attack on 
 the abbey of San Firenze, all classes of the citizens were 
 seen acting together and unanimously, to the extent, in- 
 deed, of allowing their common animosities to hurry them 
 into illegal violence. 
 
 Nevertheless, peace and concord within the city were of 
 very short duration. As soon as there were no Bianchi to 
 unite against, the Neri divided among themselves. So 
 abundantly clear it is, that the dissensions which divided 
 the city at different periods under different names, had in 
 reality but the most accidental connection with the events 
 which were supposed to give rise to them, or with the 
 principles which the names were held to embody. There 
 could be under any circumstances no permanent peace or 
 tranquillity in a community, in which a legitiinate and 
 constitutional right in every citizen to, take a part in the 
 government of the Commonwealth was combined with a 
 thorough absence of respect for abstract freedom and for 
 individual will ; in which the whole object in dispute 
 between parties was not how, but by whom the govern- 
 ment should be administered ; and in which the conception 
 of recognising the rights of minorities had never dawned. 
 
 In the early part of the year 1308 there began to be 
 visible very unmistakeable signs of a division among the 
 more immediate personal friends and supporters of Corso 
 Donati and the remainder of the Neri party. That ever- 
 restless and ambitious man had returned from the Papal 
 Court at Perugia in nowise better disposed than before to 
 content himself with any such equal share in the honours 
 
CORSO DONATI'S DISCONTENT. 317 
 
 and power of the government as his fellows of the Neri a.b. 
 were disposed to allot to him. He was discontented, and ^^°*' 
 made no attempt to conceal his discontent and enmity 
 towards those of his equals who were not his sycophants. 
 " His unusually ostentatious mode of life, the extremely 
 numerous retinue of troopers and cut-throats that he 
 always kept about him, his house ever open to all sorts of 
 people, his immoderate munificence, the various friendships 
 which he kept up with many of the princes and tyrants of 
 Italy, and in short, as is always the case, when people once 
 begin to give a bad interpretation to things, the mien of 
 the man, his style of speaking, his grand manner, his gait, 
 and every gesture, word, and movement, were said to smell 
 of sovereignty." * For a definite suspicion had arisen in 
 Plorence, that Messer Corso aimed at nothing less than 
 making himself despotic master of the Commonwealth. 
 And very serious weight was added to the notion by the 
 unquestionably suspicious circumstance of his having taken 
 for his second wife the daughter of Uguccione della Pagi- 
 uola, a baron of Romagna, who was in Tuscany as one of 
 the leaders of the Ghibellines, and whose name soon 
 became famous there for his military talents. Assuredly 
 the daughter of such a man in such a position was about 
 the last person with whom one in the place of Corso 
 Donati would have thought of allying himself, had he 
 really been a loyal and good subject of the Signory of 
 Florence. Recollecting all the similar attempts which 
 were made with different results in many of the cities of 
 Italy, and considering Messer Corso's past conduct and 
 present carriage, I feel little doubt that the accusation 
 brought against him was not without foundation ; arid that 
 he did, in fact, meditate that most unpardonable of all the 
 sins that the citizen of a free mediseval republic in Italy 
 
 * Ammirato, book iv. Gonf. 94. 
 
318 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. could commit, — the seizing, with more or less of popular 
 ^^^^- support, on the supreme power in the State, and converting 
 the Commonwealth into a " tyranny." 
 
 The first step necessary towards efiecting his ruin, 
 whether he were really guilty or not, was to spread among 
 the people a belief that he was so. For it was not to be 
 expected that such- a man could be felled by the unaided 
 arm of the law. Fighting would have to be done, and the 
 support of the populace was therefore necessary. The 
 popular fears and passions having accordingly been sedu- 
 lously worked up to the necessary point by stories of 
 Uguccione della Fagiuola being on the march towards the 
 city at the head of a GhibeUine force, the mine that had 
 been laid was fired by the deposition in the " tamburo" at 
 the Podesta's palace, of a formal accusation against Corso 
 Donati, of "plotting treason against the State in conspiracy 
 with Uguccione della Fagiuola and other Ghibellines." 
 But so great was the fear inspired by Donati, and the per- 
 suasion, that if the smallest opportunity were given him, 
 he would find some means of escaping from or overpower- 
 ing the authorities, that in contravention of the provisions 
 of the law, he was declared guilty by the Podest^ within 
 an hour after the accusation had been lodged against him, 
 on the pretext that the near approach of Uguccione made 
 it necessary to dispense with the usual judicial forms, and 
 with the delays which the law assigned to a criminal for 
 his defence. Not appearing to answer a summons of the 
 Podestsl thereupon issued, he was at once condemned to 
 death. The bell of the Podesta's palace was rung to call 
 the people to arms ; and the Gonfaloniere, the Capitano del 
 Popolo, the Podesta, the Executor of Justice,* each with all 
 his officers, the marshal and the mounted troops of the 
 
 * A new magistrate, recently created for the more efficient protection of 
 the people against the nobles. It was his special duty at once to execute 
 the sentences passed, in conformity with the •' Ordini di Giustizia" 
 
ATTACK ON CORSO DONATI. 319 
 
 Dake of Calabria, with a vast number of the populace a.d. 
 armed, " all proceeded in one vast body to attack Messer ^^°^- 
 Corso Donati."* They found him, however, not unpre- 
 pared. Short as the time had been, he had strongly 
 barricaded the streets in the immediate neighbourhood of 
 his house ; and, posted with his adherents and mercenary 
 troops behind these defences, there awaited the attack of 
 his enemies. At the first onset a great many of the citizens 
 were killed ; and a feeling of indignation at the thought 
 that all the city should thus be required to arm itself, and 
 citizens' lives be lost in the attempt to execute the sentence 
 of the law against a single man, took possession of the 
 popular mind, and urged them to take a much more 
 zealous part in the attack than they did at first. For, not- 
 withstanding the care taken by his enemies, to alarm the 
 people with stories of his treasonable machinations against 
 the Commonwealth, many had not fully believed these, 
 and the " popolo minuto" had at first been but half-hearted 
 in the attack upon the great noble who had always paid 
 court to the populace. The sight, however, of all the 
 dignities and forces of the city set at nought by one man, 
 and of the death of citizens, struck down in their attempt 
 to uphold the majesty of the law, caused a sudden access 
 of fury against him among the masses. And from that 
 moment he had no chance of escaping. A band of the 
 citizens breaking into a neighbouring garden, and there 
 knocking a breach in a division wall, came upon his party 
 in the rear, while they were still obstinately defending the 
 barricade in the front. When Corso perceived this, he 
 gave up all hope of conquest in this fight against the city, 
 but not yet all hope of saving himself. His house was 
 near the Santa Croce gate ; and turning suddenly on those 
 who intercepted him in that direction, with a band of his 
 
 * Ammirato, book iv. Gonf. 94. 
 
320 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 A..T). most trusty friends and followers around him, he cut his 
 ^^°^" way through them, and succeeded in reaching the open 
 country. But the pursuers were close behind him; and 
 some of these were the mounted troopers of the Duke of 
 Calabria. Every one of those who had escaped from the 
 Porta Santa Croce with Donati were overtaken, and put to 
 death within a short distance from the city walls. He 
 himself, being mounted, succeeded in reaching Rovezzano, 
 a villa about three miles from the city by the banks of the 
 Arno, on the road to Ponte a Sieve ; but was there over- 
 taken by the mounted troopers, and captured. They were 
 anxious to take him back alive to the city ; and, despite 
 his endeavours to bribe them from their duty by large 
 promises, had already brought him back to San Salvi, a 
 monastery about a mile outside the Santa Croce gate. 
 But " the Baron" was determined not to be led into the 
 city a spectacle for the triumph, and a butt for the insults 
 of his enemies. 
 
 There is no point in which the improved civihzation of 
 modern times has more undeniably shown itself the fosterer 
 of a higher and nobler morality among men than in the sen- 
 timents towards a fallen foe, which the general conscience 
 now recognises as fitting and justifiable. There was little 
 generosity of sentiment in the days of chivalry. To 
 triumph over an enemy insultingly, visibly, in such sort as 
 to enjoy to the uttermost the spectacle of that humiliation, 
 which was the daintiest treat to the pride of the victor, was 
 the meed of conquest most highly prized on the one side, 
 and the consequence of defeat most bitterly felt and 
 dreaded by the other. 
 
 Corso Donati was determined to spare himself this 
 bitterness, and deprive his enemies of this pleasure. But 
 it was difficult to find the means of doing so. The 
 emotions and the bodily exertions of the day had brought 
 on a sudden access of gout in both hands and feet, which 
 
1308. 
 
 DEATH OF COESO DONATI. 321 
 
 made the fierce and proud old man well-nigh helpless, a.d. 
 Yet the remedy, if remedy there were, must be quickly '""" 
 found. The city, with its thousand eyes intent to gaze on 
 pride which had met a fall— its thousand tongues eager to 
 take out in scoffing the servility which had hailed his 
 every appearance in the streets with " Viva ilBarone!" — 
 all this agony was one short mile ahead of him. Irre- 
 sistible, inexorable force was around him. His helpless 
 hands refused to do even the office of self-murder. Yet 
 the desperate old man found the means of cheating his 
 captors out of the death they grudged him. Suddenly, as 
 they were passing the monastery, he threw himself from 
 his horse to the ground ; and the soldier by the side of 
 him, startled by the sudden action, and occupied only by 
 the idea that his prisoner was escaping, pinned him to the 
 earth with a lance thrust, which gave him the escape he 
 sought. No satisfaction was to be got out of a corpse 
 insensible to taunt and insult ; so the soldiers left it in the 
 road where it lay. And the next morning it was found by 
 the monks of St. Salvi, who buried it in their cemetery.* 
 
 The defeat and death of this remarkable man produced 
 a lull in the dissensions of the city for awhile. So pro- 
 found and unusual a tranquillity did Florence enjoy for the 
 next year and a half or more, that it was only broken by 
 two little wars ; — one undertaken to assist the Pope in a 
 quarrel he had with the Venetians, as the price of the 
 absolution of the city from all censures and excommunica- 
 tions ;t and the other engaged in against Arezzo, simply, as 
 it would seem, at the request of the small town of Citta di 
 Castello. Both these small matters were successfully con- 
 cluded ; notwithstanding that in the fight against Arezzo, 
 the republic was measured against Uguccione della Fagi- 
 uola, who had risen into the reputation of one of the 
 
 * Villani, book viii. chap. 96 ; Ammirato, book iv. Gonf. 92. 
 t Villani, book viii. chap. 115; Ammirato, book v. Gonf. 101. 
 
 VOL. I. / Y 
 
322 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ELOKENCB. 
 
 1310 8^^^^^^* captains of his age ; and Plorence was at leisure 
 to receive with all due honour her hired captain, the Duke 
 of Calabria, who had, since she had last seen anything of 
 him, become by his father's death a king. It will be 
 remembered how this Duke of Calabria, at the siege of 
 Pistoia, had thought more of saving his soul from the ex- 
 communications of Pope Clement than of earning the hire 
 he was receiving from the Florentines ; and how the 
 citizens, little heeding such theological troubles themselves, 
 thought him a shabby fellow for his squeamishness. But 
 now he was returning from Avignon a crowned king with 
 his bride, and Florence was minded to forget that little 
 matter of unearned wages, and let bygones be bygones. 
 He arrived in the city on the 30th of September, 1310, 
 and was received in one of the palaces of the Peruzzi in 
 the Borgo di Greci.* Two curious entries in the ancient 
 books of the great banking firm, which are still extant, 
 bear amusing testimony to the extent of the preparation 
 made to receive the royal guest. The first, under the date 
 of 15th November, 1310, records a payment of 450 lire 
 made on account of a new kitchen constructed especially 
 for the occasion, outside the city wall, to which, on the 
 inside, the Peruzzi palaces were contiguous. We must 
 suppose, therefore, that a door of communication was per- 
 mitted to be opened in the city wall for this occasion. The 
 second entry, dated 17th September, 1313, mentions a 
 payment of 87 lire for putting into order the ground on 
 which the kitchen had been built, " when King Robert 
 came to us." 
 
 Though ardent lovers of equality, prizing it unhappily 
 more highly than real liberty, the mercantile Florentines 
 had to no small degree the bourgeois foible of exceeding 
 admiration for any scrap of incarnated royalty, and were 
 
 * Villani, book ix. chap. 8. 
 
HOSPITALITY OF THE PERUZZI. 323 
 
 never better pleased than wlien they had an opportunity of a.d. 
 doing the honours of their city, and showing their magnifi- ^^^ ' 
 cence to any guest of that pecuhar and privileged caste, 
 with which they were at the same time so proud of having 
 no closer connection. And the kings, and the princes, and 
 the cardinals, and all sorts of more or less anointed and 
 sacred heads, were apt to be very condescending and 
 affable when they came among the wealthy merchants and 
 money-dealers of the first banking city of Europe. Those 
 Peruzzi hosts of the king — " quel della pera,"^ as Dante 
 calls them, whose blood, as far as that goes, was flowing in 
 noble Roman veins, at a time when the forefathers of their 
 royal host were long-haired barbarians hunting their pre- 
 carious food in nameless forests, — those Peruzzi burghers, 
 who felt so much honoured by receiving him, were then 
 able to buy up him, and his court, and all his revenues, 
 which King Robert felt to be much more to the purpose. 
 So Florence put on her best gala dress, and there were 
 tilts and tournaments and banquets, and the ledgers and 
 accounts, some of which it would not have been civil to 
 obtrude on the royal guest's notice, were swept away out 
 of sight into the counting-houses. There was " a Httle 
 outstanding account of moneys advanced by our firm to 
 your Majesty's royal father, two hundred thousand golden 
 florins, t paid into his royal hand at Naples by our Neapo- 
 litan agent, CatiUno Aldobrandini." This little matter 
 was not forgotten, probably, by the magnificent banker 
 host, at that time, as the fact that the money was never 
 repaid has not been forgotten by the banker's descendants 
 to the present day. But doubtless no such recollections 
 were allowed to mar the festivity of the occasion. Every- 
 
 " " Those of the pear." Three pears are the canting arms of the Peruzzi. 
 
 f 25,000 ounces of pure gold. The record of the transaction may still 
 be read in the ledgers of the firm, in the possession of the Peruzzi of the 
 present day. 
 
A.B. 
 
 1310, 
 
 324 HISTOEY OF THE COMMONWEAXTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 body said every thing that was agreeable. And if, as may 
 be supposed, some Httle curling of the lip or smiling criti- 
 cism marked the estimation in which the noble and pro- 
 fessional soldiers in the monarch's retinue regarded the 
 display of burgher horsemanship in the tilting-ground, 
 they must have at least admitted that the appointments 
 and caparisons of man and horse were of a magnificence 
 that might move the envy of many a high-born cavalier, 
 and no doubt kept their criticisms for each other's ears. 
 One point in which the affable condescension of the high 
 and puissant seigneurs, whom Florence frequently delighted 
 to honour within her walls, shone forth with special bril- 
 liancy, was their perfect readiness to receive large presents 
 in hard cash, which the good citizens naively tendered 
 them in their ignorance of courtly habits and breeding. 
 Notwithstanding the little account of wages drawn for 
 service, which had not been rendered, and that other 
 matter of the unpaid loan to his father,, the good citizens, 
 playing the part of some worthy uncle taking leave of a 
 scapegrace nephew at his own door, did not omit to put a 
 heavy " tip" into his Majesty's hand* at parting with him, 
 which was forthwith pocketed. And though I cannot 
 assert that the circumstance is absolutely registered in the 
 chronicles, I think I am justified in saying that his Majesty 
 thrust his royal tongue into his cheek, and winked at some 
 noble gold — or other — stick in waiting, as he did so. 
 
 It was not, however, merely because Florence lay in 
 King Robert's way from Avignon to Naples, or for the 
 sake of paying his good friends and late paymasters the 
 Florentines a visit, that the king remained in that city 
 from the 30th of September to the 24th of the following 
 October. There was a serious matter to be talked over 
 between the king and his hosts, \Yhich was of grave im- 
 portance to both of them. 
 
 * Villani, book ix. chap. 8. 
 
HENE.Y OF LUXEMBOURG. 325 
 
 Henry of Luxembourg had been elected King of the 
 Romans, at Francfort, in 1308, crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle 
 in 1309, and was about to march into Italy as Emperor, in 
 1310. There had been no Emperor in Italy since Frederick 
 the Second ; and now the approach of one who was heralded 
 by a high reputation for ability, statesmanship, valour, and 
 enterprise, and who, moreover, was understood to have 
 conceived large and high hopes of making the imperial 
 authority in Italy something very diEFerent from the empty 
 name which it had been for so many generations, was well 
 calculated to rouse and call into activity a whole host 
 of hopes and fears in every part of the peninsula. Of 
 course there was not in any one of the fortress towers 
 vfhich still lurked among the Apennines, and bristled 
 thickly in some parts of Italy, a single old wrecked and 
 VForn-out Ghibelline noble, poverty-stricken and helpless 
 for many a year, who did not bless the day that brought 
 such news, and sing his "Nunc dimittis" in the full per- 
 suasion that the good old time was coming back, that the 
 Caesar should enjoy his own again, and every gentleman, 
 as a natural consequence, be restored to his proper position 
 in a vrorld which had too long been turned topsy-turvy. 
 Of course there vras not a city which had thrust out its 
 GhibeUines that did not look to the imperial advent with 
 fear, or one hardly treated by Guelphic enemies which did 
 not brighten with hope. Of course the Bianchi, who had 
 during the period of their exile well-nigh learned to 
 be thorough-going GhibeUines, now became such more 
 avowedly than ever. And Florence, with her old Guelph 
 reputation, Guelph prejudices, sympathies, and habits, with 
 her powerful and numerous body of Ghibellinizing exiles, — 
 of course Florence had, perhaps more than any other 
 city in Italy, reason to look with anxiety to the imperial 
 coming. It was necessarily a subject of great anxiety also 
 to the King of Naples, whose kingdom had been acquired 
 
 AD. 
 1310. 
 
326 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 AD. by means and was held by a title not at all likely to 
 obtain the imperial recognition. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the more serious objects of 
 King Robert's visit to Florence will be easily understood. 
 The Neri party, as has been seen, were much divided 
 among themselves. Enmities as bitter as those which 
 existed between them and the Bianchi had sprung up be- 
 tween several of the Guelph families in the city. And it 
 was a great object with Robert to reconcile these quarrels, 
 and bring about a state of unanimity and concord, so abso- 
 lutely necessary if Florence was to serve as a bulwark 
 against the imperial forces and designs. But all his efforts 
 to this end were vain ; " so completely did the Neri, 
 blinded by ambition and by the jealousies which had 
 arisen among them, show themselves deaf to all good 
 advice ; in such sort that they would in all probability 
 have ruined the Commonwealth, as they had ruined them- 
 selves, had not the public interests been cared for vdth the 
 utmost zeal by the men of the people who were at the 
 head of the government,"* 
 
 Among all the vivid and vehement hopes and fears 
 which were excited in many hearts by the great tidings of 
 the new Emperor's coming, there was one man more deeply 
 moved, perhaps, than any other in Italy by the prospect, 
 whose feelings and opinions on the subject will be more 
 interesting to the English reader five hundred years after 
 all the actors in that busy scene have passed away, than 
 those of all the millions of his contemporaries. Dante, — 
 consuming his heart in exile, eating the bitter bread of 
 charity, and dragging his weary limbs up the stairs of 
 foreign princes, — how did the great tidings sound to 
 him? 
 
 To Dante the Emperor came as a deliverer, as a bright 
 
 * Ammirato, book v. Gonf. 104. 
 
DANTE'S GHIBELLINISM. 327 
 
 and sudden hope, when all other hope had failed. He was a.d. 
 excited to the highest pitch of enthusiasm at the prospect, ^^^°' 
 and hailed the Caesar's arrival as the one and sufficient 
 remedy for all the evils under which Italy was sufiPering. 
 And this vehement imperial partisanship has fixed on him 
 the title of " the Great Ghibelline " for many a subsequent 
 generation. Yet it will have been seen how far Dante was 
 from meriting such a title at the time when he left 
 Florence. The Bianchi, with whom he was politically 
 associated, and on whose behalf he proceeded as ambassadoi^ 
 to Rome, were, as has been shown, no Ghibellines then ; 
 and Dante, eager only for reconcihation, order, and 
 national progress, was assuredly no more Ghibelhne than 
 they. But perhaps exile, which no man ever felt more 
 sorely, had produced its effect on him too, as well as on 
 others of the party. That he was longingly anxious to 
 avail himself of any chance of returning to his country, 
 even that of bending his pride to send humble and pathetic 
 appeals and entreaties to the government of the Neri, is 
 well known.* And he welcomed with passionate eager- 
 ness the hope that the establishment of the imperial 
 supremacy in Italy, in far more perfect form, and to far 
 more practical purpose, than it had ever existed there since 
 the fall of the Western Empire, and the consequent 
 destruction of the existing government of Florence, might 
 open to him a path of return to his native city. 
 
 But it is insisted, especially by more recent students of 
 the great Florentine's works and political career and 
 character, that his was not the vulgar Ghibellinism, which 
 bound Italian torydom to its feudal chief; that his desire 
 to see the establishment of the imperial supremacy was 
 not only compatible with the noblest and purest views of a 
 patriotism far larger and more enhghtened in its scope 
 
 * See Misserini, Vita di Dante, chaps. 23, 24, 26, and 29. 
 
328 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A-D. than the narrow municipal predilections which constituted 
 the patriotism of his contemporaries ; but was in truth a 
 far-sighted and statesmanlike perception of the real and 
 only means by which the independence and well-being not 
 of Florence or of Tuscany only, but of Italy could be 
 secured. We are told that his conception was, in a word, a 
 re-establishment of the Empire of the West in such sort that 
 Italy should not be the outlying province of a German 
 power, but the exact reverse be the case. 
 
 It cannot be disputed, that there was much in the state 
 of Italy that pointed to such a panacea for the evils which 
 were destroying her ; and that there were circumstances 
 which seemed to mark the moment as favourable for such 
 a revolution. The Papacy was transplanted to France ; 
 and its absence made the imagined change more feasible 
 as well as more necessary. The new Emperor was a man 
 capable of such a conception, and such an ambition, and is 
 by some supposed to have in fact conceived it. 
 
 Nevertheless I fear me, that those, who think they see 
 the looming form of such a political conception in the 
 records that remain to us of Dante's words and deeds at 
 that period, are deceived by the shadows of modern notions 
 thrown on that dim background by the strong light of 
 recent hopes and theories. I am not insensible to the 
 temptation of finding, that the aspirations, which appear 
 to be at last about to be realised, have been shared by the 
 greatest Italian minds, and that the heroisms of the present 
 are but carrying into effect the unchanging programme of 
 an equally heroic past. But I cannot see that such a 
 theory is warranted by the text of the documents which 
 bear upon the subject. I find no point that can serve as 
 the foundation for such an hypothesis in the very 
 remarkable letters written by him to the Emperor and to 
 the Florentines. There are passages in the letter, it is true, 
 which indicate a conception of Italian unity in the writer's 
 
DANTE'S LETTER TO THE ELORENTINES. 329 
 
 mind; but none whicli would go to show that this was a.b. 
 connected in his thought with the idea of Itahan indepen- ^^^"^ 
 dence. And in the letters to Henry there are phrases and 
 passages which very unmistakably prove that the Empire 
 of which Dante was dreaming would not have been such 
 an organisation of the European world as would have 
 guaranteed to Italy any such position in the vast scheme, 
 as should have justified Florence in throwing into the 
 Medea-cauldron the framework of the liberties she had 
 acquired, however unsatisfactory the present working trim 
 of them might have been. 
 
 " Do you feel," he writes to the Florentines, " no dread 
 and terror of the second death towards which you are 
 rushing, since you the first, and you alone,* in contempt 
 of the salutary restraint which true liberty imposes, burst 
 forth into violence against the King of the Romans, the 
 monarch of the world; since you, basing your resistance 
 on false and pernicious principles, refuse to render to him 
 that homage which he has the right to exact, and prefer 
 rather to rush into the fury of rebellion, than to bow your 
 necks to due submission ? Would you, at the instigation 
 of such mad thoughts, separate yourselves, like a new 
 Babylon, from the kindly Empire, and make an attempt to 
 establish new thrones, so that there should be one Florentine 
 and one Roman Empire ? Go your way then, and, envious 
 as you have shown yourselves already of the Apostolical 
 unity, do your best to break this other unity also ! " f 
 
 We have here exhortation to unity, it is true, but it was 
 to be a unity of " due submission " to " the monarch of 
 the world." The Florentines were to feel themselves 
 guilty of " rebellion " in that they refused submission, 
 which the Emperor " had the right to exact,"— the only 
 
 * This was not so. Venice and Genoa equally refused to submit them- 
 selves to the Emperor. 
 
 f Misserini, Vita di Dante, chap. 29. 
 
330 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. conceivable right in the case being based on ideas, theories, 
 ^^^°' sanctions, and legal fictions absolutely and permanently 
 fatal to the liberty of mankind. 
 
 The rest of his letter consists merely of threats and 
 warnings of the sufferings likely to arise from a war with 
 the imperial forces. 
 
 Dante wished, says his able biographer,* " to unite all 
 Italy under a great protector ; a profound idea, than which 
 nothing better could be found, taking into consideration 
 the position and the division of the peninsula. And justice 
 must be done to the poet, if he spoke with such assurance 
 and trust, since it was impossible to find any more effi- 
 cacious means of reuniting and tranquillising Italy, than 
 the strong hand of Henry and of an Emperor." 
 
 It is true that the world had not yet received all this 
 repeated lessons which have at length taught it that 
 
 " In native swords and native ranks 
 The only hope of freedom dwells !" 
 
 It is true that mankind had not yet been edified by the 
 study of the results of unity under a Charles V., or of the 
 tranquillity born to a saviour of society from the cannon- 
 storm of a 2nd of December. The world has had many 
 such lessons since Dante's time, and, though slow of study, 
 has at length, we may hope, learnt them. But there were 
 hearts in Florence five hundred years ago to which, despite 
 the troubles and evil around them, that proposal of 
 quietude under the " strong hand " of a German " pro- 
 tector " was not acceptable ; and it would have satisfied 
 the craving of our hero-worship better to have read that 
 Dante was of the number. 
 
 Much may be forgiven to one whose life had been 
 wrecked as that of Dante had been, the genu.ine and 
 enlightened patriotism of whose early years had been 
 
 * Misserini, Vita di Dante, chap. 29. 
 
DANTE'S LETTER TO THE EMPEROR, 331 
 
 rewarded by proscription and condemnation to the stake a.d. 
 and faggot, and to whom the keen anguish of his country's ^'^^'^' 
 injustice and the pangs of exile were intolerable as they 
 were to the high-wrought sensibilities of his poet nature. 
 But it is impossible, I think, to read the following passages 
 from the second of the letters above referred to, — that 
 written to the Emperor, — without feeling that it is the 
 exile speaking from out of the bitter indignation of his 
 heart, who writes, and that any " strong hand " by which 
 he and his might have been triumphantly brought back to 
 their country would have appeared acceptable and benefi- 
 cent to him. 
 
 He writes to urge the Emperor not to lose his time in 
 subjecting cities, and crushing rebellion in other parts of 
 Italy, but to march at once on Florence. 
 
 " I who write to thee," the letter runs, " in my own 
 name as well as in that of the others,* saw thee f such as 
 becomes the imperial majesty, most benignant, and heard 
 from thee words of utmost clemency, when my hands 
 touched thy feet, and my lips paid their debt, when my 
 spirit exulted in thee, and I said in my heart, ' Behold the 
 Lamb of God ! behold him who taketh away the sins of 
 the world ! ' But we marvel that, having conquered in 
 Lombardy, thou delayest so long at a distance from 
 Tuscany, abandoning and forgetting it. Eor if thou 
 thinkest to defend the rights of the Empire by confining 
 thyself to the boundaries of Liguria, thou art, as we judge, 
 in error. For the sovereignty of the Romans is not 
 bounded hy the frontiers of Italy nor by the limits 0/ three- 
 angled Europe. * * * * Thou madest long delay in 
 Milan; and is it thought that the infinitely poisonous 
 Hydra can be killed by cutting off the heads of it ? But 
 
 * The Ghibelline party throughout Italy. 
 
 ■f Dante had had a personal interview with Henry shortly after his 
 arrival in Italy. 
 
332 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 AB. if thou bearest in mind the erreat and elorious deeds of 
 
 1310 
 
 Abides, thou wilt see that thou art deceived, even as he 
 was, by that pestilential beast with its ever-sprouting 
 heads, until that magnanimous hero attacked the principle 
 of its life. When thou hast bent the proud neck of 
 Cremona, dost thou imagine that Brescia will not blaze 
 out into sudden fury, or Pavia? Assuredly they will. 
 What then ? Mayhap thou, most excellent prince, from 
 the summit of the altitude on which thou art placed, dost 
 not perceive that the fox which causes all this stench 
 hides itself secure from the hunters ? Certainly it is not 
 in the turbid Po, nor in your Tiber, that the fraudful 
 beast drinks ! No ? They are the waters of the Arno 
 that it poisons with its pestilence ! And Florence, if thou 
 knowest it not already, is the name by which this raging 
 pestilence is called. This is the viper nestled in the 
 breast of its own mother ! This is the sick sheep which 
 bv its contact infects the whole flock of its lord ! This is 
 the impious and infamous Myrrha who burns in the 
 embraces of her own father ! Arise then, noble offspring 
 of Isaiah, and take confidence in thyself from the eyes of 
 thy Lord, the God of Sabaoth ; and lay low this Goliah 
 with the sling of thy wisdom and the stone of thy strength ! 
 Por by his fall, dark shade and the night of fear shall fall 
 upon the army of the Philistines. That army will fly, and 
 Israel shall return again to Liberty."* 
 
 Is this the letter of a statesman working to large ends 
 of a far-seeing policy? Can we find anything in these 
 furious utterances save the maddened rage and hatred of 
 an unjustly treated man against the government and the 
 party which has oppressed and wronged him; and a 
 burning, unquenchable desire to use every and any means 
 for avenging his wrongs, and reinstating himself in his 
 
 * Misserini, ehap. 30. 
 
DANTE'S MOTIVES. 333 
 
 home, and in his honoured position in that home? I 
 cannot believe that if Henry had come into Italy while 
 Dante was still a member of the government in Florence, 
 and when he went to Rome anxious to avert from his 
 native city the curse of a foreign intervention, he would 
 have equally welcomed the project of Itahan unity to be 
 achieved by imiversal submission to a foreign sovereign. 
 Not that Dante was acting or speaking one word in oppo- 
 sition to the dictates of his conscience. But we know 
 what exile does for men, and the sort of education it never 
 fails to indoctrinate them with ; especially banishment from 
 a free city, whose misused freedom has wronged the exile. 
 
 It is only the surpassing interest that belongs to the 
 name and character of Dante, and not any importance 
 attaching to the events in question themselves, that can 
 justify me in having dwelt on them thus at length. Por in 
 truth the descent of the Emperor Henry of Luxembourg 
 into Italy belongs more, as regards any results that flowed 
 from it, to the great history of the " things that might 
 have been," than to the narrative of what has been. A 
 brief glance at the former speculative domain is sufficient to 
 busy the imagination with a whole host of probable conse- 
 quences, which would have whoUy changed the entire course 
 of Italian history from that point forwards, had the career 
 of Henry of Luxembourg not been cut short prematurely. 
 As it was, his whole story forms but a slightly connected 
 episode in the history of the time, as regards Italy at least ; 
 — its most permanently interesting feature being the part 
 which Dante was induced to play in it. 
 
 While the Emperor was yet in the north of Italy, he 
 despatched messengers to Florence requiring the Floren- 
 tines to send ambassadors to his coronation as accepting 
 his suzerainty, and bidding them forthwith cease from 
 war against Arezzo, then the main head-quarters of the 
 Ghibellines. The Signory having heard the messengers. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1310. 
 
334 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. appointed another day for giving them an answer, and in 
 ^^^°' the meantime entrusted the task of doing so to Betto 
 BruncUeschi. And the answer he gave was a remarkable 
 one. His whole speech, says the historian,* went to show- 
 that "' the Emperor could not be permitted to use such an 
 imperious tone to them, seeing that the Florentines had 
 nothing to do with him ; — that if the Emperor, looking 
 back to the past and to the ancient rights of the Empire, 
 pretended to draw from these a title to the sovereignty of 
 Tuscany, and thought on this ground to disturb and upset 
 the rights of states, the Tuscans by a similar line of 
 reasoning claimed the sovereignty of that country as the 
 descendants of their Etruscan ancestors, who possessed 
 and ruled the land from one sea to the other, not only 
 before a Caesar had founded the Roman Empire, but long 
 before the Roman Republic had stretched its dominions 
 beyond the limits of the territory around the city." The 
 imperialism which led Dante to be willing to lay Italy at 
 the feet of a foreign lord is excused by modern Italians 
 on the ground, that the inheritance of the old Roman 
 Empire by the German Emperors of the middle ages was 
 so universally recognised a portion of the political creed of 
 the times, that it could not occur to any man to deny the 
 existence of it at least de jure. But here was a man of a 
 different mould of mind ! And he spoke the sentiments 
 of the general Florentine heart. That he spoke the true 
 sentiments of his countrymen is proved by their deter- 
 mination to act in accordance with them. But it is 
 curious to find, that they were, nevertheless, not prepared 
 to state them thus boldly. The audacity of Brunelleschi 
 startled his fellow-citizens as much as it offended the 
 ambassadors. His speech was disavowed, and the ambas- 
 sadors were requested to attend the Signory another day, 
 
 * Ammirato, book v. Gonf. 106. 
 
POLITICAL FEELING AT FLOEENCE, 335 
 
 when their real seutiments should be better expressed to 
 them. Messer Ugolino Tornaquinci was named as spokes- 
 man at this time, and he made a long harangue in due 
 diplomatic style, full of an abundance of courteous phrases 
 which meant nothing, and in substance civilly declining 
 to comply with either of the Emperor's behests. 
 
 This curious incident is notable as giving us the exact 
 measure of the relationship between the Emperor and the 
 free cities, especially Florence, the freest of them all. The 
 " magni nominis umbra " of the Empire did exercise an in- 
 fluence over men's minds yet ; — an influence by no means 
 sufficient to prevent their thorough and entire determina- 
 tion to be and act in perfect freedom from any subjection 
 to the Emperor ; but yet sufBcient to frighten them when 
 they heard their practice erected into a theory, and to 
 prevent them from saying what they both felt and meant. 
 
 Henry was crowned at Rome on the 29th of June, 
 1312, having avoided Florence on his journey thither. In 
 October he sent new ambassadors to the Florentines. But 
 the Signory hearing of their approach sent orders to La 
 Lastra, which they had reached on their way to the city, 
 forbidding them to advance, and commanding them to 
 quit the Florentine territory. And on their refusing or 
 delaying to obey, they were attacked and robbed by some 
 Florentine ruffians, who compelled them to fly for their 
 lives, — not, says Villani,* without the secret connivance of 
 the Signory. In November the Emperor, having returned - 
 from Rome to the north of Italy, again without coming 
 near Florence, and being then at Genoa, formally cited the 
 Florentines to appear before him ; and on the 24th of 
 December condemned them as rebels against the Empire, 
 compelling, at the same time, all the Florentine merchants 
 in Genoa to quit the city, and confiscating all their 
 property. 
 
 * Book ix. chap. 26. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1312. 
 
336 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. It became now suflficiently evident that there must be 
 ^^^^' war between the great Guelph city and the Emperor at 
 no distant day ; and Florence set herself to prepare for the 
 struggle by all possible means. She adopted the wise 
 measure of amnestying and recalling all her exiles, except 
 such as their decided Ghibelline predilection would have 
 made a source of weakness rather than of strength. Dante, 
 for example, was expressly exempted from the act of 
 amnesty. His special worshippers complain, somewhat 
 unreasonably, it seems to me, of this exclusion, and write 
 of the " eternal disgrace " * resulting thence to the city. 
 Certainly the political dissension which separated such a 
 man from his fellow- citizens in person and in heart was 
 a grave misfortune to both parties, and a lasting one to 
 the latter. But could any rational man expect, or advise, 
 if he had been then and there present, that at such a crisis, 
 when the city was straining every nerve to defend itself 
 against the expected attack of the imperial forces, the man 
 should be invited within its walls who had written the 
 letters to the Florentines and the Emperor? 
 
 The third circuit of the walls, which had been left till 
 this time in some parts incomplete, was put into perfect 
 order, and fortified with additional palisades. At the same 
 time news was brought by a secret but sure channel, that 
 Pisa had sent the Emperor sixty thousand golden florins, 
 and the promise of sixty thousand more as soon as he 
 should appear in Tuscany with his army. Of course the 
 Florentines knew well enough that all this gold was both a 
 bribe and a means for Henry to attack them ; and they re- 
 doubled their preparations for resistance. They added a 
 new draft of a thousand horsemen to the city forces, and 
 gave commissions to trusty persons to engage beyond the 
 limits of the State a still larger number. They assigned 
 
 * Misserini, chap. 31. 
 
MURDER OF BRUNELLESCHI, 337 
 
 to " men adapted to this service the care of finding a-b. 
 money ; " * and they formed various new alliances, espe- ^^^^' 
 cially one with the Paduans. 
 
 While Florence was thus intently occupied and anxious, 
 and all thoughts as well as all hands were busy with the 
 cares so urgently needed, there occurred in the city one of 
 those strangely picturesque incidents, which, though mere 
 isolated episodes influencing in no wise the progress of 
 that national life of which a historian is the biographer, 
 yet contribute more to assist a reader in forming for him- 
 self a graphic picture of the social life of a long past epoch, 
 than many a more politically important record. 
 
 The circumstances of Corso Donati's death will be re- 
 membered; and the reader has yet more recently made 
 acquaintance with brave, bluff Betto BruneUeschi, the 
 uncourtly spokesman who so undiplomatically told the 
 truth to the Emperor's ambassadors. Well ! It so hap- 
 pened that Messer Betto, one of the most indignant in 
 the city, as we can well understand him to have been, at 
 Corso Donati's suspected designs of usurping despotic 
 power, was prominent, if not the chief, among those who 
 accused him and hunted him to his death. And on him 
 accordingly the sons and other relatives of Corso, " since 
 they could not revenge themselves on an entire people,"! 
 had determined to avenge the fate of their kinsman. For 
 long months their hatred was impotent ; for BruneUeschi 
 was not a man to be easily surprised, or, when surprised, 
 easily disposed of. But at length, in February, 1312, 
 some assassins posted in ambush succeeded in killing him. 
 " The city," says the historian, " was much disturbed at the 
 news as soon as it became known ; and without any doubt 
 a new civil war would have arisen from this cause had it 
 not been that anxiety about the approach of the Emperor 
 
 * Ammirato, book v. Gonf. 107. t Ammirato, book v. Gonf. 110. 
 
 VOL. I. ^ 
 
338 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. preoccupied the minds of the citizens." The picturesque 
 ' part of the matter, however, was what followed. Corso 
 had been hurriedly buried, it will be remembered, by the 
 monks of San Salvi, without any funeral honours or cere- 
 monies befitting the rank of such a citizen. But his family 
 had felt that the time was not come for offering more 
 fitting obsequies to his memory till his death had been 
 avenged. Now that a victim had fallen, they might 
 venture to do this. So all the family marched out to 
 San Salvi, with a large force of armed retainers, to cele- 
 brate the funeral. Guards were placed at the doors of the 
 church, and armed men took possession of every part of 
 the convent, to provide against surprise either by the 
 friends of Brunelleschi, or by the officers of justice, while 
 the Donati disinterred the corpse and caused a funeral 
 service to be performed "with great lamentation, and 
 pomp of torches, and funeral ceremonies,''^ just as if Corso 
 had died but the day before." The scene presents itself 
 to the imagination as a sufficiently characteristic one. 
 By the side of the public road, at the doors of the convent 
 church, which stands there stUl, though the monks have 
 long been away — the fierce armed figures of the Donati 
 retainers — men, we may suppose, who had followed the 
 fallen leader in many a hard day's fight — -grimly stood on 
 guard with their weapons in their hands. Within, the 
 frightened monks were busily engaged, under the com- 
 pulsion of other armed figures, in their strange task of 
 disturbing the old warrior in his resting-place, and in 
 preparing for the solemn ceremony they were required to 
 perform. When this had been completed, and the body a 
 second time consigned to the grave, the armed members of 
 the family and their followers marched defiantly back into 
 the city, with consciences satisfied and feelings soothed by 
 
 * Ammirato, book v. Gonf. 110. 
 
ATTACK OJET FLORENCE DEFERRED. 339 
 
 the murder and the religious act following it, which they a.d. 
 had accomplished. 
 
 Although Henry had not been in a hurry to come 
 to extremities with Florence, nay had indeed, as we 
 have seen, incurred the blame and objurgations of the 
 Ghibellines for his delay in doing so, and had made every 
 effort to induce the Signory to yield without coming to the 
 arbitrament of arms, it was quite evident that, if the 
 Florentines would not yield, the struggle must come. At 
 length, returning northwards from Rome in September, 
 1313, the Emperor led his army into the immediate 
 vicinity of Florence, but did not think himself strong 
 enough to storm the city. It was the opinion of Villani, 
 that had he done so, he might probably have taken it. 
 His troops, however, and especially the Florentine exiles 
 who were in the army, preferred to employ the time in 
 making predatory excursions on all sides, laying waste the 
 country, every field and building of which they well knew, 
 and knew to whom it belonged ; and thus gratifying their 
 personal hatreds, and deferring the more dangerous task of 
 assaulting the walls. 
 
 But this delay was fatal to the Emperor's chance of 
 taking the city. The people within armed themselves 
 en masse, with the Bishop and clergy and the Gonfalonieri 
 of the different wards at their head. An irresistible 
 enthusiasm and indignation took possession of all classes 
 at the sight of the wanton mischief inflicted on the country 
 by the exiles and tlfe soldiery. And in the mean time came 
 in reinforcements from Siena, Pistoia, Prato, Volterra, Colle, 
 Samminiato— (no longer save in name, "dei Tedeschi") 
 —and Bologna. For fifty days* the Emperor remained 
 at San Salvi, where, coming from Arezzo to about the 
 distance of a mile from the walls, he estabHshed his head- 
 
 ♦ Maoohiavelli, book ii. ad ann. 1312. 
 
 7. 2 
 
A.D. 
 
 1313, 
 
 340 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 quarters, without venturing to attack the city. On the 
 night of the last, day of October, being unwell at the time,* 
 he gave up all hope of being able to take the city, burned 
 his camp, and withdrew his army to San Casciano, on the 
 route to Siena, where he remained till the 7 th of January, 
 1313, laying waste the country, and doing much mischief. 
 Prom thence he went to Poggibonzi, where he remained till 
 the 6th of March, his army suffering much the while 
 from scarcity of food and sickness. He was continually 
 harassed moreover by the Florentines on one side, and by 
 the Sienese on the other, as also by a small force belonging 
 to King Robert of Naples, which was stationed in his im- 
 mediate neighbourhood at CoUe.f In fact he suffered so 
 much, and his army was so seriously diminished by these 
 causes, that when he withdrew thence to Pisa, in the spring, 
 his retreat was very much like a flight. He was very 
 hardly pressed moreover for money, and would have had 
 absolutely none, had not the envoys of King Frederick of 
 Sicily, who came to make a league with him against Robert 
 of Naples, brought him from their master twenty thousand 
 doubloons. 
 
 " Having paid his debts with these," says Villani,J " he 
 left Poggibonzi, and without stopping, returned to Pisa on 
 the 9th of March, in a very bad condition, both he himself 
 and his army. But Henry had this great quality in him, 
 that he was never disturbed by adversity, nor rendered 
 vainglorious by prosperity." 
 
 The Emperor remained at Pisa till the 5th of August, 
 and employed the time in recruiting his army and 
 preparing for a new campaign ; but not against Florence. 
 He determined, says Villani,§ "not to come to blows with 
 the Florentines, nor with others of the Tuscans; seeing 
 that he had advanced his cause little by doing so, but had 
 
 * Tillani, book ix. chap. 47. t "Villani, book ix. chap. 48. 
 
 J Book is. chap. 49, § Book ix, chap, 61. 
 
1313. 
 
 THE EMPEROR'S DEATH. 341 
 
 rather weakened himself than otherwise. His plan now a.d 
 was to entirely renovate his forces, and attack King Robert ' "^" 
 with all his strength, and take from him the kingdom of 
 Naples, believing that if he could succeed in doing 
 that, he would make himself master of all Italy. And 
 assuredly so it would have been, if God had not found a 
 remedy." 
 
 On the 5th of August, the Emperor left Pisa, and 
 marched with all his army by the Val d' Elsa towards 
 Siena; attempting and failing, most unaccountably as it 
 seems at the present day, to take Castel-fiorentino, a httle 
 town, or village rather, on the Elsa, which looks to the 
 passer-by on the railway from EmpoU to Siena, as if a 
 corporal's guard would be abundantly sufficient to secure 
 its submission. Passing beneath the walls of Siena, from 
 one of the gates of which the Sienese were tempted to 
 make a sortie, which was repulsed by the Imperial troops 
 with much loss to the city forces, he pitched his camp on 
 the aheady storied field of Montaperti, on the Arbia. 
 There he was taken ill ; * or rather became more ill ; for 
 the fact would seem to be that he had never entu-ely 
 recovered since he was seized with illness at San 
 Salvi in the previous autumn. Leaving the camp at 
 Montaperti, he went to some thermal baths, in great 
 reputation in those days, at Macereto, on the river 
 Merse, about fourteen miles to the south-west of Siena, on 
 the road to Grosseto. But obtaining no benefit from them, 
 he went thence to the monastery of Buonconvento, which 
 is twelve miles to the south of Siena, on the road to 
 Home ; and there died on the 24th of August, 1313. 
 
 Rarely has any death caused such vivid and wide-spread 
 joy and sorrow, as this of Henry of Luxembourg. To 
 Dante it was the final quenching in dark night of all the 
 
 * Villani, book ix. ckap. 52, 
 
342 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 A.i>. light and the hope of the world,^ — the prevalence of the 
 powers of darkness over the principle of good ; the irre- 
 mediable downfall not only of all his personal hopes, but 
 of a whole world of theories, schemes, and aspirations for 
 the future of Italy and mankind. To the Ghibellines 
 throughout Italy it was a sudden death-blow to a thousand 
 ambitions and expectations, and to such of them as were 
 in exile it dashed - from their lips the cup of hope, and re- 
 consigned them to despair. To the Guelph cities, to 
 Florence above all, and to her kingly ally, Robert, it was 
 indeed a great and timely deliverance. It had been the 
 general opinion that the latter would not have ventured to 
 await the attack which the Emperor was about to lead 
 against him, but would have taken ship, abandoned his 
 Neapolitan kingdom, and escaped to his county of Provence. 
 And then there would have been no other possibility in 
 prospect, but that all Italy should fall into Henry's power. 
 ]?or Florence could not have resisted alone the force, which 
 he would then have been able to bring against her. 
 
 But all these things belong, as has been said, to the 
 • history of what might have been. 
 
 The army which the Emperor had collected, mostly of 
 Italian GhibeUines, broke up and dispersed. The Pisans 
 who were among them, and who had, according to the 
 traditional and immemorial policy and feeling of Pisa, been 
 his especial supporters since his descent into Italy, carried 
 his body to Pisa, and buried it with all royal honours in 
 the cathedral there. 
 
 It was a matter almost of course that such a death, the 
 object of so much rejoicing and so much regret, should in 
 those days be attributed to poison. Medical science was 
 little able to say why any sick man died, and was wholly 
 unable to decide whether or not he had been poisoned. 
 The practice of poisoning was common, and the suspicion 
 of it was therefore of course universal. In this case the 
 
STORY RESPECTINa HENRY'S DEATH. 313 
 
 story went, that a Dominican monk had been suborned by a.b 
 the Florentines to murder his Imperial penitent with a 
 poisoned wafer in administering the Eucharist to him. 
 The tale, which does not appear to have obtained any 
 credit even at the time, was probably a mere Ghibelline 
 invention ; and the perfectly authenticated statements 
 respecting the Emperor's failing health during the whole 
 of the previous year make it quite needless to seek any 
 further for the causes of his death. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Causes of the ill-success of the riorentine popular government— Grhibel- 
 linism encouraged by the Emperor's presence — Lordship of the city- 
 offered to Robert of Naples— Pisa hires troops and puts them under the 
 command of Uguccione della Fagiuola— His character — Peace between 
 the Tuscan cities — Uguccione will not observe the peace — He makes 
 himself Lord of Lucca— Effect of this on Florence— King Uobert sends 
 his brother Pietro Conte di Gravina to Florence as General of the Armies 
 of the Common-wealth— Character of Pietro— Uguccione prepares for 
 -war — The Valdievole— Position of Montecatini— The armies meet 
 beneath that town— King Kobert sends another brother, the Prince of 
 Taranto, to aid the Florentines — Preparations for battle — Battle of 
 Montecatini— Death of the Conte di Gravina— Defeat of the Florentines 
 — How Florence bore the blow — King Robert sends his brother-in-law 
 Beltramo del Bulzo to the Florentines — He is not -well received — The 
 Signory fail to obtain another General from France, or Germany — 
 Creation of the "Bargello" Lando of Gubbio — His atrocious tyranny 
 — King Robert names Guido di Battifolla as his Vicar — His character 
 — Is unable to check the abominations of the Bargello — They are at 
 length put an end to by means of representations to King Robert — The 
 Interminelli rise against Uguccione in Lucca — Castruccio Castraoane — 
 Uguccione loses both Lucca and Pisa — Castracane made Lord of Lucca. 
 
 The great danger, from which Florence had escaped 
 only by the untimely death of the Emperor Henry, ought 
 to have served the Florentines as a lesson and a warning 
 of the absolute necessity of putting an end to their civil 
 discords. They had fully appreciated the greatness of 
 the danger, and were proportionably exultant at the un- 
 expected event which had relieved them from it. But 
 the leaders of the Florentine factions were incorrigible. 
 Yet harder lessons were in store for them ; but they re- 
 mained incorrigible to the end. The story of the Floren- 
 
WANT OF PATRIOTISM. 345 
 
 tine Commonwealth and of its memorable fall has been a.d. 
 again and again appealed to by the adversaries of demo- ^^^^' 
 cratic forms of constitution as a notable confirmation of 
 the truth of their theories of the necessary instability of 
 all government based on the will of the people. But 
 those who would draw such conclusions from the course 
 of Florentine history, have read that history wrong. As 
 far as we have yet proceeded, the moments of brightest 
 hope for the future of the Commonwealth have been 
 those when, during the transitory abeyance and impotence 
 of the leaders of both contending factions, the manage- 
 ment of affairs fell into the hands of the veritable people. 
 The nearest approach to sound principles of constitutional 
 government was made by them. Florence fell, it has 
 been said, despite the ardent patriotism of her citizens, 
 because her government was a democracy. The state- 
 ment is profoundly erroneous. The gross want of patriot- 
 ism among her leading men was fatal to her ; — again and 
 again all but fatal, and finally utterly fatal. True, these 
 men, Guelphs and Ghibellines, Bianchi and Neri, loved 
 Florence, were proud of her greatness, and ready to give 
 of their substance or of their blood to secure it. They 
 loved Florence, but they loved revenge on, and ascendency 
 over, their political adversaries far better. The two loves 
 were not compatible, and they deliberately again and 
 again gave the preference to the latter. Either faction 
 was prepared at any nloment to prefer the rule of a 
 foreigner to that of the party in opposition to them. 
 That this was so is unhappily but too patent throughout 
 the whole course of the history. And let any Englishman 
 allow his mind to dwell for half a moment on the estimate 
 that would be formed among ourselves of the patriotism of 
 a worsted and ousted political party, which should seek 
 foreign aid to vanquish and ruin its opponents ! No ; the 
 Florentine party leaders failed in patriotism. They hated 
 
346 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE, 
 
 A.-D. their adversaries within the city walls far more bitterly 
 
 1ST? 
 
 ■ than they hated any foreign foe. They loved their party 
 far more truly than they loved their country. 
 
 In the extremity of their need and danger some steps 
 had been made, as we have seen, towards a partial recon- 
 ciliation between the party in power and the exiles. But 
 no sooner was that danger past, than fresh struggles be- 
 tween the great Guelph and Ghibelline parties without 
 the walls, and fresh minor quarrels between different 
 factions of the Guelph party within the walls, plunged 
 the city into new misfortunes in the present, and prepared 
 the way for yet worse organic mischiefs in the immediate 
 future. 
 
 Of course the recent events, the presence of the Em- 
 peror in Italy, his schemes and hopes, and the yet larger 
 schemes and hopes that his coming had given rise to in 
 more fervent and less practical minds than his own, had 
 tended to make Italian Ghibellinism more Ghibelline than 
 it had become during the long absence of any emperor 
 from Italy. The stream of social progress, which had 
 forced forward the old feudal Ghibellines into tory-minded 
 citizens, could not be so driven backwards as to resuscitate 
 the old ideas and desires which had iirst been known 
 under that name. There could be no longer any question 
 of overriding, and as it were ignoring cities, and city life, 
 and citizens, or of making an independent and hostile life 
 concurrent with their life. GhibelHne ambitions were 
 civic ambitions now. But the recent hope and effort 
 had consolidated the party, and renewed, and made real, 
 instead of merely legendary, its connection with and 
 dependence on the, Emperor. Nevertheless, there was so 
 little of real political diversity of opinions and ideas be- 
 tween the Ghibellines and their adversaries, and so much 
 of mere personal enmity, and longing desire to be restored 
 to their homes, that even now, if there had been enough 
 
VICAKS OF Kma EGBERT AT rLOUENCE; 347 
 
 of real patriotism in Florence, and of intelligent per- a.b. 
 ception of the needs of the Commonwealth, to have in- 
 duced the ruling party in the city to have made the 
 Emperor's death an opportunity for recalling and amnesty- 
 ing their exiles of all' sorts, the Ghibellinism of them would 
 have been no danger to the State. They would have 
 been Florentine citizens, and not Imperial subjects, to all 
 intents and purposes. And Florence, united within her- 
 self, and able to exert her whole strength against any 
 attack from without, need not have feared all that the 
 Ghibellinism of other cities could have done against her. 
 
 But there was no such amount of virtue or wisdom 
 within the city ; and the city Avent on its way towards 
 its ruin accordingly. 
 
 Already in June, a month or two before the Emperor's 
 death, Florence had offered the government of the city to 
 King Eobert for five years, which term was afterwards 
 increased to eight. He was to send his vicar every six 
 months, who was to rule the city without altering the 
 constitution of the government, but in all other respects 
 according to his own discretion.* 
 
 In the meantime Pisa, which more than any other com- 
 munity had cause to lament the Emperor's death, and 
 dread the consequences of it, endeavoured to provide 
 against the dangers she foresaw by retaining in her pay 
 a considerable number of the German and Flemish troops 
 in the Imperial army. She had, however, some difficulty 
 in V finding a general to command them; for it would 
 seem that it was never for an instant contemplated to 
 entrust the defence of the state to any native Pisan. In 
 the first instance the city applied to Frederick, King of 
 Sicily. But he had already enough trouble on his hands, 
 by reason of the chronic state of warfare between him 
 
 * Villani, book ix. chap. Ivi. ; Ammirato, book v. Goiif. 123. 
 
348 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. and King Robert of Naples, and declined the honour. 
 ^ ' Applications to the Duke of Savoy, and to Henry of Flan- 
 ders, -were equally unsuccessful. Thus disappointed, the 
 Ghibelline city turned its eyes on TJguccione della Fagi- 
 uola, -who has already been mentioned as a military 
 adventurer from Romagna, whose valour and ability had 
 acquired for him a great reputation. He had always 
 been connected with the GrhibeUine parly, and the Em- 
 peror had appointed him his lieutenant in Genoa. By 
 Henry's death, therefore, he was left disposable, and on 
 the look-out for something to do, just when the Pisans 
 were in search of a captain for their army. So a bargain 
 was quickly struck between them ; and Pisa was pro- 
 bably much better served than she would have been by 
 either of the royal personages she had been anxious to 
 take into her pay. 
 
 TJguccione della Fagiuola was certainly a remarkable 
 man. Of herculean frame, and singularly expressive 
 features, personally brave to excess, and habitually using 
 arms heavier and larger than other men could wield, he 
 was admirably fitted to acquire the respect and regard of 
 his soldiers, and to be the popular hero of his citizen 
 paymasters. Della Fagiuola had, however, more valuable 
 qualities than these. He was a man of unbounded energy 
 and activity, fertile in resource, and had shown himself a 
 very competent master of the art of war. 
 
 " It was a wonderful thing," says Ammirato,'^^ " to see 
 the sudden change in the appearance of things at Pisa, 
 which his arrival occasioned." He brought with him a 
 good band of troopers, formed by himself, and accus- 
 tomed to fight under him as their leader. And with 
 these, added to the forces Pisa had already gathered 
 together, TJguccione decided on commencing hostilities at 
 
 * Book V. Gonf, 126. 
 
UGUCCIONE BELLA. PAGIUOLA. 349 
 
 once, instead of waiting to be attacked. He had already ^.r. 
 regained several of the fortresses, which Lucca and Flo- ^'^^^' 
 rence together had in old times taken from the Pisans, 
 and was in the full course of success, when Pisa was in- 
 duced to join Florence, Siena, and Lucca in sending 
 ambassadors to King Robert for the arrangement of 
 peace, which was in fact concluded between all these 
 cities on the twenty-sixth of March, 1314. 
 
 But such a peace, however much for the interests of the 
 merchants of Pisa, was not at all for the interests of their 
 hired general Uguccione della Fagiuola. And as, being at 
 the head of a mercenary army, no better pleased than its 
 general to find its occupation gone, the power was irreme- 
 diably in his hands, the Pisans found themselves in a 
 position to be enlightened as to the consequences of hiring 
 professional soldiers to fight their battles for them, instead 
 of fighting them, if battles there must needs be, them- 
 selves. Despite the peace, Uguccione, at the head of his 
 troops, continued to overrun the territory of Lucca, and 
 pressed the city so hard, that the Lucchese, " to their in- 
 finite disgrace," says Ammirato,* and, at all events, to the 
 infinite disgust of the Florentines, were reduced to sur- 
 render at discretion, to give up to Pisa the castle of Ripa- 
 fratta, a strong position between Lucca and Pisa (now a 
 railroad station), and to consent to the re-admission into 
 the city of the great Grhibelhne family of the Interminelli, 
 who had been long in exile. 
 
 In vain Florence protested that by the terms of the 
 alliance between herself and Lucca, the latter had no right 
 to give up towns or fortresses to the common enemy with- 
 out the consent of her ally ; and reminded the Lucchese 
 that this very castle of Ripafratta had been taken from 
 Pisa some sixty years ago by Florentine valour, and had 
 
 * Book Y. Gonf. 128. 
 
350 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. been given by Florence to Lucca. The deed was done, 
 ^^^*- and Lucca had no power to help it. So little power in- 
 deed had she to help herself, that very shortly after the 
 admission of the Interminelli into the city, a conspiracy 
 was organised between Uguccione and the members of 
 that family, aided by the other leading Ghibellines of 
 Lucca, by which the successful soldier of fortune was ad- 
 mitted, together with his soldiers, into the city, and the 
 entire government given up into his hands. 
 
 The sudden and complete revolution thus accomplished, 
 attended as it was by an amount of pillage and violence 
 almost equivalent to a sacking of the city, and by the ruin 
 and flight of a great number of the industrious artizans of 
 Lucca, was felt as a great blow by Florence. In the 
 words of the historian, * " a very great dread and terror 
 fell upon the Florentines," when the tidings reached them. 
 The alliance with Lucca had always been considered by 
 the Florentine statesmen as the turn in the balance of 
 power in Tuscany, which gave them the upper hand 
 against Pisa. The calculation was, that Arezzo and Pisa 
 were about an equal match for Florence and Siena ; and 
 that the alliance of Lucca with either of the two sides so 
 constituted was sufficient to turn the scale in favour of the 
 party which could secure her adherence. The revolution, 
 which delivered the city into the power of Uguccione 
 della Fagiuola, of course, bound her to the Pisan and 
 GhibeUine interest; and the fears in Florence for the 
 result of this were, as was soon seen, not without good 
 grounds. 
 
 It is not the less true, however, that the violence, not 
 less impolitic than cruel, which drove a large body of the 
 skilled artizans of "Lucca V Industriosa" from their 
 homes, was eventually a source of quite incalculable profit 
 
 * Ammirato, book v. Gonf. 129. 
 
CONTE DI GRAVIKA AT TLORENCE. 351 
 
 to Florence, in exactly the same manner in which England 
 was profited by the persecution which drove the skilful 
 Huguenot silk weavers from their French homes to Spital- 
 fields. It is curious that the industry imported with them 
 by the fugitives was in this case also mainly the same ;— 
 that of silk-workers. The silk trade received a check in 
 Lucca, and an impetus in Florence, from that displacement 
 of skill and industry, which reversed the relative positions 
 of the two cities in this branch of industry and commerce, 
 and secured the superiority to Florence for all the gene- 
 rations that have come and gone from that day to this. 
 
 The first step taken by the Florentine Signory on the 
 fall of Lucca, was to send envoys to King Robert, charged 
 to point out to him all the dangers that threatened the 
 Guelph cause, in consequence of this disaster, and to beg 
 him to send them immediate help. The King complied 
 with the demand by despatching in all haste his youngest 
 brother Pietro, Count of Gravina, at the head of three 
 hundred horse, who arrived in Florence on the 18th of 
 August, 1314. The Count of Gravina was a very young 
 man, and not likely to be of much service as a general to 
 oppose to such a warrior as Uguccione della Fagiuola. 
 But he was a prince and a foreigner ; and the Florentines 
 as usual were delighted at his arrival, and received him 
 with every possible manifestation of the most cordial wel- 
 come. " Though very young, he was by nature prudent 
 and discreet. He allowed no sign of the pride and 
 haughtiness of royalty to appear in his intercourse with 
 the citizens ; but behaved courteously to them ; and made 
 it evident to all that, looking upon the interests of Florence 
 as his own, he had acted with the utmost promptitude in 
 turning his attention to their affairs. And to all these ex- 
 cellencies, or appearances of excellencies, he added the 
 natural advantages of remarkable beauty both of face and 
 person ; and in a short space so won the affections of the 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1314. 
 
352 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 -i.B. citizens, that it was tliouo-ht that if he had lived, the 
 
 1314 
 
 Florentines would have conferred on him the lordship of 
 their city for his life."* 
 
 The young prince began his exercise of power well and 
 prudently by arranging a peace with Arezzo. He used 
 also the invidious power, which had been entrusted to him, 
 of. nominating by his sole authority all the magistrates of 
 the Commonwealth, judiciously, by placing in ofl&ce a 
 Signory which commanded the respect and adhesion of all 
 classes in the city. Averardo de' Medici, great-great- 
 grandfather of Cosmo Pater Patrice, was named Gonfa- 
 loniere ; and in the list of the Priori we find, among other 
 distinguished but less well-known names, those of Soderini 
 and Giotto Peruzzi, the head of the great Peruzzi firm, and 
 at that time probably the wealthiest merchant and banker 
 in Europe. 
 
 Uguccione della Fagiuola, meanwhile, who, "holding 
 Lucca on his own account, began to behave towards 
 the Pisans themselves more after the fashion of a prince 
 than of their hired captain," f was not losing his time. 
 He employed himself in preparing the way for more 
 serious and vitally important hostilities by doing as much 
 desultory mischief as he could to the territory of the 
 enemy, making raids and incursions, burning farms, de- 
 stroying crops, and capturing isolated fortresses, after the 
 usual fashion of that day, which recognised no distinction 
 between fighting and non-fighting classes of the popula- 
 tion, which knew no other war-code than that which 
 declared, that he who is not for us is against us, and 
 which sought by every means to do all the evil possible to 
 every one thus compendiously condemned, and to extend 
 the horrors of warfare to as large a surface of the hostile 
 territory as possible. 
 
 * Ammirato, book v. Gonf. 131. •)■ Ammirato, loc. cit 
 
THE VAL DI NIEVOLE. 353 
 
 The Florentines on their part were pursuing a similar a.d. 
 pohcy ; and succeeded in getting possession of almost all ^^^^' 
 those outlying towns, castles, and portions of territory 
 which Lucca held in the lower Valdarno, as Fucecchio, 
 Montecalvi, Castelfranco, Montopoli, &c. They were 
 active also on the other side of Lucca in the Val di 
 Nievole, in which they captured Monsummano and Mon- 
 tecatini. 
 
 If Tuscany be, as it has often been called, the garden of 
 Italy, the Val di Nievole is the garden of Tuscany. The 
 traveller, setting his face from Pistoia towards Lucca, 
 begins his journey of some twenty-five miles by chmbing a 
 spur of the Apennine of no great height, which divides the 
 Ombrone valley around Pistoia from that of the Nievole, 
 and on which still stands the ancient castle of Serravalle, 
 destined to defend this pass, so important in the wars of 
 the period under review. The traveller indeed no longer 
 climbs the height, but dashes through it, and under the 
 ragged old towers of the castle, by a railway tunnel, and 
 pays for the convenience by losing one of the most 
 lovely views in Tuscany. The many-shaped hills and 
 picturesquely-broken ground around him are richly 
 covered with woods of oak, beech, and chestnut ; and 
 the wonderful luxuriance of the valley beneath, stretch- 
 ing away to Lucca, teeming with corn and wine and 
 oil, and fruits of every description, the earliest and the 
 finest in Tuscany, and thickly studded with towns and 
 villages, white glistening villas and grey church towers, 
 laughs in the all-gilding sunshine, the very picture of 
 peaceful industry, abounding plenty, and measureless con- 
 tent. 
 
 In the midst of this rarely spread scene of beauty and 
 riches, down in the flat bottom of the valley, is the 
 modern town of Montecatini, the Tuscan Cheltenham, 
 with its white stone buildings,— pump-rooms, churches, 
 
A.B. 
 
 1315. 
 
 354 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 hotels, bathing estabhshments — gathered around the 
 health-giving springs, and shining out brightly among the 
 green world in which it is embosomed. The waters were 
 well known and much esteemed in the old Roman time. 
 And the very frequent mention of gout in the mediaeval 
 chronicles, to an extent which would seem to indicate 
 that the malady must have been more common in those 
 days of activity than it is in these idler times in Tus- 
 cany, may perhaps indicate that they were more neglected 
 than was wise in the mediaeval centuries. This thermal 
 establishment stands at the foot of the steep mountain 
 side which shuts in the valley to the north-east. And 
 high above it, on the crest of the mountain, is the old 
 mediaeval town of Montecatini, with its fragments of town- 
 walls, and the towers of its own strong castles, one at 
 either extremity of the long crescent-shaped line of 
 buildings, which top the height. It makes a very 
 imposing appearance even yet, as seen from the valley 
 below it ; and in the fourteenth century was a very 
 important and strong military position. 
 
 This fortress-town had been taken since the disaster 
 at Lucca by the Florentine forces, as has been said ; and 
 now Uguccione marched his army up the valley from 
 Lucca to regain it. The enterprise was strategically a 
 very important one ; and it soon became apparent that 
 it would turn out to be the great struggle of the war. 
 Uguccione came into the field with all his forces ; and 
 Florence in alarm sent urgent messages to King Robert 
 to despatch them more assistance. He would have wished, 
 we are told, to send his son, the Duke of Calabria, with 
 an important and well-organised force. But as the need 
 was too urgent to admit of delay, he consented -to the 
 pressing entreaties of the Florentine envoys, that he 
 would allow his brother, the Prince of Taranto, to go 
 with a hastily raised force of five hundred horse. This 
 
THE TWO ARMIES. 355 
 
 prince, who had the reputation of being more brave a.b. 
 and reckless than skilful or fortunate in war, arrived ^^^^ 
 in Florence, bringing his son Carlo with him, on the 
 11th of July, 1315. And the Florentines, thus rein- 
 forced, lost no time in marching to meet the forces of the 
 enemy. 
 
 They had strained every nerve to collect a powerful 
 army. All the communities with which they were on 
 friendly terms, had been asked to send their aid. There 
 were in the Florentine army Bolognese, Siennese, men 
 from Citta di Castello, from Gubbio, Perugia, Pistoia, 
 Volterra, Prato, and other places of smaller mark, 
 besides the mercenaries brought by Pietro, Count di 
 Gravina, and the Prince of Taranto ; in all a host of three 
 thousand two hundred cavaliers, and a very large 
 number of infantry. These forces left Florence on the 
 6 th of August. 
 
 Uguccione had the veterans of the Emperor Henry's 
 army, who had been hired by Pisa ; and these, with his 
 own band, which had accompanied him from Genoa, 
 were the mainstay of his army. His force, however, was 
 increased by the troops of Lucca, by those of his allies 
 Maffeo Visconti, the Bishop of Arezzo, and the Count of 
 Santafiora, and by all the Ghibelline exiles from Florence. 
 But his entire army was considerably inferior to that of 
 the Florentines, at all events in mounted troops, of which 
 he had only two thousand five hundred. 
 
 He also had a " vast quantity " of foot soldiers ; but, 
 as usual, the number of these is not stated. They were 
 esteemed of so little importance, that the historians- 
 rarely took the trouble to speak of them otherwise than as 
 " an infinite quantity," — " a vast crowd," — " an uncount- 
 able number," or such-like phrases. 
 
 The two armies came in face of each other in the 
 valley below Montecatini, having only the small streamlet 
 
 A A 2 
 
356 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 ^■^i of the Nievole between them. And in that position they 
 remained several days watching each other, and engaging 
 in a few isolated and unimportant skirmishes, neither party 
 being anxious, as it would seem, to bring on a general 
 engagement. Meantime all Italy, as we are assured by 
 the contemporary historians, was awaiting in the utmost 
 anxiety the result of the expected battle ; and it was 
 universally felt . that upon the issue of it depended the 
 future fortunes of the two great parties, which divided 
 between them, with a more or less sharply marked line of 
 division, the whole peninsula. 
 
 At length, on the 28th of August, tidings reached 
 Uguccione that the Guelphs of the country around Lucca, 
 prompted and aided by emissaries from Florence, had 
 succeeded in breaking up and barring the route by which 
 provisions reached the army from Lucca. His position 
 was thus rendered untenable. Burning therefore his 
 camp defences in the course of that night, he was found 
 by the Florentine army in the morning, with his entire 
 force so arranged as to be ready for battle, if he should 
 be attacked, or for moving off in the direction of Pisa, if 
 the enemy should permit his doing so undisturbed. 
 
 The Florentine leaders, who had during all this time 
 been over-weeningly confident in their superior numbers, 
 while the Ghibelline general had been aware that nothing 
 but extreme caution, vigilance, and prudence could make 
 up for his inferiority in that respect, did not hesitate an 
 instant about attacking him. As soon as ever the light 
 of dawn showed that he was on the move, the news that 
 the Ghibelline army was in flight ran through the 
 Florentine camp ; and the French princes rushed to the 
 attack with such haste, that considerable confusion 
 prevailed in the ranks of their army, and many of the 
 men-at-arms had not even time to put on their armour 
 completely. 
 
BATTLE OF MONTECATINI. 357 
 
 The first attack was made by the feditori* of the a.d. 
 Ghibelline army, on a corps of Siemiese and men of Colle, ^^^^' 
 who, being unable to withstand the onset, fell back on the 
 body of Florentine cavalry under the Count of Gravina, 
 followed up by the feditori as they retreated. The body 
 of Florentine horsemen, however, stood firm, and not only 
 so supported the Siennese as to enable them to reform 
 themselves, but destroyed almost entirely the band of 
 feditori. Among them fell Francesco della Pagiuola, the 
 son of TJguccione, a young man of much promise, and 
 Giovanni Malispini, a Florentine exile of note. Never- 
 theless the Florentine army, which, having begun the 
 battle without having taken the necessary time to arrange 
 itself in due order, had not recovered the confusion 
 resulting thence, was not able to withstand the shock of 
 the main body of the enemy. And when the death of his 
 son was told to TJguccione on the field, as he was just 
 about to charge at the head of the band of eight hundred 
 German veterans, the tidings added such fury to his 
 onslaught, that the wavering squadrons of the enemy 
 gave way ; and though the Florentines and the Count of 
 Gravina strove to stand firm, and did check the enemy 
 for a short time, the rout soon became universal, and the 
 greatest battle in which the Florentines had ever yet been 
 engaged was lost irreparably. 
 
 The young Count of Gravina, and his nephew, the son 
 of the Prince of Taranto, both fell ; and the body of the 
 former was never found. Two thousand of the Florentine 
 army were left slain on the field ; and one thousand five 
 hundred were taken prisoners. The proportion of men 
 of note and name among the killed was especially large. 
 The Prince of Taranto and the remainder of the army 
 fled in utter rout and confusion, some to Pistoia, and 
 
 * It will be remembered that these "attackers" were a sort of forlorn 
 hope, selected for this especial duty. 
 
358 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OE FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. some to Fucecchio. This terrible battle and complete 
 defeat took place on the 29th of August, 1315, a day 
 remembered with shame and sorrow for many years 
 afterwards on the banks of the Arno.* 
 
 The shock of this great disaster, however, did not suffice 
 to prevent the Florentines from showing themselves im- 
 mediately after it curiously unchangeable, both in their 
 good and in their evil characteristics. They were not 
 frightened into losing heart, or thinking for an instant of 
 yielding, or modifying their political principles, or neg- 
 lecting instant means for repairing their broken forces. 
 Nor, on the other hand, were they frightened into concord 
 among themselves. Other people have generally found, 
 in foreign war at least, the advantage of a cessation from 
 internal discord. But the fighting energy of these 
 Florentines was such, that they would fight one day 
 shoulder to shoulder against the foreign enemy, and the 
 next, fly at each other's throats in the streets of their 
 own city. 
 
 Deeply as the defeat of Montecatini was felt in Florence, 
 the old historian boasts f that not for a day did the 
 Florentine workmen cease from plying their various crafts ; 
 nor did the Signory lose a day in taking measures to 
 repair the mischief, by raising money, making new levies, 
 and hiring fresh troops. They sent off envoys instantly to 
 the King of Naples, asking for a Hew general and more 
 men. And King Robert, since one of his brothers had 
 fallen, and another had disgraced himself in their service, 
 sent them this time his brother-in-law, the Count Beltramo 
 del Balzo, with two hundred horsemen. 
 
 He found, however, on arriving in Florence, that a very 
 large portion of the citizens were unwilling to receive him, 
 and were anxious to break off their connection with the 
 
 * Villani, book ix. chaps. lxx.,lxxi.,lzxii.; Ammirato, bookv.; Gonf. 136. 
 + Yillani, book ix. chap. 74, 
 
EFFORTS OF THE FLORENTINES. 359 
 
 King. The new Signory, which came into office shortly a.d. 
 after the application had been made to King Robert, were ^^^^' 
 of this mind • and they were supported by Messer Simone 
 della Tosa, a man of great influence in the city, and by a 
 great portion of the people. Disaster had produced its 
 usual effect of disgusting the defeated with the govern- 
 ment and the generals under whose guidance it had fallen 
 upon them. But though the new Signory were backed by 
 the larger part both of the great families and the people, 
 it was impossible to find any means of breaking with the 
 King before the ten years, during which the supreme 
 authority had been entrusted to him, should be at an 
 end. 
 
 Under these circumstances, they determined at least to 
 reduce the authority iii the city of the new royal Vicar, 
 Count del Balzo, to the smallest possible amount. With 
 this view, they sent envoys first into France and then into 
 Germany, for the purpose of engaging some leader of dis- 
 tinction, who, with his following of troops, might eclipse 
 and make a nullity of King Robert's vicar. But neither 
 of the negotiations was successful. Still, however, deter- 
 mined to find some means of attaining their object, they 
 had recourse to an extraordinary step, the possibility of 
 which proves fatally how little had been done in demo- 
 cratic Florence for the security of individual liberty, and 
 how entirely all the efforts of the democracy in its re- 
 peated and successful attempts to liberate themselves from 
 the authority of the nobles, had aimed in no degree at 
 securing guarantees for good government and the personal 
 freedom of the citizens, but wholly at obtaining the power 
 of exercising themselves the irresponsible power of which 
 they saw the evil in other hands. 
 
 When the two attempts to bring foreign aid from Ger- 
 many or from France had both failed, the party opposed 
 to the continuance of the authority of the Kings of Naples, 
 
360 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. consisting of the Signory in office, of Simone della Tosa 
 ' and his adherents among the great families, and of a large 
 — probably the larger — portion of the people, determined 
 on creating a new and special office, for the purpose of 
 placing in it a creature of their own, a man on whom they 
 had cast their eyes, as thoroughly adapted to the carrying 
 into execution of their designs. He was called the " Bar- 
 gello" — a name which in after times became but too fami- 
 liar a household word in Florence — and his duty was the 
 execution of the orders of the Signory, without other form 
 of law or warranty than the simple bidding of his masters. 
 The man, who was brought into Florence for this purpose, 
 was one Lando, of Gubbio, whose antecedent history had 
 nothing in it to distinguish him from any other low-born 
 ruffian, but whose short tenure of office in Florence has 
 made his name a by-word of infamy and terror among 
 the Florentines to this day. His qualifications for the 
 position, and for the strange excess of power and authority 
 confided to him, seem to have consisted solely of thoroughly 
 unscrupulous ferocity, prompt and resolute determination, 
 unflinching nerve, and bulldog-like fidelity to his employers. 
 Five hundred foot soldiers and fifty horsemen were placed 
 at his disposition ; and the tocsin bell was given into his 
 keeping. 
 
 " The party in power created and made a largello, one 
 Lando d'Agobbio, a bloodthirsty and cruel man ; and on 
 the 1st of May, 1316, they gave him the banner {gonfa- 
 lone) and lordship ; and this man stood continually at the 
 foot of the stair of the Palazzo de' Priori with five valets 
 armed with headsman's axes." This is the curt and crude 
 statement of Villani ; * and he goes on to relate how, 
 under pretext of suspicion of Grhibellinism, this man pro- 
 ceeded to decimate the party opposed to the government. 
 
 * Book ix. chap. Ixxvi. 
 
THE "BARGELLO." 361 
 
 Without any warrant, save a secret hint from the Signory *■»• 
 to their executioner, citizens were seized in the midst of 
 their famihes, and, without even form of trial, led to 
 immediate execution. In a word, a reign of terror was 
 established in Florence ; and the people seem to have 
 been entirely, and one may say unaccountably, cowed and" 
 panic-stricken by it. It seems inconceivable that a popu- 
 lation, which had again and again risen in arms, and made 
 the city a battle-field on some party question as to the 
 distribution of office and power — which had an organised 
 machinery specially provided for the facilitation of such 
 risings — should have remained passive under such a 
 tyranny, and have offered their throats like sheep to the 
 slaughterer without resistance. Yet such was unquestion- 
 ably the case. The historians* speak very shortly of this 
 period, offering no word of comment or explanation of the 
 extraordinary, patience of the city under the infliction ; 
 apparently as if they were ashamed of dwelling on facts 
 so humiliating. But the probability seems to be, that all 
 the mechanism and habitudes of insurrection and resist- \f 
 ance were adapted to the case of class rising against class. 
 And the division of the city, which led to this hateful state 
 of things, was not a class division. Had it continued, it 
 would doubtless have soon become such. But while the 
 terror lasted there were men of every class — nobles, great 
 burghers, and populace — on either side. 
 
 This episode of a Florentine reign of terror affords a 
 notable instance of the wide difference there may be 
 between constitutional guarantees as to the persons to 
 whom the power of governing shall be confided, and 
 guarantees as to the mode in which that power shall be 
 exercised. The Florentine democracy had been wholly 
 intent on the former; and had entirely neglected the 
 
 * Villani, loc. cit. ; Ammirato, book v. ; Gonf. 139 ; Coppo Stefani, book 
 V. ; P.ubr. 319. 
 
362 HISTOET OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 ^■^- latter object. "By whom shall power be exercised 1" 
 and not "How shall it be exercised V had ever been the 
 question in Florence. The democracy of Florence was a 
 better and more civilising government than the despotisms 
 which were its contemporaries, because the objects at 
 which the popular power aimed were better. But the 
 modes in which it sought to achieve them were fre- 
 quently as tyrannical in principle as the edicts of a despot 
 could be. 
 
 The abominable presence of this Lando of Gubbio in the 
 city did not last for much more than four months. But 
 it was put an end to in an accidental manner, almost 
 equally characteristic of another, though less serious, 
 weakness of the Florentine character'. 
 
 The Count Beltramo del Balzo, finding himself a mere 
 cipher in the city, without any power, and in a false posi- 
 tion, had easily yielded to the desires of those who wished 
 to break with the King, and had quitted Florence. The 
 party in opposition, however, who desired to continue 
 the connection of the city with King Eobert, sent mes- 
 sengers to him secretly, telling him the miserable state of 
 things in Florence, and imploring him to send them 
 another vicar. And this time Robert, who was by no 
 means willing to break ofi" an alliance which afforded him 
 at need most valuable and available support in sundry 
 ways, named Count Guido di Battifolle as his vicar. This 
 nobleman belonged to a branch of the great Guidi family, 
 which, separating itself from the rest of the race, had 
 embraced Guelph principles at a very early date. The 
 Guidi di Battifolle had for many generations been known 
 as strong and staunch Guelphs. The new vicar was a 
 man very highly respected personally, well known in 
 Florence, where he had many friends, and exercising con- 
 siderable influence in the country around. It was hoped 
 that such a man might be able to win over the. good 
 
A.D. 
 
 LANDO OF GTJBBIO DISMISSED. 363 
 
 opinion of the city to the King ; and, at all events, it _._. 
 would be impossible to accuse him of Ghibelline ten- ^^^^' 
 dencies. 
 
 Count Guide came, and seems to have been unmolested, 
 but was wholly without any power or influence in the 
 city, and quite unable to put any check to the doings of 
 the Bargello. Things went on thus till the autumn, when 
 it so chanced that the daughter of Albert of Germany 
 passed through Florence on her way to be married to the 
 Duke of Calabria, son of the King of Naples. The King's 
 brother, Gianni, the Archbishop of Capua, the Lord Trea- 
 surer, and Count Beltramo, the late vicar, together with 
 a large company of great personages, came to meet the 
 bride at Florence. Of course the citizens were as usual 
 delighted at receiving so many great folks ; and in their 
 good humour suffered themselves to be persuaded so far 
 to become reconciled with the faction that had always 
 remained attached to the King, as to allow six priors of 
 that party to be added at the next election to the seven 
 of the other faction. And this measure of conciliation so 
 far modified the tone of the government, that when King 
 Robert, who had heard, on the arrival of his intended 
 daughter-in-law and her escort, of the state of things in 
 Florence, wrote to the government insisting that the 
 Bargello should be dismissed, the Signory complied with 
 the demand, and Florence was relieved of his presence in 
 the course of the October of that year. 
 
 But while these events were taking place in Florence, 
 after the great defeat of Montecatini, circumstances were 
 occurring in , Pisa and Lucca, in both of which cities 
 Uguccione della Fagiuola was now exercising absolute 
 power, that had a more important bearing on the future 
 fortunes of all three communities. 
 
 Notwithstanding the success which had attended his 
 arms, and the advantages Pisa had gained by the ability 
 
364 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.I). and valour of her general, there were discontents in the 
 ■ city, and a party of the citizens, which could ill tolerate 
 the metamorphosis of their hired captain into their tyrant. 
 They ought to have known that the change was but a 
 development as normal as that of a chrysalis into a 
 butterfly. But they either knew it not, or liked the re- 
 sult none the better for knowing it. The consequence 
 was that TJguccione, the successful soldier of fortune, 
 found it necessary to his safety to seize and behead 
 Messer Banduccio Bonconti, one of the principal and 
 most esteemed citizens of Pisa, and his son. The in- 
 dignation of the city at this deed was deep and general. 
 But the Pisans had chosen to set a successful soldier over 
 them, and were obliged to take the natural consequences. 
 
 In Lucca, TJguccione had deputed his son, a brother of 
 the youth who was killed under Montecatini, to rule as 
 his deputy. And there also the citizens were beginning 
 to chafe a little under the yoke, and with more of reason 
 too than their neighbours of Pisa, for they had not placed 
 it on their necks themselves. The blow, however, which 
 avenged Lucca on her conqueror and oppressor was dealt 
 by the last man among all the Lucchese from whom 
 TJguccione might have expected it. The great Ghibelline 
 family of the Interminelli were recalled from exile, as 
 has been mentioned, as one of the consequences of the 
 conquest of the city. And it had been by the assistance 
 of this powerful clan that Delia Fagiuola had been able 
 to seize the supreme power in the state. 
 
 It was quite, however, according to the normal sequence 
 of cause and effect in such cases, that jealousy should 
 soon arise between the tyrant and those by whose in- 
 fluence he had risen to power. The Interminelli were 
 too powerful to make safe subjects. There was one man 
 among them, especially, whose character and qualities 
 rendered him dangerous to the foreign tyrant. He was 
 
CASTEUCCIO CASTRACANE. 365 
 
 not by birth a leading man among tbem, being a scion of a-b- 
 a younger branch of the great clan. But he was one of ^^^^' 
 those men who are destined to leave their mark in the 
 world's history either as great criminals or great heroes, 
 or both, according to the aspect of the times in which 
 their lot shall have been cast. Castruccio Castracane 
 degli Interminelli was fortunate in this respect. He was 
 exactly fitted for his epoch. Resolute, prompt, and bold; 
 excelling in all personal military exercises ; unscrupulous, 
 and full of resource ; aspiring, but aspiring only to such 
 things as were the recognised objects of ambition in the 
 world around him ; up to the highest mark of his time 
 and his class, but not one jot in advance of it ; with 
 ability sufficient to play his part in the council-chamber 
 as well as in the battle-field, and to comprehend political 
 schemes larger than those confined within the limits of 
 his little state, — he had the qualities needed for a popular 
 hero in that age and clime. He had seen the world too ; 
 having, when left an orphan at twenty years of age, 
 passed some time in England, where some of his family 
 had large commercial interests, and afterwards travelled 
 in France. He was born in 1280, and was therefore at 
 the time in question thirty-six years old. 
 
 It was on the 10th of April, 1316, that young Delia 
 Fagiuola, heutenant in Lucca for his father, seized a pre- 
 text for throvring this dangerous man into prison. Of 
 course the intention was to take his hfe. To have thus 
 affronted and broken with him, and then to allow him to 
 live, would have been madness indeed. Nevertheless the 
 young Heutenant, when he had taken the first step, feared 
 to take the second. He had meshed the quarry in his 
 toils, but dared not strike the blow that was to despatch 
 him. 
 
 In this difficulty he sent for his father from Pisa. On 
 hearing the state of the case, Uguccione lost not a minute 
 
366 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.D. in startnie; for Lucca with all his own more immediate 
 ■ following of troops. He had perhaps forgotten the fate 
 of Banduccio Bonconti and his son. But if he had, the 
 Pisans had not. And scarcely had he rounded the shoul- 
 der of the mountain which, as Dante says, hides Lucca 
 from Pisa, when the city rose in sudden and unanimous 
 insurrection ; and first rushing to the palace in which he 
 resided, and there putting to death every member of his 
 family, proclaimed the usurper deposed, and elected Gaddo 
 della Gherardesca lord of the city. 
 
 The tradition goes, that the first care of Uguccione, 
 after his march from Pisa to Lucca, was to dine. He was 
 a huge eater, we are told, and " liked to dine," equally 
 disliking of course to be disturbed in his enjoyment. 
 And unfortunately the news of what was taking place in 
 Pisa, which had followed him to Lucca, reached him just 
 as he was beginning his repast. It is said that had he 
 instantly hurried back to Pisa he might, with the force at 
 his command, have quelled the rebellion there at once. 
 But Uguccione could not tear himself from a well-spread 
 table. As soon as he had dined, he would give the 
 Pisans a lesson, but not till then. But when that time 
 came it was too late. The tidings of the insurrection of 
 Pisa had then been spread through all Lucca, and now 
 the well-dined usurper had two cities in revolt to deal 
 with instead of one only. 
 
 Although he would not ride to Pisa while waiting for 
 his dinner, Uguccione had found time before seating him- 
 self at table' to order the execution of the prisoner, for 
 the despatching of whom he had come thither. The 
 block had already been prepared ; the headsman was 
 ready, and Castruccio had been brought out to undergo 
 his fate, when the sudden rising of the city saved him. 
 Somebody was needed on the spur of the moment to head 
 the rebelHon and accept the dangerous position of lord 
 
CASTRUCCIO CASTRACANE. 367 
 
 of the city in opposition to the not yet defeated tyrant. 
 The great name and recognised merits of Castruccio, as 
 well as a sort of fitness arising from the narrow escape he 
 had had from the tyrant's hand, pointed to him as the 
 man for the place and the time. And he thus stepped 
 from the scaffold to the sovereignty of his native city. 
 
 Overwhelmed by this second disaster, Uguccione seems 
 to have lost his wonted energy and decision. He gave 
 up all for lost, and getting as best he might out of the 
 city with his son, he rode for Verona, then under the rule 
 of his old ally, Cane della Scala. 
 
 So Castruccio Castracane became lord of Lucca, and 
 TJguccione della Fagiuola, — as the Florentine tale of that 
 terrible ogre ran for many a generation afterwards, — ate 
 up two cities at one meal. 
 
 1316. 
 
BOOK III. 
 
 FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR WITH CASTRUCCIO, 
 A.D. 1320, 
 
 THE CLOSE OF THE WAR WITH THE ROMAN COURT AT 
 THE DEATH OP GREGORY 21., a.b. 1378. 
 
 58 TEARS. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Influence of Florence on the politics of Europe— Becrease of military and 
 increase of commercial aptitudes — Banking business of Florence — 
 Peace from 1315 to 1320— Italian G-hibellinism in the fourteenth century 
 — Florentine constitutional failures— Political division of Italy — What 
 the modern world owes to Florence — Influence of the " fuorusciti" — 
 Castruocio Castracane — Maehiavelli's account of him — Motive that 
 induced Florence to take part in the wars of Lombardy — ^Matteo 
 Visconti — Incites Castruocio to make war on Florence — Castruccio 
 commences the campaign — Tariff questions between Florence and 
 Bologna — Philip of Valois in Italy — Death of Uguccione della Fagiuola 
 — Florentine demonstration against Lucca — Florentines induce Spinetta 
 Malispini to attack Castruccio — He meets the Florentine army at 
 Montevettolino — The Florentine army falls back on Florence — Council 
 of " popolani " created for the management of the war — Mercenary 
 troops hired — ^Death of Dante — ^Notice of him by Villani — Florence in 
 alliance with the Pope — Death of Matteo Visconti — The Pope coins 
 counterfeit florins — Insurrection of Milan — ■ Winter expedition of 
 Castruccio in the Pistoia mountains — Count Beltramo del Balzo 
 general of the Florentines — Valdarno ravaged by Castruccio — The 
 people march out of Florence to defend Prato from Castruccio — Floren- 
 tine forces pursue Castruccio into the Valdarno — Difference of opinion 
 in the Florentine camp — Referred to the senate — -Florentine boys force 
 the decision of the senate — The nobles by treachery cause the return of 
 the army to Florence — Armed bandit exiles threaten Florence — 
 Treasons of the nobles — Failure of the means adopted to keep down the 
 nobles — Intrigues of Castruccio — He obtains possession of Pistoia — 
 Political feeling in Florence — Raimondo di Cardona arrives in Florence 
 — His first exploits — Determination in Florence to fight a pitched 
 battle with Castruccio — Formal declaration of war, 8th June, 1325 — 
 Florentine forces — Castruccio refuses battle before Pistoia — Dissensions 
 in the Florentine camp — Azzo Visconti joins Castruocio — Battle of 
 Altopascio — Great Florentine defeat. 
 
 Fob, a long time after the first consciousness of inde- 
 pendent existence began to stir the httle commanity on the 
 
 B B 2 
 
372 HISTOE.T OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.T). banks of the Arno within its narrow walls, material growth 
 was the main law, and supplied the most observable phe- 
 nomena of its existence. But for the last generation or so 
 previous to the time at which we have now arrived, a 
 vigorous enlargement of the political views and influence of 
 the Commonwealth has been gradually becoming remark- 
 able. And from the present time forward this will be yet 
 more markedly and observably the case. 
 
 This merchant-ruled city, possessing a territory consider- 
 ably less in extent than the county of York — a territory 
 which, notwithstanding the teeming fertility of certain dis- 
 tricts, was, on the whole, by no means a rich one, and was 
 incapable of supplying a sufSciency of food for its inhabi- 
 tants — had become already a power in Europe ; and by no 
 means one of the least influential. The founders of the 
 Commonwealth started in social life, as the soldiers of 
 Cromwell went forth to battle, with the sword in one hand 
 and a book in the other. But the book, in which the 
 Florentines put their trust, was not the Bible. The book 
 in which Florence ti-usted, and on which she founded her 
 political greatness, was the ledger. With the sword in her 
 right hand and the ledger in her left, she went out to do 
 her world-battle ; and with both she did great things. But 
 at the period of her history to which this chronicle has 
 come, she began to shift the sword into the left hand, and 
 take the ledger into the right. She began to do so ; and 
 as years grew on her, she did so more and more. A doctor 
 of sociology, oracular with the experience and wisdom of 
 another five hundred years of the world's history, would 
 have shaken his head at the symptom. But the laws which 
 regulate such matters, though sure enough, are slow in 
 their operation, as measured by the ken of flying genera- 
 tions of span-long lived creatures. And for awhile a strong 
 and living faith in the almighty golden florin did great 
 things ; and Florence, mounted on a pile of ledgers, stood 
 
A.T). 
 
 PARALLEL BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FLOEENCE. 373 
 
 on a level with nations whose natural stature was very far 
 greater than hers. 1^20, 
 
 Indeed, the consideration of the standing which the 
 Tuscan Commonwealth made for herself in the world of 
 mediaeval Europe, can hardly fail to lead the observer to 
 remark many points of similarity between the position of 
 modern England and mediaeval Florence. The money- 
 power of Florence as much exceeded that of any contem- 
 porary community, as that of England now exceeds that of 
 all other countries. And the Florentine money-power was 
 based on textile manufacture and banking. Nor will the 
 mode in which she used this power fail to suggest to the 
 reajfler's mind analogies with more than one period of our 
 own national life and passage in our history. They also 
 could subsidize nations bigger than themselves ; could 
 foment disaffection among the subjects of a tyrant, or 
 supply a ruler with the means of subjugating his people, 
 according as long-sighted views of the balance of political 
 power, or of contingent commercial advantage, might 
 dictate. They also could come forward as the patrons and 
 protectors of princes in distress, and could influence the 
 making of war or peace between powerful sovereigns by 
 operating on the wires that opened or shut the sluices of 
 financial supply. When Henry of Luxembourg was de- 
 tained before Brescia by the obstinate valour of its inhabi- 
 tants, it was Florence that had counselled the resistance, 
 and backed her advice with offers of cash supply, which 
 made it possible and effectual. It was Florentine in- 
 trigue that made Padua ungovernable in the hands of her 
 Ghibelline lord, Cane della Scala. Among the troops 
 which opposed Henry at Rome, there were regiments in 
 the pay of Florence. Parma was induced to shut her gates 
 against him by Florentine gold. The loans of the Floren- 
 tine bankers, either in prospect or in " passivity," exercised 
 very potent influence in the councils of Plantagenet and 
 
374 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. Valois monarclis. And more tlian one Pope found his 
 most authentic inspiration in a Florentine bribe. 
 
 And in thus influencing Europe the ubiquitous banking 
 transactions of the Florentines assisted them not only in- 
 directly, by the creation of wealth, but directly, by pro- 
 viding them with agents, negotiators, . and collectors of. 
 information on the spot, not only in every European capital 
 city, but in every important centre of population. It is 
 astonishing how large a portion of the negotiating business 
 of Europe, not only on account of their own city, but of 
 other powers, was carried on by Plorentine merchants. 
 The history of the twelve Florentine ambassadors, sent by 
 twelve different potentates to Pope Boniface on occasiop of 
 the Jubilee in 1300, has been related; and it is but a 
 special instance of what was more or less the case at every 
 court in Europe. Those bankers and merchants who 
 visited or resided in foreign cities for the needs of their 
 trade, were statesmen and political personages at home ; 
 men accustomed to considerations of politics and the diffi- 
 culties of governments ; and assuredly inferior to none in 
 that part of the diplomatist's duty, which is supposed to 
 need rather the wisdom of the serpent than the simplicity 
 of the dove. 
 
 The ruin of Uguccione della Fagiuola, which appeared to 
 Florence — little guessing as yet that his fall had but made 
 way for a far abler and more dangerous enemy to rise into 
 power — one of those great and notable deliverances which 
 the presumptuous arrogance of nations and of individuals 
 leads them to term "providential," as if every smallest 
 event in their microcosms were not as much and as little 
 so ; — this deliverance from the victor of Montecatini gave 
 rise to a period of unusual tranquillity in the city. And 
 the prudent and well-intentioned government of the Count 
 of Battifolle, who, from his intimate acquaintance with 
 Florence, knew well how deeply rooted were many of the 
 
GHIBELLINISM OBSOLETE. 375 
 
 causes of tlie ills from whicli she had been suffering in the a.d. 
 family feuds of the leading citizens, and who strove with ^^^^' 
 much success during the whole period of his vicariate to 
 induce these hereditary enemies to become reconciled to 
 each other, had contributed efficaciously to the same result. 
 The other cities of Tuscany were also at peace ; so that the 
 years between the great defeat at Montecatini, in 1315 
 and 1320, present a lull in the well-nigh perpetual storm 
 of mediaeval Italian history, which gave the city an oppor- 
 tunity of recruiting its financial resources, and preparing 
 for fresh conflicts. 
 
 For the condition and constitution of Italy rendered it 
 quite impossible but that fresh confficts should ere long 
 arise. The recent presence of an Emperor in Italy had 
 re-animated Ghibellinism throughout the peninsula. In 
 Florence, although continued exile and the exasperating 
 effects of a state of warfare had done much towards turn- 
 ing the expatriated Bianchi into GhibeUines, it may still be 
 affirmed that Ghibellinism was, if not absolutely dead, 
 powerless. Other quarrels and divisions of the city into 
 parties on quite different questions and principles had con- 
 tributed to this result. And the student of Florentine 
 history must not allow himself to be deceived on this point 
 by the occasional accusations of Ghibeffinism, which he 
 will find thrown at its opponents by some section of a y/ 
 party, which might with equal justice have been called 
 GhibelHne itself. Such accusations were the mere froth 
 and scum of party warfare. The victims of Bargello Lando 
 during his short but disgraceful reign of terror were 
 accused of Ghibellinism, much as in certain equally dis- 
 graceful periods of our own history men have been hunted 
 down as " Papists." It had become little more than mere 
 vulgar abuse aud bad language to call a man a Ghibelline 
 in Florence. 
 
 Beyond the walls of Florence, however, it was not the 
 
376 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. same thing. And although in no part of Italy did Ghibel- 
 ^^^°" linism mean exactly what it did in the days when a large 
 part of the population, and almost all the privileged classes, 
 recognized the Emperor as their actual and rightful sove- 
 reign, still it was the name by which a certain definite 
 system of opinions, prejudices, and principles, — a certain 
 platform, as it would be called in America, — was called 
 and known. And the system of opinions and feelings 
 faggoted up and labelled with that name may still be 
 compendiously described, as it was described in a 
 former chapter when the old Florentine Ghibellinism was 
 in question, as Toryism. The communities in which 
 Ghibellinism was in the ascendant were those in which 
 the principle of authority was upheld and maintained 
 against the rival principle of individual volition. The 
 quarrel has not been quite fought out yet, although we 
 have made our way to the discovery of something like 
 the middle ground on which the two rival principles 
 should meet and be reconciled. But no such recon- 
 ciliation was dreamed of as possible, desirable, or con- 
 ceivable in the fourteenth century, and the two systems 
 had to fight to the death when they came into such close 
 juxtaposition as they did in the microscopic states of 
 mediaeval Italy. 
 
 It will occur probably to the reader, when called on to 
 regard Florence as the principal stronghold, supporter, and 
 advocate of that principle of free will as opposed to autho- 
 rity, which came to be called Guelphism, that, common- 
 wealth and democratic as she was, Florence had little 
 claim to consider herself the champion of any such social 
 system. And he will remember perhaps that he has been 
 already called upon more than once in the course of this 
 history to observe the almost total failure of her demo- 
 cratic institutions to secure to her people the advantages 
 of individual liberty. But it must be borne in mind that 
 
POLITICAL THEORIES IN FLORENCE. 377 
 
 she was the first pioneer in a very difficult and intricate a-t>. 
 
 • - • 1820 
 
 path. She was in the position of the first inventor of a 
 watch, a steam-engine, or other complicated and wholly 
 unprecedented piece of mechanism. Individual liberty, 
 pure and simple, of course is simple savagery, and was 
 not what was meant or wanted. How to secure the 
 utaiost amount of it compatible with the other correlative 
 requirements of the case? Can it be deemed surprising, 
 considering how far mankind has even yet got in finding 
 an adequate and satisfactory solution to this problem, that 
 the pioneers in the path of investigation and experiment 
 should not only have failed to attain their object, but 
 should have been but imperfectly conscious of it, and have 
 never succeeded in even defining it clearly and intelligibly 
 to their imaginations ? Thus much they understood clearly 
 and meant with their whole hearts ; that they would not 
 admit or tolerate the opposite principle, as it was under- 
 stood, set forth and embodied in the world around them. 
 They would not have the " governo d' un solo." No 
 despot ! No lord and master, claiming to be such by 
 right divine ! No ruler of any sort, who rested his title 
 to rule on any other basis than the consent and will of the 
 people to be ruled ! This was the first point that needed 
 to be clearly established. And when we remember the 
 principles and the practice and precedents of the world all 
 around them, we must surely feel that the step so made 
 was not a small one, nay, that it was the greatest and most 
 difficult to make of all the path that has since been trodden 
 in the same direction. 
 
 No government without the consent of the governed ! 
 Upon this point the Florentines were clear, and even 
 fanatically earnest ; so earnest, that the intensity of their 
 allegiance to this fixed idea blinded them,— as the pursuit 
 of fixed ideas will blind men,— to the evils of tyranny 
 inflicted on them by means not incompatible with it. 
 
378 HISTOEY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 ^•D- And this was the great principle of Guelphism which 
 ' Florence had to uphold against the Ghibelline faith of 
 nearly all the rest of the world. 
 
 One other remark has to be made respecting some of 
 the allies of Morence in her Guelphism. It is a very- 
 obvious one, but may be just noted to avoid any miscon- 
 ception. When great principles are embodied in names, 
 and when these names become party cries, by which a 
 great variety not only of differently circumstanced in- 
 dividuals, but of differently circumstanced communities 
 are divided, and under which they have to range them- 
 selves, it will occur that other considerations besides a 
 real allegiance to the principle in question will decide the 
 party connection of some among them. The sort of cir- 
 cumstances, which might easily cause some of the numerous 
 states into which Italy was divided, to ally themselves with 
 one party, when the nature of them would seem to assign 
 their adherence to the other, are so obvious that it is 
 needless to particularize them. It will be sufficient thus 
 far to have reminded the reader, that he is not to look 
 for pure Guelph principles in aU the allies which rallied 
 around Florence. 
 
 Having premised thus much, it may be well to state 
 shortly the general division of Italy between the two con- 
 tending parties and principles, that furnished the motive 
 and gave its shape to the wars which are on the eve of 
 beginning between Lucca, or rather between Castruccio 
 Castracane degli Interminelli, who was the representative 
 man of GhibeUinism in Italy at this period, and the 
 Commonwealth of Florence. 
 
 GhibeUinism was nearly universal in the north of Italy, 
 divided among a number of more or less well known great 
 families, of whom the principal were the Visconti at Milan, 
 and the Delia Scala at Verona. Naples and the States of 
 the Church were Guelph ; the former, as need hardly be 
 
WHAT PLORENCE HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD. 379 
 
 suggested, from political circumstances, from opposition to a.d. 
 the Empire, and from connection, rather than from princi- ^^^°' 
 pie. Tuscany and the whole of Central Italy were divided 
 between the two, although the real strength and strong- 
 hold of genuine Guelphism was there. Without Florence, 
 there would have been no Guelph party. Had those 
 stout sandalled and leather-jerkined Florentine burghers 
 of the thirteenth century not undertaken and persevered 
 in that crusade against the feudal nobles and the Ghibel- 
 line principle, which, as has been seen, was the leading 
 occupation and idea of the Commonwealth during all that 
 century, GhibeUinism and Imperialism would have long 
 since possessed and ruled Italy from the Alps to the toe 
 of the boot ; — with what ulterior consequences to Europe, 
 who shall say? And consideration of this indubitable 
 fact must lead to the admission that the stout, vigorous 
 old Commune did accomphsh a great work for which 
 mankind still owes it a debt of gratitude, — did place 
 itself with irremoveable energy and strength, like some 
 huge boulder-stone in the course of a rushing water, and 
 thus at a critical point turn the stream of human destinies 
 into the course which has led onwards to a higher civiliza- 
 tion. However much they may have failed, — those bold 
 pioneers, — so to cut their new path through the jungle 
 of social anarchy as to secure for themselves all the 
 advantages of which they were in search, they did dis- 
 cover and keep alive in the world that one fundamental 
 principle from which so much has followed and been 
 evolved. No right-divine rulers ! No government save 
 by the consent of the governed ! This was the under- 
 lying principle which, amid unruly passions of all sorts, 
 cropped out in their manifold party wars, and for which 
 they were now about to fight on a larger scale, and with 
 a more clear and definite consciousness of the real object 
 and motive of the strife. 
 
380 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.B. One other circumstance should be borne in mind, as it 
 ■ will contribute much towards a right understanding of the 
 motives and forces that influenced the conduct of many of 
 the parties in the struggles which commenced in Italy 
 with 1320. Almost every city had its body of " fuor- 
 usciti; " — literally, " those who had gone out;" — proscripts 
 and exiles, in fact, who represented the minorities, larger 
 or smaller, as the case might be, in the different com- 
 munities ; — Ghibelhnc fuorusciti from Guelph cities, and 
 GvLd^\i fmrusciti from Ghibelline cities. The idea, that 
 it was the natural and matter-of-course order of things for 
 a political vanquished minority to be driven forth from 
 the city, like drones from the hive, so deeply rooted in the 
 Italian mind as to be producing a comparatively feeble 
 after-crop of mischief even at the present day, probably 
 arose from the violent incompatibility of th« two prin- 
 ciples, which found themselves face to face 'with each 
 other within the narrow area of a small city's wall. The 
 result was a disastrous one ; and in the case of Florence 
 very specially reads us a valuable lesson on the impolicy 
 of political proscriptions. Political exile is a punishment 
 for dissent from the majority, which not only fails to 
 reform the culprit, and fit him to return, but never fails to 
 be powerfully operative in the opposite sense. The strong 
 Guelph constitution of Florence would have absorbed and 
 assimilated any peccant humours of Ghibellinism ; indeed 
 had all but entirely done so ; even as England absorbs 
 and assimilates her Toryism. But Florence instead of 
 allowing this healthy process to accomplish itself, kept up 
 by her proscriptions an artificial preserve of Florentine 
 Ghibellinism, which was always ready to unite itself with 
 any enemy of the Commonwealth, not so much because of 
 any community of political principle, as from a hope that 
 the exiles might so attain their never-abatidoned object of 
 returning to their country. And so it was with all the 
 
" FUORUSCITI." 381 
 
 Other cities to a yet greater degree, inasmuch as in many a.d. 
 of them parties were more equally balanced than in ^^^"" 
 Florence, and the exiled minority were not so hopeless a 
 minority as were the Ghibellines in that city. Of course, 
 the natural allies of all these bodies of proscripts were the 
 neighbouring cities in which their principles were in the 
 ascendant ; and the assistance they were always imploring 
 was very generally granted, from the consideration that 
 the city against which it was asked, was at the same time 
 affording an asylum and a rallying point to a body of 
 " fuorusciti " from its own walls. 
 
 This was the position of Italy when Castruccio Castra- 
 cane became Lord of Lucca, a city which though more 
 equally divided than either Pisa, which was decidedly 
 Ghibelline, or Florence, which was as decidedly Guelph, had 
 been for the most part Guelph in its sympathies and 
 alliances, until Uguccione della Pagiuola conquered it, and 
 replaced its Ghibelline exiles, and first among them the 
 Interminelli, by whose means he was himself, as we have 
 seen, shortly supplanted. But it was not Lucca, but Cas- 
 truccio, that was formidable to Florence. Not only as a 
 soldier, but as a statesman, he was undoubtedly the 
 foremost man in Italy of his time. And Machiavelli has 
 recorded his opinion, that had he lived longer he would have 
 subjugated all Italy ; summing up his life of him by saying, 
 that as while he lived he was inferior neither to Philip of 
 Macedon, nor to Scipio of Rome, he would unquestionably 
 have surpassed both of them, if he had had either Rome 
 or Macedon, instead of Lucca, for a theatre of action. 
 
 But these are mere rhetorical flourishes; nor can it 
 seriously be believed that Castruccio would ever have 
 succeeded in so beating down the Plorentine power as to 
 have removed it out of the path of his ambition. 
 Altogether this life of Castruccio, written by the celebrated 
 Secretary some two hundred years after the death of his 
 
382 HISTOKT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. hero, is a strange and unsatisfactory production. Speaking 
 ■^^^*^" of the rout of Montecatini, Machiavelli asserts that the 
 GhibeUine army was led, not by Uguccione, but by 
 Castruccio ; that the loss of the Florentines amounted to 
 the altogether incredible number of ten thousand, dead on 
 the field ; and that the Prince of Taranto was killed in the 
 fight ; together with other discrepancies from the usually 
 received account ; on which Ammirato observes,* that 
 some of these statements being unquestionably and 
 notoriously false, it becomes probable that the rest may be 
 so also. But there runs through this little work of 
 Machiavelli a tone of sympathy with, and admiration for 
 the despotic ruler, and a preference for his side as opposed 
 to that of his own countrymen, fighting for the principle of 
 free institutions, that does not give pleasant evidence to 
 character on the much mooted question, what we are to 
 think of the celebrated author of // Principe. Several 
 pages of his memoir are filled by the Secretary with a 
 selection from the witticisms and sharp sayings of his 
 hero, which are really so pointless, as to suggest either a 
 low estimate, not so much of the great captain, from whose 
 idle words these gleanings have been raked up, as of the 
 professed wit and man of letters who has recorded them ; 
 or a high estimate of the progress of general taste and 
 intelligence during the past five hundred years. 
 
 It may, however, be worth while to give the description 
 which Machiavelli has left us of the appearance of this 
 remarkable man. " In person," he says, " he M^as of more 
 than ordinary stature ; and every portion of his body was 
 well proportioned to his great height. He was so pleasing 
 in appearance, and he received all persons with so much 
 affability, that no one ever left him discontented with him. 
 His hair was of a reddish shade, and he wore it cut short 
 
 * Book T. Gonf. 137. 
 
AFFAIRS OF LOMBAEDT. S83 
 
 over his ears. And lie always, whatever weather it might a.d. 
 be, even if it rained or snowed, went about with his head ^^^°* 
 uncovered."* Such was the bodily presentment ot the 
 man, who did more for the Ghibelline cause, than any 
 Emperor had ever been able to accomplish; and who, — 
 though the exaggeration of Machiavelli's estimate of the 
 possibilities before him may be rejected, — would, it may 
 weU be believed, have made a yet deeper mark in the 
 history of his time, had his life not been brought to a close 
 prematurely. 
 
 The Florentines were the first to break the peace, at 
 least as far as Tuscany was concerned. War was going on 
 during all these years, (1315-1320,) in L'ombardy, and 
 both King Robert and the Signory of Florence deemed it 
 prudent to give such support to what little Guelph power 
 existed in the north of Italy, as should prevent Ghibel- 
 linism from mastering the whole country. This was 
 deemed an important point, because any Emperor marching 
 into Italy must needs pass through Lombardy. If but 
 one or two cities there could be kept in the Guelph 
 interest, the invader would find it necessary, to take 
 them before continuing his march southwards; a siege 
 would be requisite ; time would be lost by him, and 
 gained by Florence and the Tuscan cities ; — a short space 
 of warning which might be invaluable to them. Such 
 interference was the more necessary just then, in that 
 Matteo Visconti, an active and able captain, and the chief 
 and main support of Ghibellinism in the north of Italy, 
 was gradually making himself and his Ghibelline allies 
 masters of the whole district. One of the chief of these. 
 Cane della Scala, of Verona, had recently made himself 
 master of Cremona, one of the few important Guelph cities 
 in Lombardy. And although Florence had no interest or 
 
 • Machiavelli, Vita di Castruocio Castraoane. Opere, ediz, italia. 1813, 
 vol. ii. p- 427. 
 
384 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.r. concern in the matter beyond the political expediency of 
 not permitting Guelphism to be extinguished in the north 
 of Italy, that motive was deemed sufficient to induce her 
 to send three hundred horse of her own, increased to a 
 thousand by the contributions of the other Tuscan Guelph 
 cities, to assist the exiles who had been ousted from 
 Cremona by Cane della Scala at the last revolution, in 
 recovering their position. This was successfully done ; 
 and Cremona was, on the 10th of October, 1319, restored 
 to the Guelph interest. But this interference of the 
 Tuscan city in the affairs of Lombardy, followed as it 
 shortly was by information, which reached the ears of 
 Matteo Visconti, that a scheme had been arranged between 
 Florence, the new Pope John the XXIL, and Robert of 
 Naples, for inviting Philip of Valois, the brother of the 
 king of France, to come into Italy in the character of 
 Vicar of the Church for the abatement of the Ghibelline 
 power, and specially as an enemy to the House of Visconti, 
 Lords of Milan, made it appear urgent, to find some means 
 of repressing the Guelph party generally, and humbhng 
 Florence in particular. 
 
 The object in view was, as Ammirato says,* "to raise 
 such a fliame in Florence itself as to give the citizens 
 enough to do in attending to their own affairs." And it 
 seemed to Visconti, as he cast about for the means of 
 effecting this, that Castruccio was the very man for the 
 purpose. During the four years of peace since he had 
 become Lord of Lucca he had been busily employed in 
 gathering resources both of men and money. He had 
 succeeded in getting together a considerable force of old 
 well-trained soldiers ; he was in strict alliance with the 
 neighbouring powerful Ghibelline community of Pisa, and 
 was altogether in a position to be a very formidable 
 
 * Bookv. Gonf. 161. 
 
ATTACK OF CASTRUCCIO. 385 
 
 enemy. To Castracane, therefore, Visconti addressed a.b. 
 liimself; laid before him the secret plan for bringing the 
 French prince into Italy as a preparative for a general 
 attack upon the Ghibelline party, and pointed out to him 
 how certainly a league, which considered itself strong 
 enough to attack so powerful a prince as the Lord of 
 Milan, of Pavia, Piacenza, Lodi, Como, Bergamo, Novara, 
 Vercelli, Tortona, and Alexandria, would overwhelm him, 
 the master only of Lucca, if they were successful in the 
 first enterprise. He urged on him, therefore, the prudence 
 of attacking Plorence at once, and endeavouring to cripple 
 her eflfectually before the combinations she was meditating 
 could be completed. He further enlarged on the advan- 
 tages Castruccio might find in a close alliance with the 
 house of Visconti, and hinted that it might be available 
 not only for the preservation of what he at present pos- 
 sessed, but for the acquisition of much greater matters. 
 
 Castruccio, though perfectly well aware that the object 
 of Visconti was to make use of him as a means of 
 diverting a powerful enemy from his own frontiers, yet 
 thought that the arguments adduced were true ones, and 
 that the policy recommended to him was sound. And 
 having made up his mind to act on it, he did so with the 
 suddenness of a thunder-clap. Regardless of the oath, 
 taken by him when peace had been made, which bound 
 him not to break it without due notice and formal declara- 
 tion of war, he suddenly marched into the lower Valdarno 
 in the April of 1320, and had taken some half score of 
 towns and castles, almost before it was known at Plorence 
 that war had begun. 
 
 Plorence was startled by the news as she was busy in 
 the peaceful work of adjusting tariff questions with her 
 neighbour Bologna across the Apennines. And though 
 she had to turn with hot haste to more exciting cares, and 
 events are pressing on, it is worth our while to stop a 
 
 TOL. I. ° ° 
 
3S6 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE, 
 
 A.T). moment to notice that little trading question, Por those 
 ■ ■ traders had just made a discovery, which would have 
 saved the world no small amount of care and cash, if 
 it would only have condescended to learn from them. 
 Bologna having much need of money to defend herself 
 from the Ghibellines of Lombardy, very simply and 
 naturally doubled the duty on merchandise entering her 
 gates. But having to her infinite astonishment discovered, 
 when she came to count the proceeds in her treasury, 
 that she had gotten not twice as much, but half as much 
 as before ; and having at once set to work to investigate 
 the causes of this surprising phenomenon, it was found 
 that " the Florentines had deserted the road of Bologna," 
 and carried their goods another way. So the Bolognese 
 being mere traders and not statesmen, instantly sent 
 envoys across the Apennines to tell their neighbours that 
 the duties were put back again to their old figure. 
 
 The news of Castruccio's inroad suddenly recalled all 
 the thoughts and cares of the Commonwealth to more 
 urgent and less profitable considerations. And the Sig- 
 nory seem to have been well aware from the first that 
 they had no ordinary enemy to deal with in the new Lord 
 of Lucca, and that the present disasters were but the first 
 drops that heralded a storm, which it would need all the 
 strength and energy of the Commonwealth to resist. 
 And indeed the heavy storm-drops soon began to fall 
 more and more thickly. Before any measures could be 
 taken for the repair of the mischief in the Valdarno, the 
 citizens heard of their seemingly ubiquitous enemy in the 
 Lunigiana and Garfagnana, districts of the Florentine 
 territory to the north of Lucca. The city appears to 
 have been panic-stricken, and was only partially relieved 
 by hearing that Philip of Valois had arrived in Italy, and 
 was in presence of the Visconti forces Jaetween Vercelli 
 and Novara. There was gladness also in the city at the 
 
CASTRUCCIO BEFORE GENOA, 387 
 
 news of the death of an enemy who had always been a a.d. 
 special bugbear to the popular imagination of the Tloren- ^'^^'^' 
 tines, — the gigantic Uguccione, who ate up two cities for 
 supper. The old warrior, who, since the day of his 
 expulsion from Lucca, had been continually fighting iu 
 the service of Cane della Scala, died at Verona in the 
 autumn of 1320, at a considerable age, but worn out 
 rather by a life of perpetual warfare than by years. 
 
 It very soon appeared, however, that little was to be 
 hoped from the assistance of the Prench prince, whose 
 march into Italy had been the object of so much nego- 
 tiation and intrigue. Por some unexplained reason, at 
 the moment when the Guelph hopes were the highest, he 
 suddenly made peace with Visconti at Mortara, — a little 
 town not very far distant from VUlafranca, — and marched 
 back into France. 
 
 The Florentine territory was nevertheless liberated for 
 the moment from the wasting inroads of Castruccio, by 
 his departure northwards to assist the Ghibelline exiles 
 from Genoa in besieging that city. And Florence re- 
 covered her equanimity and her resolution sufficiently to 
 act with a patriotism, as regarded the general welfare of 
 Italy, which was not often manifested in those ages. For 
 feeling deeply the importance to the Guelph cause of 
 Genoa, which was in a great measure the key of Italy, 
 and convinced that the presence of Castruccio and his 
 veteran troops would turn the scale against the defenders 
 of the city in that obstinately contested siege, they deter- 
 mined, at the risk, or rather at the certainty of loss and 
 suffering to themselves and their own territory, to make 
 such a demonstration against Lucca as should compel his 
 return to defend his own capital. The measure was 
 entirely successful. Castruccio hurried back from before 
 the walls of Genoa, and that city was saved. Nor did 
 Florence suffer for her devotion to the general Guelph 
 
 c c 2 
 
388 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. cause. For as it was now tlie end of the year, and the 
 1321. -winter set in with unusual severity, the two armies, nearly 
 equal in strength, numbering each of them about twelve 
 hundred cavahers and a great number of infantry, after 
 watching each other for a while from the opposite bank of 
 the Httle stream of the Giusciana, near Fucecchio in the 
 lower Valdarno, retired as by mutual consent to their 
 winter quarters in their respective cities.* 
 
 But each party perfectly well knew that its adversary 
 was planning new modes of attack. And the Florentines, 
 thinking that they had found a means of placing Castruccio 
 between two fires, were the first to recommence hostilities. 
 There was in the mountains of the Lunigiana a territorial 
 magnate, the Marchese Spinetta Malispina, who, although 
 a Ghibelline, had been despoiled of well-nigh all his castles 
 and estates by Castruccio. He was of course ready for any 
 desperate attempt against his oppressor ; and the Floren- 
 tines, cautiously taking hostages from him to secure his 
 good faith, sent him a force of three hundred cavaliers and 
 five hundred infantry, with which, together with such as 
 were faithful to him of his own retainers, he attacked and 
 regained some of the places he had lost. The Florentines 
 meanwhile, imagining that Castruccio would immediately 
 rush to punish this audacious attack made upon him by a 
 poor ruined country noble, had prepared the main strength 
 of their forces to attack Lucca itself directly he should have 
 left the city. But Castruccio was far too wide awake to 
 be made the dupe of any such trick. He rightly guessed 
 that the Marchese would never have dreamed of attacking 
 him, if not acting at the instigation and with the support 
 of Florence. And perceiving at once the entire plan, he 
 became aware that it behoved him to prepare himself for a 
 
 * Ammirato, book v. Gonf. 165, 166, 167, 168; Yillani , book ix. chaps, 
 cvi. cix. ox. cxi. oxv. 
 
rLOEENTINE NIGHT RETREAT. 389 
 
 serious attack on his head-quarters. He sent, therefore, in a.d 
 all haste to his Ghibelline friends in Lombardy, to Matteo ^^-^• 
 Visconti especially, for succour, and obtained it with such 
 promptitude and secrecy, that the Florentines were utterly 
 astonished and taken aback when Castruccio, entirely 
 neglecting the attack in the Lunigiana, and leaving the 
 Marchese Malispina to enjoy a brief period of triumph as 
 he pleased, marched out of Lucca against them with a well- 
 appointed army of sixteen hundred cavaliers, and " common 
 soldiers without number." On the 7th of June, 1321, the 
 two armies came into presence in the neighbourhood of 
 MontevettoKno, a small fortified village on the southern 
 slope of the spur of hills which divides the valley of the 
 Ombrone from that of the Arno. The Florentine general, 
 Guido deUa Petrella, at once recognized the inability of his 
 army to cope with that of Castruccio with any hope of 
 success; and withdrew to a spot called the Belvedere, a 
 culminating point of the range of hills, so called from com- 
 manding a view over either valley. The army of Castruccio 
 followed him up the steep hill, and at nightfall took up a 
 position in the immediate neighbourhood of that occupied 
 by the Florentines. Had the Lucchese attacked that night, 
 the Florentines, as they themselves admit, must have been 
 utterly routed. Fortunately the night turned out a dark 
 and stormy one, and the rain fell in torrents ; so that, near 
 as the two camps were, there was no possibility of either 
 party seeing what was going on among their neighbours. 
 Taking advantage of this, Petrella lighted a number of 
 torches and faggots, and leaving them burning, so as to 
 lead the enemy to think that the camp was on the alert, 
 quietly withdrew down the hill side under cover of the 
 storm, and got his army safe off to Florence. But he thus 
 left the unhappy country to the mercy of the enemy ; who, 
 finding in the morning that he had been tricked, and that 
 the prey of which he had made sure had escaped him, em- 
 
390 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. ployed himself unchecked in ravaging the whole of the 
 ^^ ' lower Valdarno.*. 
 
 There was ■ great discontent and a strong outcry against 
 the Signory in Florence on account of these disasters ; 
 which was appeased by the creation of a special council of 
 twelve "popolani," two for each ward of the city, withoTit 
 the advice of whom the Signory was to take no step 
 respecting the conduct of the war.f 
 
 Later in the year, in August, the Signory succeeded in 
 hiring a force of an hundred and sixty cavaliers in Friuli, 
 under Jacopo di Pontanabuona, a landed noble and captain 
 of free lances of that country ; who, after his arrival in 
 Florence, was of much use in checking the incursions of 
 Castruccio. But no further action of importance took 
 place that year ; and the city was much engaged by the 
 new arrangements made necessary by the termination of 
 the eight years, during which the supreme Protectorship of 
 the city had been given to King Robert of Naples. That 
 connection now came to an end ; though the parties to it 
 remained still close allies and friends. 
 
 The year 1321 was, however, marked by one event of a 
 higher interest for all future generations than any of these 
 wars and warriors which occupied so much larger a space 
 in the thoughts of their contemporaries. It was the year 
 of Dante's death ; and the fact is recorded in the chronicle 
 of his fellow-citizen Villani, in a chapter headed " Who the 
 poet Dante Alighieri of Florence was;" some passages of 
 which mark so curiously the sort of estimation in which 
 the poet was held by his contemporaries, that it is worth 
 while to quote them. 
 
 " In the said year, 1321," writes the chronicler, J "in 
 the month of July, died in the city of Ravenna, Dante 
 
 * Villani, book ix. chap. cxXvii. ; Ammirato, book v. Gonf. 171. 
 t Villani, book ix. obap. exxviii. ; Ammirato, book v. Gonf. 172. 
 X Villani, book ix. chap, oxxxvi. 
 
DEATH OF DANTE, 891 
 
 Alighieri, of Morence, having recently returned from an a.d. 
 embassy to Venice, in the service of the Signori da -"^^^ 
 Polenta, with whom he was living. And in Ravenna, in 
 front of the door of the principal church, he was buried 
 with much honour, in the dress of a poet and a great 
 philosopher. He died an exile from the Commonwealth of 
 Morence, in about the 56th year of his age. This Dante 
 was an honourable citizen of Florence, of old family, of the 
 ward of St. Peter, and a neighbour of my family. And tlie 
 cause of his exile from Florence was, that when Messer 
 Carlo di Valois, of the royal house of France, came to 
 Florence in the year 1301, and drove into exile the Bianchi, 
 as has been hereinbefore related, the said Dante was one 
 of the principal governors of the city, and a member of 
 that party, although he Avas a Guelph. Wherefore, with- 
 out other fault of his, he was driven out and banished from 
 Florence, together with that party ; and went to the 
 university of Bologna, and thence to Paris, and to many 
 other parts of the world. He was a very learned man in 
 nearly every branch of knowledge, and a consummate 
 rhetorician, both in prose and verse, as well as a most 
 eloquent public speaker. In verse he was supreme, writing 
 with the most polished and elegant style that our tongue 
 had ever been found capable of up to his time, and, indeed, 
 much later. He wrote in his youth a book on the ' New 
 Life of Love.' And afterwards, when in exile, he composed 
 twenty most admirable lyrics on love and moral subjects ; 
 and, among other things, three very noble letters : — one to 
 the Signory of Florence, complaining of his exile for no 
 fault ; — another to the Emperor Henry when he was at the 
 siege of Brescia, blaming him as it were with prophetic 
 knowledge for his delay there ;— and a third to the Italian 
 Cardinals during the vacancy of the See after the death of 
 Pope Clement, urging them to agree in the election of an 
 Italian Pope. These are all written in Latin, in a lofty 
 
A.B. 
 
 1322. 
 
 392 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 style, full of excellent sentiments and autliorities, and were 
 much admired by competent judges. He wrote, also, th6 
 Commedia, in which' he treated, in an hundred chapters or 
 cantos, of hell, and purgatory, and paradise, in exquisite 
 verse, and adorned with many great and profound ques- 
 tions of morals, natural science, astrology, philosophy, and 
 theology, and set forth, with new and beautiful images, 
 comparisons, and poesies, in a manner more lofty than can 
 be expressed, as whosoever hath a subtle wit may gather 
 for himself from the work. It is true that in that Com- 
 media he indulged in declamation and railing, as poets 
 will, more, perhaps, in some parts than he ought to have 
 done. But perhaps his exile drove him to do this. He 
 wrote, also, a treatise on Monarchy, in which he treated of 
 the functions of the Pope and the Emperor. This Dante 
 was, by reason of his learning, somewhat presumptuous, 
 and disdainful and arrogant ; and, after the fashion of a 
 philosopher of inelegant manners, was no good hand at 
 conversing with the unlearned. But for his other excel- 
 lencies, for his science, and for the renown's sake of so 
 distinguished a citizen, it seems proper to award him an 
 undying remembrance in this our chronicle ; although the 
 noble works which he has left us in writing bear truthful 
 and honourable testimony to his worth." 
 
 So honest Villani, having conferred immortality on 
 Dante thus magisterially, goes on his way, returning to 
 more important matters, as " How the sun was darkened 
 when the King of Prance died." 
 
 Por a few months after the cessation of the protectorate 
 of the King of Naples in Plorence, nothing of much 
 importance was done towards bringing to a decision the 
 antagonism between the Commonwealth and its great 
 enemy Castruccio. Both parties contented themselves 
 with indirect endeavours to advance their several objects ; 
 — the Plorentines by assisting the Guelph party wherever 
 
ALLIANCE WITH THE POPE. 393 
 
 it needed assistance, in Lombardy chiefly, either in attacking a.b. 
 the adverse party, or in defending itself when attacked ; ^^^^^ 
 — and Castruccio mainly in forming treasonable under- 
 standings with traitorous citizens in various cities of 
 Tuscany, destined to be the means, when a favourable 
 opportunity should arrive, of making himself master of 
 them,-, as he had become master of Lucca, by one of those 
 sudden revolutionary movements which were so often 
 successful in the Italian cities. 
 
 Florence throughout this period was in close aUiance 
 with the Pontiff, who was at war with her enemy Matteo 
 Visconti, in Lombardy. The spiritual arms of the Church, 
 which had so often been used against her were now as 
 freely used against her foes ; and she had the satisfaction 
 of knowing that when, in 1332, Matteo Visconti died in 
 his 90th year,* he died under the ban of the Church, and 
 was denied Christian burial. With such a pope it was 
 impossible for Florence to be very angry, although he did 
 issue a false coinage with the name and in the likeness 
 of their golden Florin ; f especially when he put forth a 
 bull, threatening with excommunication anybody else who 
 should do the like. 
 
 The death of old Matteo Visconti, nonagenarian as he 
 was, was felt to be a blow to the Ghibelline interests ; for 
 though he left sons, in the prime of their age, especially 
 Galeazzo, to succeed him, it was thought that the young 
 man would not hold his own dominions as firmly, nor 
 give such support to the Ghibelline cause as his father had 
 done. And these suspicions were very soon justified by 
 the insurrection, first of Piacenza, and then of Milan itself 
 against him.' This last news threw Florence into a 
 paroxysm of delight ; and pubHc rejoicings were decreed, 
 and festivals of all sorts celebrated on occasion of it. J 
 
 * Ammirato, book vi. Gonf. 178 ; Villani, book ix. chap. clvi. 
 
 ■j- Villani, book ix. chap, clxxi. J Ammirato, book yi. Gonf. 180. 
 
394 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. But the triumph of Florence on this score was very short- 
 ■^^^^" Hved ; for within two months the popular mind in Milan 
 had veered; and Galeazzo was proclaimed Lord of that 
 city, amid the shouts of his subjects. 
 
 The year 1323 began with an attack by Castruccio on 
 the fortresses in the hill country, between Lucca and 
 Pistoia ; specially on Lucchio, a village and castle (of which 
 the ruins may yet be seen) situated in a wonderfully 
 picturesque and inaccessible position, among jagged peaks 
 and chestnut forests, about half way between the now well- 
 known baths of Lucca, and the town of San Marcello in 
 the Apennines, behind Pistoia. It was for the second 
 time an exceptionally severe winter ; and the Florentines 
 had deemed it quite impossible for an armed force to 
 penetrate the snows and torrent barriers of those rugged 
 and roadless mountain valleys. But Castruccio Castracane's 
 entefprize and activity falsified their calculations. Dis- 
 mounting his men-at-arms, he led them on foot over a 
 country, that to most captains would have appeared 
 impracticable in the height of summer ; and took Lucchio, 
 and various other strongholds in that and the adjoining 
 districts.* 
 
 The Florentines, in their distress and eagerness to find 
 some means of enabling themselves to contend on equal 
 terms with their indefatigable and ever-alert foe, sent 
 proposals to that Count Beltramo del Balzo, King Robert's 
 brother-in-law, whom they had but a few months before 
 refused and driven from their city, to come and assume 
 the command in chief of their armies. He assented ; and 
 arrived in Florence with two hundred cavaliers on the 17th 
 of May, 1323. But the first result of his* arrival was a 
 disastrous one. Messer Jacopo Fontanabuona, who has 
 been mentioned as the leader of the body of troops engaged 
 
 * Ammirato, book vi. Gonf. 137. 
 
A.D. 
 
 CASTRUCCIO AT PUATO. 395 
 
 by the Commonwealth in Friuli, and who had done good ...-. 
 service, and shown himself faithful to his hirers, took ^'^-^' 
 offence at having a new comer placed over him in 
 command, and went over with his soldiers, to Castruccio. 
 This was a heavy blow, telling doubly as it did ; for those 
 hardy mountaineers were good soldiers ; the best perhaps 
 then in the service of the Commonwealth.* 
 
 The result of this unexpected piece of good fortune to 
 Castruccio, was immediately seen in a renewal of incur- 
 sions, and ravages of the Florentine territory. The 
 unhappy inhabitants of the lower Valdarno, again saw 
 their fields overrun, their growing crops destroyed, their 
 farms harried, their houses burned. And the Florentines 
 being unprepared for resistance to such forces as Castruc- 
 cio commanded, kept close within their walls, and made 
 no attempt to protect their unfortunate subjects ; till 
 emboldened by success, and by the apparent lethargy of 
 the enemy, he advanced into the heart of the Florentine 
 territory, as far as Prato, a flourishing city between 
 Florence and Pistoia, only twelve miles from the former, 
 and attempted to seize the town.f 
 
 But this was more than the popular mind of Florence 
 could tolerate ; and the attempt led to a series of circum- 
 stances and scenes so singularly characteristic and illus- 
 trative of the life in the mediaeval Italian cities, and 
 specially of the temper and humours of the Florentines, 
 that, though the story is but an isolated episode, which 
 exercised no appreciable influence on the ulterior fortunes 
 of the war, it must not be omitted. 
 
 No sooner was the news of Castruccio's appearance in 
 the immediate neighbourhood of Prato known in Florence, 
 than the whole city was in commotion. It was no longer 
 a question of sending troops and arraying armies. Every 
 
 * Villani, book ix. chap, ccviii. t Ibid., chap, ccxiv. 
 
A.D. 
 
 1323. 
 
 396 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 man shut his shop, seized his arms, and prepared instantly 
 to set out for Prato, and help in driving back the 
 audacious leader, who had come to beard Florence within 
 twelve miles of her own walls. Por once, all classes and 
 all parties were united. Nobles, burghers, and populace 
 all rushed to the Prato gate. The Signory hurriedly 
 passed a law, that any bandit or exile from the city, not 
 Ghibelline, who should present himself before Prato, and 
 join the expedition, was ipso facto relieved from all past 
 condemnations, and all pains and penalties whatever. This 
 invitation was addressed rather to those, who had been 
 banished or who had fled from the city, on account of 
 ordinary crimes and violences, than to political exiles. 
 And the result of it was an addition to the tumultuously 
 assembled Florentine host of four thousand bandits, — 
 " ferocious fellows fit to be employed in any desperate 
 enterprize ; " * — and the entire force that was gathered 
 together before Prato was 1500 horsemen, and 20,000 
 foot. 
 
 Castruccio, great captain as he was, knew that he had 
 no force to oppose to such a force as that ; and he there- 
 fore in the night, which elapsed between the arrival of 
 these masses of men at Prato, and the battle which they 
 proposed fighting the next day, played them the same 
 trick which the Florentines had played him at Belvedere, 
 and retreated with all his force, under cover of the night, 
 towards the Valdarno and Lucca. Then in the mornina: 
 arose a great diff'erence of opinion, and violent dispute 
 among the Florentine host, on the question whether they 
 should content themselves with having saved Prato, which 
 was what they came out to do, or should follow Castruccio 
 in his retreat, and force him to a battle. The nobles in 
 the army were all of the former opinion, the populace of 
 
 * Ammirato, book vi. Gonf. 184. 
 
DECISION OF THE BOYS. 397 
 
 the latter. The nobles reminded the people of the battle 
 of Montecatini, and of what had resulted from acting 
 precisely as they now wished to do toward Uguccione della 
 Pagiuola ; spoke of the wisdom of making golden bridges 
 for retreating enemies ; and referred to the misfortune of 
 Montaperti, occasioned by the determination of the people 
 to fight, in opposition to the advice of the nobles. The 
 populace accused the nobles of cowardice, and of secret 
 sympathy for Castruccio and the Ghibelline cause. 
 
 As the dispute only became more violent the longer 
 it lasted, and the captains of the army were powerless 
 to decide the question in either sense, it was determined to 
 send messengers in all haste to the Senate, demanding their 
 decision on the point. The Senate met in all haste ; bat 
 it soon appeared that it was as divided in opinion on the 
 matter in question as the army ; and the division was in 
 the same sense ; the burghers, supported by all the out-of- 
 doors populace, were in favour of pursuing the enemy, and 
 attacking him, even were it within the walls of his capital, 
 and the nobles were for letting well alone, and contenting 
 themselves with what had already been accomplished. It 
 became necessary for the Signory, therefore, to decide the 
 matter; and that body (consisting, as the reader will 
 remember, of the Gonfaloniere and the Priori, or wardens 
 of the guilds), though wholly plebeian in its constitution, 
 vet feeling deeply the weight of the responsibility, and having 
 before their eyes the two great disasters of Montaperti and 
 Montecatini, was slow to come to a final determination. 
 
 Meanwhile the city was waiting impatiently for the 
 decision. The greater part of the able-bodied men had 
 gone out with the host to Prato. But the boys were in the 
 city; and the Florentine boys were, like the London 
 'prentice boys of old, a power in Florence after a sort. 
 And suddenly the Piazza below the windows of the 
 Palazzo Publico, within which the puzzled Signory were 
 
 A.B. 
 
 1323, 
 
398 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OE FLOEENCE. 
 
 A.n. coming to no decision, was filled with a crowd of boys, — 
 boys only, with no man among them, — each one with his 
 apron full of stones. A cry was raised for an immediate 
 order to the army to march against the enemies of Florence. 
 And when, after a minute's pause, no answer was forth- 
 coming, a sudden storm of stones smashed every window 
 in the palace. And, " as though it were fated that every 
 class and condition of the people might have it to say that 
 they had at some period or other borne rule in Florence,"*' 
 the boys decided the question. "Monstrous as it is to 
 relate, the majesty of the Gonfaloniere, the Priori, the 
 Council of Twelve, and all the Senate together, had to 
 bend themselves to their will; and so decreed that the 
 army should, without further question, pursue the enemy 
 into the territory of Lucca." * 
 
 So the army commenced its march from Prato. But 
 when it had reached the Florentine frontier, the nobles, 
 still determined at any cost to have their own way, 
 succeeded in arresting all further progress by raising a 
 report among the bandits, — those 4000 ferocious fellows 
 ready for anything, — that the Signory had no intention of 
 keeping its promise to them, of pardoning their past 
 misdeeds. The result of this treacherous whisper was, 
 that all these desperate men, separating themselves in a 
 body from the rest of the army, marched directly upon 
 Florence, with the purpose of compelling the government 
 by force to keep faith with them. Very great alarm was 
 felt in the city when they appeared unexpectedly before the 
 walls. But with the earliest dawn of the following day a 
 messenger arrived from the army, with tidings that it was 
 in full march, and not far from the city. Florence was 
 thus saved from being hostilely entered by its own outlaws. 
 But the city remained deeply mortified and humiUated, as 
 
 * Ammirato, book \i Gonf. 184, 
 
CONSPIRACY OF THE NOBLES. 399 
 
 it might well be, at tlie upshot of its great march with ban a.d. 
 and arriere ban to Prato. ^^^3. 
 
 The nobles pressed hard that the pardon which had 
 been offered to the outlaws should be maintained, urging 
 not only the justice of the case, but the expediency in the 
 present circumstances of the city, of retaining the arms of 
 so many brave and fighting men. But this the Signory 
 absolutely and steadily refused, alleging that these men had 
 irretrievably forfeited all title to consideration of any kind, 
 by appearing with arms in their hands in hostile guise 
 before the city. They had, at all events, inflicted some 
 hours of mortal fear on the " popolani grassi" of the 
 Signory ; and that is an offence men do not easily forgive. 
 
 On the other hand, there was very good reason to 
 believe that the motives of the nobles, or at least of many 
 among them, for wishing to have these reckless and dan- 
 gerous men in the city were by no means those which 4hey 
 put forward. A conspiracy was shortly afterwards dis- 
 covered on the very eve of its execution, got up between a 
 party among the nobles and the outlaws ; the object of 
 which was to admit the entire body of them into the city 
 by night, to set fire to the town in various places, and in 
 the confusion to bring about an entire revolution in the 
 government, deposing the Gonfaloniere and the entire 
 Signory, burning all the archives in which the records of 
 laws passed against the nobles were preserved, and esta- 
 blishing a- strictly oHgarchic form of government. The 
 plot was discovered just in time to defeat it ; and it became 
 pretty well known in the city that the chief conspirators 
 were Amerigo Donati, the son of Corso, Teghia Fresco- 
 baldi, and Lotaringo Gherardini. But "no one of the 
 people dared to accuse any of them by name in the council, 
 fearing' to be assassinated as they returned home in the 
 evening; since the taking away of all power from the 
 nobles in public affairs did not deprive them of their 
 
400 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. private power, and the plebeians were not defended by 
 '^^^' respect for the Signory in the darkness of night."* 
 
 It is a very remarkable fact, that after all that had been 
 done in Florence to depress the nobles, even tyrannically, 
 and to subject them, as if they were an inferior caste, to 
 the authority of the people, we should still find them thus 
 dangerous and thus formidable to their fellow-citizens. 
 Strange that the terror of then: lawless violence should so 
 paralyze every part of a government which had the whole 
 political and executive power in its hands ! And it might 
 be felt that such a condition of things might justify the 
 extraordinary and anti-social means taken by the Common- 
 wealth for the abatement of such an evil, were it not that 
 every such measure was in reality calculated to preserve 
 and perpetuate the mischiefs it was intended to eradicate. 
 Laws against nobles were not only a legal recognition of 
 the difference between them and other men, but an indica- 
 tion, and, at the same time, a nourishment of the belief in 
 the popular heart that there really did exist such difference. 
 Had the exactly contrary course been taken, — had the 
 government refused to see or know any difference whatever 
 between a plebeian and a patrician, — the dangerous enmities 
 between the two classes would have shortly disappeared, 
 together with the destruction of the boundary line that 
 separated them. 
 
 But the government sought to relieve the city, which had 
 been much agitated at the discovery of the conspiracy, by 
 the same old plan which had proved so inadequate on 
 former occasions ; — the devising and adding to the constitu- 
 tion of new popular magistracies, without the least reason 
 for believing that they would be more efficacious towards 
 the end in view than the former arrangements. Fifty-six 
 " Pennonieri" — flagbearers — were appointed, so many to 
 
 * Ammirato, book vi. Gonf. 184. 
 
A.D. 
 
 CASTRUCCIO'S PLOTS. 401 
 
 each ward, whose duty it was to put themselves at the ...„. 
 head of the populace in arms whenever there should be any ^^^* 
 need of defending the popular form of government. 
 
 Castruccio, indefatigable as ever, did not cease during 
 the following year, 1324, to endeavour both by fair means 
 and foul to increase his own power and diminish that of 
 his enemy. He harassed the Florentine territory by con- 
 tinued raids, and he plotted treason within the walls of 
 Florence, Pisa, and Pistoia. His accomplice in Florence 
 was Tommaso Frescobaldi, who had undertaken to corrupt 
 the foreign soldiers and give up the city to Castruccio. 
 But the Signory discovered the treason, and the noble 
 traitor, leaving one of his agents to pay for his crime with 
 his head, escaped out of the city, and was sentenced to 
 perpetual infamy and the confiscation of all his property. 
 In Pisa Castracane was equally unsuccessful. In that 
 Ghibelline city his unscrupulous treachery had not even 
 the excuse of being exerted for the advancement of the 
 great Ghibelline cause, but was palpably a mere attempt 
 to increase his own power and dominion. Among his 
 virtues, it was reckoned by his contemporaries that he was 
 " faithless towards those who were faithless to him." And 
 the latter category must, it is to be presumed, be taken to 
 include all those who were not bound to any fidelity 
 towards him. For we do not find that the Count Thieri 
 della Gherardesca, the ruler of Pisa, had been guilty of 
 any treachery towards him. Yet Castruccio suborned 
 assassins in Pisa to murder him, with his son, and others 
 of the leading citizens. But in Pisa also the plot was 
 discovered, and the instruments of the great man suffered 
 alone the penalty due to him and themselves. In Pistoia 
 he was more fortunate. There his intrigues took the 
 form of buying the most powerful man in the city, Filippo 
 Tedici. Ten thousand golden florins and the hand of 
 Castruccio's daughter were the price for which this man 
 
 VOL. I. n D 
 
402 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ELOEENGE. 
 
 A.B. agreed to sell his country to the Ghibelline tyrant. The 
 ^^^^' bargain was duly executed, and Castruccio took possession 
 of Pistoia,* on the 5th May, 1335. 
 
 The Florentines, when they saw that city lost to them, 
 " cursed again and again the avarice of the evil ministers 
 who for their own ends had delayed the purchase of 
 Pistoia, till Pilippo Tedici was obliged in despair to throw 
 himself into the arms of Castruccio." f 
 
 This last misfortune was but one in a long series of 
 mishaps, which had caused great grief and discouragement 
 to the Florentines," and had thrown a gloom over the city. 
 The continual inroads on the territory of that terrible 
 Castruccio, by far the most formidable enemy that the 
 Commonwealth had ever known ; — the never-ending still 
 beginning activity with which he was ever scheming new 
 attacks by open force or stealthy treachery against the 
 city ; — the consciousness that disaffection and treason 
 lurked within their own walls, as had been but too largely 
 proved by the recent cases of the Donati and Prescobaldi 
 plots,^ either of which infamously base attempts might have 
 given up the Commonwealth to all the horrors of military 
 tyranny and despotic government ; — the discords and mis- 
 management, which had caused that notable uprising of 
 the city and march to Prato to end so disgracefully in a 
 catastrophe, which made an exhibition to all Italy of the 
 impotence of the city, and invited the sneering ridicule of 
 every enemy to popular government; — all these things 
 had sunk deep into the popular mind, and produced a 
 feeling of despondency, which was very foreign to the 
 usual temper of the Florentine public. " Politics," as the 
 modern phrase is, were not, it should be well understood, 
 interesting to the mediaeval Florentine citizen, merely in the 
 same sort, degree, and manner that they are to the millions of 
 
 * Tillani, book is. chap, coxoiv. + Ammirato, book vi. Gonf. 195. 
 
"POLITICS" IN FLORENCE. 403 
 
 vast modern empires, however free, and however popularly a.b. 
 governed. An individual member of a social body con- ^^^^' 
 sisting of some thirty millions, especially an individual of 
 the classes farthest removed from the duties and cares of 
 governing,' cannot feel that direct and personal interest in 
 the public affairs that the member of a community num- 
 bering a few hundred thousand will feel. " Politics " were 
 not in fourteenth-century Florence a matter, the duties of 
 which were to be compendiously discharged by a vote, the 
 consideration of which was to make matter for after-dinner 
 talk. They were not a subject of satisfaction which could 
 find its expression in an approving nod over the morning's 
 newspaper, or of discontent which might evaporate in a 
 shrug. The public interests and the public fortunes were 
 to those old Plorentines matters of primary interest, often 
 indeed superseding all private affairs and duties, matters 
 requiring each citizen's perpetual vigilance, and his not 
 unfrequent action. 
 
 It is necessary to bear this in mind, if we would rightly 
 picture to ourselves the life of those Italian Communes. 
 And the remarks apply to Florence in a stronger degree 
 than to any other among them. 
 
 It was the 6th of May, 1325, in Florence, and matters 
 were looking very gloomily. Pistoia, a position so im- 
 portant in every way as a bulwark between Florence and 
 Lucca, lost to the city but yesterday, and gone to increase 
 the power of the enemy, so alarmingly powerful already ! 
 Something must be done ! But what ? With the nobles, 
 our natural military leaders, not a man of them to be 
 trusted ! With our foreign paid captains not worth 
 much; — the best among them offended, and gone over 
 to the enemy ! 
 
 But suddenly on that May afternoon there was a busy 
 buzz of tidings through every lane and remotest alley of 
 the city. There is an arrival in Florence ! Raimondo di 
 
 '' DD 2 
 
404 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. Cardona, the celebrated captain, he who led the Papal 
 ^^'^^' forces but lately in Lombardy, and has been since then 
 languishing in the dungeons of the Visconti at Milan, has 
 just reached the city, when all the world thought him still 
 in his Milanese prison ! He effected his escape, made his 
 way to the sea-side, took ship to Telamone,* and came 
 straight to Florence. He is now on the piazza, and all 
 Florence is flocking thither ! He is the man for Florence 
 in her need ! Out, every man of you, from your back 
 streets and courtyards — tanners, smiths, marble workers, 
 weavers, dyers ! Leave the factories open ! Never stay 
 to close the gaping mouths of your cavernous dyeing- vaults 
 on the Arno, vomiting forth clouds of steam from their 
 cauldrons ! Out, jolly dyers, with your brawny naked 
 arms and chests stained with all the hues in your dyeing 
 vats, and hurry away to the piazza, as you are to help in 
 making Raimondo di Cardona general of our armies ! 
 
 So the Florentines received their unexpected guest, as 
 Ammirato says, " as if he were an angel sent them by 
 heaven ; " and he was appointed general of the Florentine 
 forces within an hour after his arrival in the city,f and on 
 the very next day marched out with such men-at-arms as 
 could be got together at a moment's notice, and gained 
 some small successes against the enemy, — especially taking 
 Artimino, a fortified post on a high isolated hill behind 
 Signa.l 
 
 But the Florentines were bent on doing greater things 
 than these with their new general. It had for some time 
 past been a strong and growing wish in the popular mind 
 
 * The old Etruscan and then Roman port on the Tuscan sea ; now a 
 well-nigh abandoned hamlet, in the midst of poisonous Maremma marshes ; 
 but soon to be a port again and a railway terminus, giving life to a drained 
 and reclaimed district. 
 
 t Villani, book ix. chap, coxcv. ; Ammirato, book vi. Gronf. 195. 
 
 X Afterwards the seat of a hunting-box of the Medici, and now of a villa 
 commanding one of the most magnificent views in Tuscany, 
 
THE FLORENTINE ARMY. 405 
 
 to fight a pitched battle with their detested and dreaded a.t). 
 enemy Castruccio. The war between him and the Com- ^^^^• 
 monwealth had hitherto been confined to skirmishes, in- 
 roads, ravages of country, and the capture of towns and 
 castles. And the people were bent on bringing the 
 quarrel to the final arbitrament of a great and regular 
 battle. Nevertheless there were reasons, which induced 
 the more thoughtful part of the community to hesitate 
 much ere deciding on so bold and hazardous a line of 
 conduct. On the very night after Artimino was taken, a 
 fiery meteor passed over Florence. Raimondo di Cardona, 
 however able a general he might be, had just made his 
 escape from a prison, which could scarcely be deemed a 
 lucky omen. Then but a few nights before, an earthquake 
 had been felt at Florence, — which must mean something ! 
 And in April last such a quantity of snow had fallen 
 all over Tuscany, that surely there was somewhat in the 
 wind ! All these considerations were anxiously urged by 
 the more educated portion of the citizens. But nothing 
 could divert the people from their fixed idea, and it was 
 found necessary to yield to the popular will. 
 
 War was accordingly declared, with all due formality, 
 against Castruccio on the 8th of June, 1335,* and the 
 army prepared for a campaign. On the 17th of that same 
 month it marched out of Florence, with a strength of 
 fifteen thousand infantry, all natives of Florence, or of its 
 territory, and two thousand five hundred cavaliers, of 
 whom one-fifth were Florentine citizens, and the remainder 
 hired troops of various nations. Nearly four thousand 
 horses were used for the transport of the baggage and 
 stores of the army, and this branch of the service alone 
 cost the Commonwealth three thousand crowns a day, " a 
 sum which," says Ammirato, " may well astonish any one 
 
 * Villani, book ix. chap. coo. 
 
406 HISTORY or. THE COMMONWEALTH OP FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D._ who considers the smallness of the Florentine territory at 
 °' that time." 
 
 The army marched out with the " carroccio," and its 
 attendant car with the war-bell, in front of the army. 
 But its sound as it went at the head of the host, was 
 drowned by that of all the bells of the city ringing out 
 their parting blessings and wishes of good luck to the 
 departing troops. But a gloom was suddenly thrown 
 over this festive opening of the campaign, by an omen of 
 evidently evil import. The bell on the Palazzo of the 
 Podesta, the celebrated " Montanina," so called and much 
 petted by the Florentine populace, because it had been 
 captured from the castle of Montale, and brought in 
 triumph to Florence, some quarter of a century before that 
 time ; — the " Montanina " cracked itself at the first stroke 
 of the clapper, and instead of ringing out a cheery farewell 
 to the army, sounded what many felt to be a croaking 
 warning. 
 
 The evil effect of this on the spirits of the soldiers was, 
 however, very shortly afterwards relieved and counter- 
 balanced by the excommunication of Castruccio, fulminated 
 by the friendly Pope as his contribution to the efforts 
 about to be made against the common enemy. 
 
 The army marched to Pistoia, where Castruccio then 
 was, and strove to taunt him into giving them battle, by 
 burning and ravaging the country around the town, and by 
 celebrating on the 24th of June the usual Florentine 
 games in honour of St. John, close under the walls of 
 Pistoia. Castruccio was proof however against this 
 favourite insult, which always seems to have enraged and 
 tormented the victims of it, as much as it gratified the 
 performers of the feat. He let them run their races, and 
 play out their games under his nose to their heart's 
 content, steadily refusing to quit his walls, while he knew 
 himself to be inferior in strength to the enemy. Finding 
 
REPETITIONS OF FLORENTINE HISTORY. 407 
 
 It impossible to irritate the old soldier into fighting at a 
 disadvantage, they broke up their camp before Pistoia, 
 and marching into the Valdinievole, gained several unim- 
 portant successes against various small towns and 
 fortresses of the Liicchese territory. 
 
 Meantime, however, Castruccio was actively gathering 
 forces from his Ghibelline allies; and when the Floren- 
 tines succeeded in taking the more important fortified 
 town and castle of Altopascio,* which in a great measure 
 opened to them the road to Lucca, he was ready to come 
 out from Pistoia to look after them. 
 
 As usual, the Florentines lost several precious days in 
 disputing on the course they should pursue. The perti- 
 nacious repetitions of the follies and mismanagement of 
 this sort which occur again and again in the pages of the 
 Florentine chronicles are such as to make the reader fancy 
 that he must have missed the place in the volume, and got 
 back to incidents that he had left years behind him. 
 As before in the Valdarno, disputes arose in the camp 
 between those who were for pushing on to Lucca, and 
 those who deemed discretion the better part of valour, and 
 would fain content themselves with the successes obtained. 
 As before, the matter is referred to the Senate at home ; 
 and the Senate is as much divided on the question as the 
 army. At last, however, it was determined that the 
 forces should march on Lucca. Messer Raimondo di 
 Cardona advanced a few miles, and took up a manifestly 
 ill-chosen and disadvantageous position ; — a blunder, of 
 which Castruccio did not fail to take advantage. He 
 came out from Pistoia ; and some skirmishing between the 
 armies took place, in which, though nothing decisive was 
 accomplished, the advantage remained sufiiciently on the 
 
 * The traveller may see the harmless-looking little village on its knoll in 
 the midst of the valley from the left-hand window of the railway carriage, 
 as he rushes past between Pescia and Lucca. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 ia25. 
 
408 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.I), side of Castruccio, to injure very notably the moral tone of 
 
 i-^^o. ^]jg Florentine army. 
 
 But Castruccio was not yet quite ready for the great 
 battle, which he was now as determined on fighting, as 
 the Florentines had been, but were scarcely so stiU. He 
 had sent to Galeazzo Visconti, to beg him to send him his 
 son Azzo, who had already distinguished himself as a 
 leader, with a strong body of reinforcements. And 
 Visconti did not fail him. The young Azzo arrived with 
 his forces in Lucca ; but to Castruccio's infinite disgust, 
 instead of marching on at once to join him in his camp 
 near Altopascio, he began bargaining for money payment 
 for himself and men, which Castruccio had not to give 
 him. The old soldier threw himself into the saddle, and 
 rode by night to Lucca, to see the young man. After a 
 long interview, he succeeded in inducing him to limit his 
 demands to 6000 golden florins, in place of the very much 
 larger sum he had first asked ; and having obtained from 
 some Lucchese merchants a security for that sum, he 
 received Azzo's promise to march with his troops the first 
 thing in the morning. Castruccio, who was anxious to be 
 absent from his camp as few hours as possible, could not 
 stay in Lucca for the dawn ; and set out to ride back at 
 once to Altopascio. Bat fearing that Azzo might be 
 dilatory in the morning, and knowing how much might 
 depend on his arrival in the camp in good time, he had a 
 hurried interview with his wife, before getting into the 
 saddle for his night-ride back to the army ; and told her 
 to take with her some of the prettiest women in Lucca, 
 and go to the young prince, and see to it that he was off 
 in good time. 
 
 The following morning, the 33rd of September, 1325, 
 Castruccio, instead of at once opening the general attack, 
 for which he was now as anxious as the Florentines had 
 been, when first they marched out of the city to seek him, 
 
DEFEAT OF ALTOPASCIO. 409 
 
 made demonstrations of wishing to avoid it. The Ploren- a.d. 
 tines were proportionably excited to eagerness for the '^^^• 
 battle. But Castruccio so ordered matters, that the first 
 hours after the dawn were occupied in unimportant 
 skirmishes, with no appreciable result. Scarcely however 
 had the September sun risen high enough in the sky to 
 make its rays felt, when Azzo and his squadron of cavahers, 
 coming from Lucca, appeared on the horizon. Then 
 Castruccio knew that the hour for which he had been 
 waiting was come. With consummate generalship he 
 induced the Florentines to commence the attack, exactly 
 when, and exactly where he wished them to do so. And 
 in a very short time the great battle of Altopascio was lost 
 and won. The incidents of the day ought to have been, 
 but were not, an unforgotten lesson to the Florentines. 
 All the foreign cavalry, which the citizens had hired, 
 without regard to cost, and in which they put their main 
 trust, comprising as it did cavaliers of name and fame of 
 many nationalities, was routed at the first shock of the 
 attack. Raimondo di Cardona was taken prisoner. His 
 second in command, who turned and fled with all the 
 cavalry led by him, almost without striking a blow, was, 
 if not guilty of treason, as was suspected, guilty in any 
 case of the grossest cowardice. The only part of the 
 army which fought well, held its ground for awhile, and 
 strove hard to avert the fortune of that fatal day, was the 
 despised body of infantry, " all natives of Florence, and 
 the country around," as we were told. Had the Floren- 
 tines learned from this notable fact the wisdom it was so 
 well calculated to teach them, that terrible day of 
 Altopascio might have been the best and most fortunate 
 for the Commonwealth that had ever yet shone on it. 
 But the Florentines learned nothing ; and similar causes 
 produced similar efiects, on an increasing scale, to the end 
 of the chapter. 
 
410 HISTORY OP THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. The rout was a most complete one. The " carroccio " and 
 '■ the bell were both taken. The slaughter of knights in the 
 field was not great. They ran away too quickly. But 
 many fell in the flight and pursuit. Of the slaughter of 
 the poor citizens and peasants on foot, who were fighting 
 for their hearths and homesteads, of course small note was 
 taken. 
 
 And thus of the four great battles, our story has had to 
 record thus far, — Montaperti,* Campaldino,f Montecatini, f 
 and Altopascio,§ — all save the second have been disastrous 
 defeats for the Florentines. || 
 
 * 4th September, 1260. t Hth June, 1289. 
 
 J 29th August, 1315. § 23r(i September, 1325. 
 
 II Villani, book Lx. chaps, cociv. eocv. coovi. ; Ammirato, book vi. Gonf. 
 197. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Eesnlts of the defeat of Altopascio— Castruocio before Florence — Valdarno 
 ravaged — Eaoes run beneath the walls of Florence — Castruccio enters 
 Lucca in triumph — Distress of Florence— Charles, Duke of Calabria, 
 made Lord of Florence — Piero di Narsi beheaded by Castruccio in 
 Pistoia — First appearance in Florence of Walter de Brienne, Duke of 
 Athens — Plan of Castruccio to drown all Florence by damming the 
 Arno at Signa — Duke of Calabria passes through Siena — Arrives in 
 Florence — His demands for money — For increased power — The nobles 
 support his demands — He pacifies the people by withdrawing them — 
 The Duke does nothing towards repressing Castruccio — The Emperor 
 Louis the Bavarian comes into Tuscany — Duke of Calabria quits 
 Florence — Florentines take Pistoia — Castruccio lays siege to Pistoia 
 — Florentine army marches to relieve the town — fails to do so — and 
 marches into the Valdarno — Castruccio takes Pistoia — Pisa offered by 
 the inhabitants to the Emperor — Castruccio determined to hold Pisa by 
 force against the Emperor — The Florentines prepare for new struggles 
 with Castruccio — The Emperor marches towards Florence — But is 
 diverted by a proposal of Peter of Aragon that he should first make 
 himself master of Telamone — Florence saved by this delay from a 
 coalition against her of the Emperor and Castruocio — Death of 
 Castruccio. 
 
 The immediate consequences of the defeat of Altopascio 
 were more deplorable for Florence than had been those of 
 any one of the former disasters of the same kind. Their 
 conqueror upon this occasion was a man of boundless 
 ambition, of considerable political as well as military talent, 
 of far-sighted views, indefatigable activity, and utterly un- 
 scrupulous determination. He lost no time in following 
 up the heavy blow he had dealt his great enemy — the only 
 enemy, it may be said, that stood in his way to as extended 
 a domination in Tuscany as that of the Visconti in Lom- 
 bardy — by a series of rapid operations which reduced 
 
A.D. 
 
 1325. 
 
 412 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 riorence to a lower point of distress and humiliation than 
 she had ever known yet. 
 
 To recover all the positions which the Florentines had 
 taken from him in the previous months of the war, was to 
 Castruccio the work of a few days. Then advancing 
 towards the city, driving in the garrisons of the castles and 
 the inhabitants of the villages before him, he came, on the 
 1st of October, to San More, a httle hamlet in the midst of 
 the Valdarno between Sigiia and Prato, some three or four 
 miles from Florence. On the evening of the .2nd, he 
 pitched his camp at Peretola, a village on the road to 
 Arezzo, not more than two miles from the city. 
 
 Notwithstanding the continual wars with her neighbours 
 on all sides, in which Florence had been engaged for the 
 last two hundred years, the city and the territory imme- 
 diately around the walls — the " contado " of Florence, as 
 it was called — ^had never been profaned by the presence of 
 a hostile force. And the dismay, grief, and humiliation in 
 the city caused by this advance of Castruccio, up almost to 
 their very walls, was much what Londoners would feel if a 
 French army were encamped at Hampstead. Yet Florence 
 was so thoroughly cowed and disheartened, that, notwith- 
 standing the vast number of fighting men of all grades who 
 were shut up within her walls, no whisper was heard of 
 making an effort or a sally against the enemy. There the 
 citizens remained within their jealously-guarded circuit, 
 filled to choking with the runaway champions whom they 
 had hired, and the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, 
 who had sought shelter within the walls, looking on from 
 their towers and battlements at the destruction of their 
 country. Castruccio did not spare them. Up to the very 
 gates of the city he destroyed and burned everything 
 between the foot of the mountains and the Arno. The 3rd 
 of October was employed by his army in gathering and 
 sending off to Lucca every sort of moveable property they 
 
RAYAGES UNDER THE WALLS OF FLORENCE. 413 
 
 could lay their hands on. The 4th and the 5th were spent 
 in cutting down trees, and vines, and crops, and burning 
 and razing habitations. He did not even, says the histo- 
 rian, spare the monasteries of either sex, or the churches ; 
 " to the destruction of a vast quantity of noble works of 
 painting, which had begun to flourish wonderfully in those 
 days. The whole territory around Florence was at that 
 time abundantly adorned by such works, the result both 
 of the natural taste of the Florentines, who, accustomed as 
 they were to make large fortunes by their industry and 
 trade, spent their money freely in magnificent buildings, 
 and of the great abundance of admirable artists. Castruccio 
 had therefore ample opportunity of wreaking his fury." * 
 
 But the spirit, which animated the heart of every victor 
 of those days, would not have been satisfied without adding 
 insult to injury. Indeed, the general practice of the times 
 shows that the former was felt to be the sweeter of the two 
 to the victor, and the harder to be borne by the vanquished. 
 Accordingly the usual sport of running races under the 
 walls of the city to be insulted, was practised on the even- 
 ing of the 4th of October. It was an understood thing, 
 that the prizes in these races, consisting of a trophy of 
 some sort, represented the " spolia opirna " of the city 
 which was so far conquered as not to dare to come forth 
 from its walls to prevent the running of such a race. 
 Castruccio, to make the thing complete, caused these races 
 to be run from the very foot of the walls to Peretola ; — 
 the first for horses ; the second by men on foot ; and the 
 third by infamous women. " And so the Florentines 
 dragged through this miserable time, like people lost and 
 undone, thinking only of the safety of the city, and aban- 
 doning all idea of credit or honour." f At last he returned 
 
 * Ammirato, loc. cit. 
 
 + Villani, book ix. chap, ccoix. The historian does not mean that the 
 "honour" of the Commonwealth was lost in our sense of the phrase; but 
 
 A.D. 
 
 1325. 
 
414 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. to Lucca, at the desire of Azzo Visconti, who was anxious 
 to receive his money, and be off home to Lombardy, 
 leaving the whole country on that side of Florence abso- 
 lutely a desert. The young Visconti begged also, that the 
 prisoner Raimondo di Cardona, who had escaped from his 
 father's dungeons, should be given up to him ; a request 
 which Castruccio promised to grant, " as soon as he had 
 done with him ; as he wanted to use him in the triumphal 
 entry he purposed making into Lucca ;" — as in fact he did 
 on the 10th of November following. 
 
 Immense were the preparations made for this feast of 
 glory to be offered to himself by the great captain. It 
 was to be modelled on the Imperial triumphs of the old 
 Roman time ; and a great number of " the most honour- 
 able personages in Italy," we are assured, flocked to 
 Lucca to witness a spectacle that had not been seen for so 
 many ages. Castruccio entered, however, not according to 
 classical precedent on a triumphal car, but on a magnificent 
 charger, escorted by all the clergy, the principal men, and 
 the ladies of Lucca. Before him marched all his captives, 
 with their hands tied in front of them in the form of a 
 cross ; — then the captured carroccio, followed by the 
 standards of the city and those of King Robert reversed, 
 and trailing in the dust. After the carroccio came all the 
 prisoners of rank, knights and captains, among whom there 
 were three of special name, who, belonging as they 
 happened to do, to three different nationalities, were 
 thought to add a notable enhancement to the magnificence 
 of the triumph, as showing the extent of the victor's con- 
 quest. These were " Urlimbacca," a German leader of free 
 lances ; Piero di Narsi, a French knight, who became after- 
 wards, when he was ransomed, General-in-chief in the 
 Florentine service; and the Spaniard Raimondo di Cardona. 
 
 that (he citizens were too dejected and miserable to be roused to care about 
 the taunts and insults of the yiotor. 
 
DISTRESS m FLORENCE. 415 
 
 A remark made by the historian Ammirato,* that nothing a.d. 
 m all the ceremony so irked the minds of these prisoners, ^^^^• 
 as being compelled to carry in their hands wax tapers, as 
 an offering by the victor at the shrine of St. Martin, shows 
 how difficult it is for us, at this distance of time, to appre- 
 ciate or understand the sentiments and ideas of a period 
 removed from us by only some ten or twelve generations. 
 
 The remaining months of the year 1325 were pro- 
 bably the most disastrous and humiliating through which 
 the Commonwealth ever passed. Castruccio took but a 
 short period of repose for the enjoyment of his triumph, 
 and again returned to overrun the Florentine territory, 
 taking castles and sacking villages at his pleasure. And 
 this was not all that the miserable cowed and cower- 
 ing citizens had to endure. The overcrowded state of the 
 city, filled with the mercenary soldiers of many nations, 
 soon caused pestilence to make its appearance among them ; 
 and a great mortality ensued. 
 
 In the midst of these troubles, the Signory, which took ' 
 office for the last two months of the year, "considering 
 that the enemy was brandishing his sword under the walls 
 of Florence, and over the heads of its inhabitants ; — that 
 Signa was occupied, Prato laid waste, and the contado 
 ruined by him ; — that Montemurlof was besieged ; — ^that 
 the army of the Bolognese, which had been counted on as 
 a means of making head against the enemy in Lombardy, 
 was broken and dispersed ; — that the best captains in the 
 service of the Commonwealth were prisoners; — that the 
 number of the troops was diminished, the expenses in- 
 creased, and the citizens discouraged; — and, in a word, 
 that everything was going against Florence and in favour 
 of its enemies,"! — determined to have recourse to the old 
 
 * Book vi. Gronf. 198. 
 
 + A remarkable isolated hill at the foot of the mountains between Prato 
 and Pistoia. 
 
 % Ammirato, book vi. Gonf..l99. 
 
416 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.I). remedy, and instead of trusting to the stability of their 
 ^^^^' own institutions, and the patriotism of their own citizens, 
 to seek assistance from foreign royalty. The supreme 
 power in the city was therefore conferred for ten years on 
 Charles, the eldest son of King Robert of Naples, called 
 the D.uke of Calabria. 
 
 The terms of the bargain made with him on the 23rd of 
 December were as follows : — 
 
 The ten years are to be counted from his arrival in 
 Florence, which should not be later than the following 
 April. 
 
 The Duke shall reside personally in Florence at least 
 thirty months ; or in any country where he may be en- 
 gaged in war on account of the Commonwealth. 
 
 In time of war he shall maintain a thousand horsemen 
 from the northern side of the Alps ; * and receive from 
 the Commonwealth 200,000 golden florins a year; — in 
 time of peace he shall maintain four hundred cavaliers, 
 and receive 100,000 florins only. 
 
 If in time of peace the Duke does not wish to reside in 
 Florence, he must maintain there a Lieutenant of his own 
 family, or some " great Lord," as also a Vicar to administer 
 justice. 
 
 He shall not in any respect change the form of the con- 
 stitution ; but shall defend and maintain the Gonfaloniere, 
 the Priori, the Executor of the " Ordini di Giustizia," and 
 the Gonfalonieri of the militia companies. 
 
 On this understanding, which was quite sure to be 
 punctually carried out in at least that one of its provisions 
 relating to the remuneration of the royal hireling, the 
 Duke of Calabria reached Florence on the 30th of July, 
 thus beginning his service by breaking one of the condi- 
 tions of it. Nor did he come eveii then, without havins 
 
 * A curious admission of the superiority of sucli to the Kalians. 
 
PLOT OF PIERO DI NARSI. 417 
 
 been urged by a special embassy sent to entreat him to do a.d, 
 so, and perform something for his wages. For, in truth, ^^^^• 
 the need of the Commonwealth was extreme. 
 
 Piero di Narsi, having been ransomed from his prison 
 in Lucca, was in the meantime appointed general of the 
 Florentine forces. Knowing that he had the command 
 only temporarily, till the Duke should arrive, and anxious, 
 as Ammirato says, " to do something in that time to show 
 his valour and zeal for the Commonwealth," he could think 
 of nothing better than a plot for the murder of Castruccio, 
 to be executed by a chosen band of his own men under 
 his guidance. Some of those, however, entrusted with 
 the secret, betrayed it to Castruccio, who took steps to 
 ensure the capture of the unlucky Frenchman by means of 
 an ambush, into which he fell, when in the act of placing 
 himself in ambush to assassinate Castruccio. He was 
 taken accordingly, and carried captive into Pistoia, where 
 he was beheaded on the Piazza the next morning, Cas- 
 truccio alleging that he had broken his parole, given, as 
 the GhibeUine general asserted, when he M'as admitted to 
 ransom, not to bear arms again against Lucca. That 
 great man took advantage also of the occasion to say a few 
 animated words of virtuous indignation at a deed, which, 
 substituting stealthy murder for valour in the field, sapped 
 the foundation of all military honour ; — sentiments particu- 
 larly edifying in the mouth of him, who had suborned 
 assassins to murder Thieri della Gherardesca in Pisa ; and 
 had been the author of more treasons than any half-dozen 
 other men of his time. 
 
 No event of all this disastrous period made a more 
 painful impression on the Florentine people, than this 
 pubhc and disgraceful execution of their general-in- chief 
 on the Piazza of a neighbouring city. They began to 
 think that the unseen power, which some men call "luck," 
 and some call " Providence," was against them, and that 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
418 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. " the stars in their courses fought against " FJorence. 
 ^^^^- They were somewhat consoled, however, by the timely 
 arrival on the 17th of May, 1326, only three days after 
 the execution of Narsi, in Pistoia, of Walter de Brienne, 
 Duke of Athens, who* had been sent with four hundred 
 cavaliers by the Duke of Calabria as his lieutenant, till he 
 should be able to come to Florence in person. This Gual- 
 tieri di Brenna, as the Italian historians call him, but more 
 infamous in popular Florentine story, as the Duke of 
 Athens, was (before the Florentines had an opportunity of 
 knowing him) " much esteemed both for the splendour of 
 his family, descended from a king of Jerusalem, and be- 
 cause he was married to Beatrice, daughter of the Prince 
 of Taranto, King Robert's brother," * and so cousin to 
 the new generalissimo, the Duke of Calabria. 
 
 Whatever comfort could be found in the presence among 
 them of so great a personage was not administered to the 
 citizens a day too soon. Castruccio . had again begun to 
 ravage the country, advancing with 800 horse and 3000 
 foot almost to the city walls. Finding that he could not 
 provoke the citizens to come out from the shelter of their 
 fortifications, he retired to Signa, and there planned one 
 of the most singular enterprizes ever imagined by the 
 ingenuity that has been employed for so many ages in 
 the destruction of mankind and the defacement of the 
 world. 
 
 It has been mentioned in a former chapter, in which an 
 account was given of one of the earliest expeditions of the 
 Florentines against the feudal lord of a castle, commanding 
 the pass of Signa, that the Arno there leaves the wide 
 basin in which Florence stands, and passes through a gorge 
 in the hills into the lower Valdarno, which stretches thence 
 to Pisa. This spot is about seven miles from Florence. 
 
 * Arnmirato, took vi. Gonf. 201. 
 
SCHEME OF DAMMING THE ARNO. 419 
 
 The road thence to Pisa and Leghorn takes advantage of a.b. 
 the passage which the river has opened for itself; and ^^^^' 
 latterly, space has with som6 difficulty been found to 
 squeeze the railroad in between them. Now it struck 
 Castruccio, that if he could only build a water-tight wall 
 across this gorge in the rocks, he could accomplish the 
 master-stroke of drowning all Florence, and the whole 
 extent of the upper Valdarno. The idea was a veritable 
 flash of genius, and the execution, as he felt, would have 
 given him rank among the greatest destroyers the world 
 has seen. But his engineers showed him that to produce 
 in any degree the effect desired, his wall must be an 
 hundred and fifty braccia, or nearly three hundred feet, 
 high. And before that fact, he with much reluctance and 
 regret abandoned the design. 
 
 The Duke of Athens meanwhile was employing himself 
 in recruiting and reconstructing the Plorentine army ; and 
 the citizens, recovering a little from their prostration, 
 began to conceive hopes of revenging themselves by the 
 help of their new general for all the ills they had suffered. 
 Nothing however of any importance was done before the 
 Duke of Calabria's arrival. On the 10th of July it was 
 known in Florence that he had arrived in Siena ; and, as 
 it happened that that city was in a state of disturbance on 
 account of a deadly feud between the Tolomei and the 
 Salimbeni families, which it was feared might lead to a 
 revolution, having for its object to destroy the Guelph 
 government in power at Siena, and substitute a Ghibelline 
 one in its place ; and as such an event would have been 
 extremely prejudicial to Florentine interests, inasmuch as 
 it would in all probability have thrown Siena into alliance 
 with Castruccio, the Signory sent messengers to the Duke 
 of Calabria, begging him not to quit Siena till he had 
 taken measures to set that feud at rest. The Duke did as 
 he was bid ; — patched up a peace between the two families 
 
 £ B 2 
 
420 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. for five years; — obtained as a reward for doing it the 
 ^^^^" Signory of Siena for that period ; which piece of prefer- 
 ment we must suppose, was found to be tenable with that 
 of Florence, the two cities being only forty miles apart ; — 
 and having consumed eighteen days in arranging these 
 matters, sent in to the Florentines a little bill of sixteen 
 thousand golden florins for his services during that period, 
 observing, that he had remained in Siena at their orders, 
 and that such service did not enter into the duties of his 
 place of Lord of Florence. 
 
 The good burghers deUghted at having a real royal 
 prince in their service, paid without grumbling ; and gave 
 him such a reception, say the chroniclers, as had not been 
 seen for a long time in any city of Italy on the arrival of 
 any King, Pope, or Emperor whatever. The Duke brought 
 with him his Duchess, the daughter of Charles de Valois, 
 and Prince John of the Morea, his uncle, accompanied also 
 by the Princess. There was " Filippo Despoto di Ro- 
 mania," the Duke's cousin also, and numbers of other 
 high and mighty lords and ladies. It was very gratifying 
 to the citizens, naturally so, — but costly, as all those shreds 
 and slips of royalty held out their hands for vails, and got 
 them very unstintingly. Truly, as Pope Boniface said, 
 Florence was the fountain-head of gold in those days. 
 And, " it was a marvel to all the nations of Italy, that the 
 Florentine people, masters of so small a territory, and that 
 not a fertile one, after all the reverses, and disasters in- 
 flicted on them by Castruccio, after the enormous expenses 
 they had supported, and when they were, as it seemed, at 
 the last gasp, should have been able to hire a prince of so 
 great authority, and such a numerous and noble array of 
 barons with him. For counting the four hundred cavaliers 
 of the Duke of Athens, and those who came from Provence, 
 there were two thousand foreign knights in the city." * 
 
 * Ammirato, book vi. Gonf. 202, 
 
THE DUKE OP CALABRIA'S DEMANDS. 421 
 
 The first measures of the Duke, as soon as the festivities a.d. 
 of his reception had come to an end, were not calculated ^^^®' 
 to reassure the citizens as to the value of the services it 
 had cost them so much to secure. He made demands for 
 increased power and more money; and worse than that, 
 did little or nothing towards repressing the power of 
 Castruccio. He wanted absolute power to name the 
 Signory at his pleasure, to absolve by his sole authority 
 all exiles, bandits, and outlaws, and permit their return 
 to the city, and to impose taxes by simple decree. The 
 nobles, thinking they saw in such tendencies an oppor- 
 tunity of getting rid entirely of the popular constitution, 
 strongly urged that the Duke should be entrusted with 
 absolute power purely and simply and without restriction. 
 But Charles, having some knowledge of the Florentine 
 character, instead of insisting on his demands, allowed 
 them in great part to drop, and sided openly and strongly 
 with the people in the disputes to which this proposal 
 gave rise, declaring that he by no means wished any such 
 power, nor judged it wise to accord such to any ruler. 
 By this judicious conduct he obtained aU that he had 
 asked for, except the right to impose taxes, which the 
 Signory modestly said " whenever it should be necessary, 
 they preferred doing themselves." He obtained also an 
 additional 30,000 golden florins for the hire of more 
 troops, which he declared to be necessary for the war. 
 Great preparations indeed were made for resuming hos- 
 tilities against Castruccio. All the alhed Guelph cities 
 were required to send in their contingents of men, and 
 did so. But the Duke, to the surprise of everybody, did 
 not take the field. It was thought that his father. King 
 Robert, retained too vivid a recollection of the last great 
 battle in which a prince of his house had commanded the 
 Florentine army, and which had been fatal to one of his 
 sons. In any case nothing was done; and when at the 
 
422 HISTOET OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.D. end of the first year of the Duke's signory, it was found 
 ^'^^'" that he had in one way or another cost the city more than 
 460,000 golden florins ;*— that all that had been got for 
 this was, that " every matter small and great in Florence 
 was ruled by the Duke's counsellors and creatures ; — that 
 the Signory was so reduced and cowed that the Priori did 
 not dare to do the least thing, nor so much as send off a 
 messenger ; — that a counsellor of the Duke was always at 
 their elbow, so that the citizens, who were used to govern 
 their own city, were ruled by men less worthy and less 
 wise than themselves,"! a strong feeling of discontent 
 became very general in the city. 
 
 Meanwhile Louis of Bavaria, who had by amicable 
 arrangement with his competitor Frederick of Austria, 
 become Emperor, had been invited by the Ghibellines to 
 march into Italy to support their party, and specially to 
 make head against Robert of Naples. Louis was crowned 
 with the iron crown at Milan in May, 1327 ; marched 
 into Tuscany, and was received by Castruccio in Lucca in 
 November of that year, created his host Duke of that city, 
 and in December left Tuscany for Rome. 
 
 Under these circumstances the Duke of Calabria thought 
 it necessary to hurry southwards to defend his father's 
 kingdom. So leaving Florence to take care of itself, he 
 started thence on the 28th of December, 1327, having in 
 the nineteen months of his rule caused the Commonwealth 
 an expense of 900,000 golden florins, j and done absolutely 
 nothing towards the carrying on of the war. 
 
 Castruccio had followed his friend and patron the Em- 
 peror to Rome shortly after the departure of the latter, so 
 that Florence was left a breathing space to look into her 
 
 * Villani, book x. chap. x. It should be remembered that this amounted 
 to the almost incredible, but yet perfectly well authenticated sum of 5(5,250 
 ounces of pure gold. 
 
 t Villani, luc. cit. J Villani, book x. chap. xlix. 
 
A.D. 
 
 CASTRUCCIO'S RIDE FROil ROME. 423 
 
 affairs by the absence of her great enemy, and that, per- -._. 
 haps hardly less desirable, of her great friend. ^^^® 
 
 On the 28th of the following month, January, 1328, 
 Pistoia was taken by a night surprise by the French 
 soldiers left by the Duke of Calabria in Florence, and the 
 miserable city was given up for ten days to the brutahty 
 of these foreign soldiers. But the triumph of this success, 
 — the first of any moment that the Commonwealth had 
 achieved for so long a time, — was not of long duration. 
 For no sooner had the indefatigable Castruccio heard of 
 this disaster to his arms than he set out instantly to repair 
 it. Leaving Rome on the 1st of February with five 
 hundred cavaliers and a thousand cross-bowmen, he soon 
 left them behind him in his impatience ; and pressing on 
 with only twelve other horsemen, he rode through the 
 Maremma at very great risk from the bands of robbers 
 by whom it was infested, and reached Pisa in what v/as 
 then deemed the wonderfully short space of nine days. 
 
 The sudden difference that the presence of such a man 
 made in Tuscany might have given a lesson to all German 
 emperors and others engaged in the attempt to acquire 
 and govern dominions far away from the seat of their 
 own power, and to which they could never give their con- 
 tinued personal superintendence. The personal qualities 
 of rulers counted for too much in those times and countries 
 to admit of the success of vicarial government. Returned 
 to the scene of his triumphs and prestige, Castruccio found 
 little difficulty in making himself lord of Pisa to begin 
 with. And he lost no time in making use of all the 
 resources of that rich city, increased by the imposition of 
 new taxes, for the getting together of sufficient means in 
 men and money to be used in recovering Pistoia. 
 
 Meanwhile the Florentines were wasting the precious 
 months in quarrelling with the General left in Florence at 
 the head of the foreign forces by the Duke of Calabria, as 
 
A.r. 
 1328. 
 
 424 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 to whose duty it was to victual and garrison Pistoia. The 
 Frenchman maintained that he had done his part in taking 
 the city, and it behoved the Florentines to provide for its 
 defence. The Signory replied that it was expressly to 
 provide for such expenses that they paid the Duke 200,000 
 florins a year ; and that besides this, the amount of booty 
 taken in Pistoia was such as ought to make those who had 
 been enriched by it both abundantly able and willing to 
 furnish the necessary expenses. 
 
 While the Florentines were thus busied in talking in- 
 stead of doing, Castruccio sent the forces he had been 
 actively preparing to lay siege to Pistoia on the 13th of 
 May, 1328, and followed them himself on the 30th of 
 that month. 
 
 Then Florence began to bestir herself ; collected assist- 
 ance from all the Guelph cities, hired more foreign troops, 
 at an expense infinitely greater, than would have been 
 needed to put Pistoia into a thoroughly defensible con- 
 dition ; subsidized the Bolognese with ten thousand florins, 
 and on the 13th of July marched out with two thousand 
 six hundred cavaliers, and foot soldiers " innumerable," to 
 raise the siege and relieve Pistoia. The force of Castruccio 
 did not amount to more than sixteen hundred horse, and 
 infantry in proportion, and he declined the battle to 
 which the Florentine commanders endeavoured to provoke 
 him, contenting himself with entrenching his camp and 
 strengthening his position by barricades of felled trees. 
 
 Villani, enumerating the various elements of the Floren- 
 tine forces, remarks, as a strong point in their favour, that 
 " the greater part of the cavalry was from beyond the 
 Alps." It is curious to observe this constant tendency 
 to rate foreign higher than native thews and sinews, and 
 to trust to hired help rather than to native patriotism. 
 On almost every occasion the result furnished a severe 
 lesson to the employers of foreign troops. The splendid 
 
CASTRUCCIO RECOVERS PISTOIA. 425 
 
 army got together at such vast cost before Pistoia was a.d. 
 almost useless,— quite so indeed as regarded the main ^^^^' 
 object in hand. The leaders disputed with each other. 
 The foreign troopers fraternized during the intervals of 
 hostilities with others their fellows in the camp of the 
 enemy. Suspicions of treason arose. And eventually the 
 Florentine generals, "having trumpeted a final challenge" 
 to Castruccio to come out from his defences and fight 
 them, which he was too wise to do, broke up their camp, 
 and divided their forces into bands, which occupied them- 
 selves, as usual when nothing better could be done, in 
 damaging the territory of the enemy. One portion of the 
 Florentine force menaced Pisa and Lucca, but failed by 
 that means to draw off Castruccio from the great object 
 of recovering Pistoia ; which having been left unprovisioned 
 by the Florentines, and now seeing itself deserted by the 
 relieving army, submitted on the third of August ;— to 
 the great chagrin of the Florentine people, who felt bitterly 
 the disgrace of having wholly failed with a force nearly 
 double that of the enemy to prevent his taking from 
 them an important city within twenty miles of their own 
 capital.* 
 
 Castruccio, now once again absolute master of Lucca, 
 Pisa, and Pistoia ; still in the prime of life, being in his 
 forty-seventh year ; universally recognized as the greatest 
 captain of his time, at all events to the south of the Alps ; 
 and having made himself, from being a simple Lucchese 
 citizen and exile, absolutely necessary to the great , 
 Ghibelline party and the powerful princes, whose most 
 vital interests were bound up with the ascendancy of it ; — 
 Castruccio Castracane was at this period, more than ever in 
 a position calculated to foster schemes of yet higher 
 ambition. Nevertheless, there were difficulties around his 
 
 * Villani, book x. chap. Ixxxv. ; Ammirato, book vii. Gonf. 212. 
 
426 HISTOEY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.n. present path. When on his return from Rome he had 
 ' seized the supreme power in Pisa, that portion of tha 
 inhabitants which was opposed to him had endeavoured 
 to foil his plans, by offering the lordship of the city to the 
 Emperor Louis of Bavaria. But the Emperor, though 
 much tempted by such an offer, had felt that he could not 
 afford to come to an open rupture with Castruccio ; and 
 had replied to the Pisans, that he could not meddle in 
 any such matter ; but that they might, if they liked, make 
 their offer to the Empress. The lady jumped at the 
 proposal, and sent a " Vicario " to take possession of the 
 city in her name. 
 
 Galeazzo Visconti was at that time living as a guest 
 with Castruccio, having been turned out of the sovereignty 
 of Milan by the Emperor, on his first arrival in Italy, in 
 consequence of Visconti's refusal to impose a tax upon his 
 subjects in favour of the imperial coffers. The fact was, 
 that he had already drained his subjects' purses so dry, 
 and raised so much' disaffection among them, that he dared 
 not do as the Emperor desired. Whereupon the latter, 
 with very short-sighted policy, considering that the 
 Visconti were the mainstay and best supporters of the 
 Ghibelline cause in Lombardy, . took advantage of the 
 discontent of the Milanese, raised a rebellion against the 
 Visconti, drove them from the city, and then readily 
 obtained from the citizens the supplies of which he stood 
 in need. This conduct of the Emperor had produced a 
 great effect on the mind of Castruccio. He saw in it a 
 warning, that Louis could not be trusted as a loyal chief 
 of the Ghibelline cause, and that should the occasion offer, 
 the same fate might happen to him which had happened 
 to the Visconti, now an exiled pensioner on his hospi- 
 tality. So, after two days of doubt, he determined that it 
 was not worth while to lose Pisa for the sake of keeping on 
 good terms with the Emperor, if the latter chose to quarrel 
 
CASTRUCCIO'S NEGOTIATIONS, 427 
 
 with him on the subject. So he suddenly arrested and a.-d. 
 imprisoned the Empress's Vicar and other adherents, and 
 caused himself to be formally declared Lord of Pisa. 
 
 Nevertheless, he was desirous of remaining on good 
 terms with the Emperor, at all events for the present, if 
 the latter would allow him to do so. And as Louis was 
 very soon after the fall of Pistoia returning northwards 
 from Rome, without having accomplished anything save 
 exciting the violent discontent and anger of the Romans 
 by the predatory habits of his troops, Castruccio sent 
 proposals to him to march his army through Tuscany, 
 opening new schemes of great things to be done against 
 Florence by their mutual co-operation, and promising to 
 return with him the following year to assist in a campaign 
 against Naples.* The Elorentine historians, however, 
 assert that he was at the same time making proposals 
 of peace to the Signory of Florence, having no faith in 
 the Emperor, and deeming it wise, in the partial break 
 up of the great GhibeUine party by the ruin of the 
 Visconti, to content himself with seeming what he already 
 held. 
 
 The Florentines, however, trusted him as little as he 
 trusted the Emperor; and once more prepared for new 
 efforts in the field against him. Among other provisions, 
 the Signory wrote to King Robert, requesting him to send 
 back his son, the Duke of Calabria ; and intimating, that 
 if he did not return to his duty, they should not pay the 
 300,000 florins, but only such part of that sum, as the 
 real pay of the troops left in Florence by the Duke might 
 amount to ; — which they estimated to be not more than 
 120,000 florins. Notwithstanding the immense sums 
 which the Commonwealth had expended during the war 
 with Castruccio, means were now found, though not 
 
 * Ammirato, book vii. Gonf. 214, 
 
428 HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. without difficulty, for putting into a perfect state of defence 
 ^^^^- all the fortresses of both the upper and lower Valdarno. 
 So much difficulty had the Signory in finding the money 
 to meet these expenses, that a forced contribution was 
 exacted from the clergy, on the pretext of an old papal 
 letter issued on some previous occasion. 
 
 Meanwhile the Emperor was slowly making his way 
 northwards, stopping on his road here and there to extract 
 money from different cities, and preparing a combined 
 attack on Florence, in alUance with Castruccio. The city 
 looked forward to the storm about to break over it, with 
 greater apprehension than had ever been felt before in 
 the worst epoch of its history. If Castruccio alone was 
 able to reduce us to the condition in which we were 
 after the battle of Altopascio, what, it was argued, will 
 be the result of a union between him and the Imperial 
 forces ? 
 
 This dreaded combination however was deferred for a 
 short space, by the intervention of yet another enemy, 
 Peter of Aragon, the son of Frederick, King of Sicily. 
 The Aragonese dynasty in Sicily, was as much Ghibelline 
 in its traditional politics, as the French dynasty in Naples 
 was Guelph. These two houses were in continual war 
 with each other on quarrels of their own ; but the Sicilian 
 monarch was as natural an ally of the Emperor as his 
 neighbour of Naples was of Florence. Now, while Louis 
 was encamped before Todi, and was making his arrange- 
 ments for the attack on Florence, messengers came to him 
 from Peter of Aragon, telling him that their sovereign had 
 just arrived by sea at Corneto, and begging the Emperor 
 to come there to meet him, for the prosecution of certain 
 plans expedient for their common interest. The proposal 
 was, that while Peter with the forces he had brought with 
 him should besiege the port and town of Telamone, Louis 
 should take Grosseto, " in order to prevent the Florentines 
 
A.D. 
 
 DEATH OF CASTRUCCIO. 429 
 
 from using this road and port for their merchandize." * 
 It was then August ; and it seems strange that such a ^^^^ 
 month should have been selected for such an enterprize. 
 The two towns in question, are situated in the most 
 unhealthy part of the Maremma ; and unless the sanitary 
 conditions of the district were widely different then from 
 what they are now, an army undertaking the siege of either 
 of the places named at that period of the year, must have 
 been exposed to certain destruction. 
 
 The delay occasioned in the ulterior plans of the 
 Emperor by this interruption was not a long one; for 
 Telamone had been already taken before the end of August, 
 and Grosseto was then on the point of falling. But it was 
 sufficient to save Florence from the greatest danger that 
 had ever yet threatened her. Tor while the two monarchs 
 were yet engaged in the Maremma, the news reached them 
 of the death of Castruccio. 
 
 He died at Lucca, on the 3rd of September, in 
 the 47th year of his age, of a fever caught by over-exertion 
 in the great heats of summer. 
 
 His death was so carefully concealed, that the news of ' 
 it did not reach Florence till the 10th. But the effect 
 which the tidings then produced in the city, is described 
 to have been beyond all belief. For a while the citizens 
 seemed to feel as if it were impossible that so great and 
 unexpected a deliverance could be real ! All the mis- 
 fortunes, all the ruin seemed to be suddenly at an end, as 
 when the sun shines briUiantly out after being obscured 
 by black clouds. They cared nothing for Louis, the 
 Emperor, or for any other enemies. The terrible Cas- 
 truccio would scatter their armies and ravage their country 
 no more ; — and that was enough. All other troubles they 
 could cope with. The Emperor, and the Ghibelline party 
 
 * Amiairato, book vii. Gonf. 215, 
 
430 HISTOET OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF FLORENCE. 
 
 A.B. througliout Italy, felt that this untimely death would 
 ■ change the face of affairs most materially in Tuscany. 
 And the dismay which fell upon the whole party of his 
 friends, no less than the unmeasured exultation of his 
 enemies, testify sufficiently to the fact, that this Lucchese 
 citizen was the most able and remarkable man, that this 
 story has as yet encountered. 
 
 END OP VOL. I. 
 
 EIIADEUKT AND fcVANS, PKINTEES, WHITErEIAHS.