[Sidenote: [1197-1218 A.D.]]
The death of Henry VI was followed by a general war throughout the
empire, which gave fresh activity to the passions of the Italian nobles,
and greater animosity to the opposing parties. The two factions in
Germany had simultaneously raised to the empire the two chiefs of the
houses of Guelf and Ghibelline. Philip I, duke of Swabia, and brother of
Henry VI, had been named king of the Romans by the Ghibellines; and Otto
IV, son of Henry the Lion, duke of Bavaria and Saxony, by the Guelfs.
Their contest was prolonged to the 22nd of June, 1208, when Philip was
assassinated by a private enemy. The Germans, wearied with eleven years
of civil war, agreed to unite under the sceptre of his rival, Otto IV,
whom they crowned anew. The following year he passed into Italy, to
receive from the pope the golden crown of the empire.
But though Otto was the legitimate heir of the Guelfs of Bavaria, so long
chiefs of the opposition to the imperial prerogatives, yet now wearing
himself the crown, he was desirous of possessing it with these disputed
rights; every one was denied him, and all his actions controlled by
the pope. There was soon a declared enmity between the emperor and the
pontiff who, rather than consent to any agreement, or to abate any of his
pretensions, raised against the Guelf emperor the heir of the Ghibelline
house, the young Frederick II, grandson of Frederick I, hardly eighteen
years of age, and till then reigning under the pope’s tutelage over the
Two Sicilies only. Frederick, excited and seconded by the pope, boldly
passed through Lombardy in 1212, and arrived at Aachen, where the German
Ghibellines awaited, and crowned him king of the Romans and Germans. Otto
IV in the meantime returned to Germany, and was acknowledged by Saxony.
The civil war, carried on between the two chiefs of the empire, lasted
till the 19th of May, 1218, when Otto died, without any attempt by
either party to despoil his rival of his hereditary possessions. It
was this civil war that caused the names of Guelf and Ghibelline to be
exclusively substituted for those of party of the church and party of
the empire. In fact, each noble family, and each city, seemed to consult
only their hereditary affection, and not their political principles, in
ranging themselves under either standard. The Guelfs placed themselves
in opposition to the pope, to repel his Ghibelline candidate; and Milan,
Piacenza, and Brescia braved even excommunication to resist him; while,
on the contrary the Ghibellines of Pavia, Cremona, and of the marches
armed themselves with zeal against an emperor of the Guelf blood.
During this period, while the minority of Frederick II left so much
time to the cities of Italy to consolidate their independence, and to
form real republics, the person most influential and most prominent in
history was the pope, Innocent III, who reigned from 1197 to 1216. He
caused his power to be felt in the remotest parts of Christendom, but he
suffered to be constituted at Rome, under his own eye, a republic, the
liberty of which he respected, and over which he assumed no authority.
The thirteen districts of Rome each named annually four representatives
or _caporioni_; their meeting formed the senate of the republic, who,
with the concurrence of the people, exercised the sovereignty, with
the exception of the judicial power. This power belonged as in other
republics to a foreign military chief, chosen for one year, and assisted
by civil judges, dependent on him, but bearing the name of senator,
instead of podesta. We have still extant the form of oath taken by the
first of these senators, named in 1207. By it he engages to guarantee
security and liberty to the pope as well as to his brothers the
cardinals, but promises no submission to him for himself.
In the beginning of the pontificate of Innocent III, two German generals,
to whom Henry VI had given the titles of duke of Spoleto and marquis of
Ancona, held in dependence and subjection the provinces nearest Rome.
Innocent, to revive the spirit of liberty, sent thither two legates; and
by their interference, the cities of these provinces, built for the most
part in the mountains, and without any means of becoming either wealthy
or populous, threw off the German yoke, and made alliance with those
cities which from the preceding period had entered into the league of
Lombardy; thus two Guelf leagues were formed, under the protection of
the pope; one in the marches, comprehending the cities of Ancona, Fermo,
Osimo, Camerino, Fano, Jesi, Sinigaglia, and Pesaro; the other in the
duchy, comprehending those of Spoleto, Rieti, Assisi, Foligno, Nocera,
Perugia, Agubbio, Todi, and Città di Castello. These leagues, however,
in accustoming the cities of these two provinces to regard the pope as
their protector, led them afterwards to submit without resistance to the
sovereignty of the church.
Other legates had been about the same time sent into Tuscany by the pope;
they convoked at St. Ginasio, a borough situated at the foot of the
mountain of San Miniato, the diet of the towns of that country. These
provincial diets were in the habit of assembling frequently, and had
till then been presided over by an officer belonging to the emperor, in
memory of whom the castle in which he resided is still called San Miniato
al Tedesco. These diets settled the differences which arose between
cities, and had succeeded in saving Tuscany from the civil wars between
the Guelfs and Ghibellines. Pisa, which had been loaded with favours by
the sovereigns of the house of Hohenstaufen, and which had obtained from
them the dominion of sixty-four castles or fortified towns on the shores
of Tuscany, and over the isles of Corsica, Elba, Capraia, and Pianosa,
proclaimed its determination of remaining faithful to the Ghibelline
party, and its consuls withdrew from the diet convoked at St. Ginasio;
but those of the cities of Florence, of Siena, of Arezzo, of Pistoia, and
of Lucca accepted the protection of the pope, offered by his two legates,
and promised to coalesce in defence of their common liberty.[b]
[Illustration: FLORENCE]
FACTIONS IN FLORENCE
[Sidenote: [1177-1215 A.D.]]
We have already seen that the spirit of political as well as religious
party began to rise as early as 1177, and excepting some short intervals
of uneasy repose, remained in a state of violence until 1182. From this
epoch there are no accounts of actual war within the city of Florence
until 1215; but nearly five years of hard fighting between two great
factions of undiminished force was unlikely to be followed by a dead
calm except from exhaustion; or by any oblivion of injury in an age and
country where revenge was a duty, not a crime.
The great power and independence of the newly created podesta, together
with external hostilities, probably assisted in maintaining peace in
a city that prided itself on being founded under the protection and
ascendant of Mars, and therefore doomed by fate to everlasting troubles.
Hence Roccuzzo de’ Mozzi is made by Dante to say:
“_Io fui della città, che nel Batista_
_Cangiò ’l primo Padrone, onde ei per questo_
_Sempre con l’arte sua la farà trista._”
Disputes which had so long occupied the attention of Italy were not
without participation in Florence, where the quarrels of church and
empire did not fail to create two adverse opinions, but as yet confined
to words; the prevailing politics, being Guelfic and papal, while
the opposition led by Uberti was entirely imperial, were accidental
circumstances; but combined with and as it were grafted on local
politics, drew a distinct line between contending factions and boded
mischief.
In the year 1215, according to an ancient manuscript published from the
Buondelmonti library, Messer Mazzingo Tegrini de’ Mazzinghi invited
many Florentines of high rank to dine at his villa near Campi about
six miles from the capital; while at table the family jester snatched
a trencher of meat from Messer Uberto degli Infangati who, nettled at
this impertinence, expressed his displeasure in terms so offensive that
Messer Oddo Arrighi de’ Fifanti as sharply and unceremoniously rebuked
him; upon this Uberto gave him the lie and Oddo in return dashed a
trencher of meat in his face.
Everything was immediately in confusion; weapons were soon out, and while
the guests started up in disorder young Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti,
the friend and companion of Uberto, severely wounded Oddo Arrighi.
The party then separated and Oddo called a meeting of his friends to
consider the offence; amongst them were the counts Gangalandi, the
Uberti, Amidei, and Lamberti, who unanimously decided that the quarrel
should be quietly settled by a marriage between Buondelmonte and Oddo’s
niece, the daughter of Messer Lambertuccio di Capo di Ponte, of the
Amidei family. This proposition appears to have been unhesitatingly
accepted by the offender’s family as a day was immediately nominated for
the ceremony of plighting his troth to the destined bride.
During the interim Madonna Aldruda or Gualdrada, wife of Forese de’
Donati, sent privately for young Buondelmonte and thus addressed him:
“Unworthy knight! What! Hast thou accepted a wife through fear of the
Fifanti and Uberti? Leave her that thou hast taken, choose this damsel
in her place, and be henceforth a brave and honoured gentleman.” In so
saying she threw open the chamber door and exposed her daughter to his
view; the unexpected apparition of so much beauty, as it were soliciting
his love, had its usual consequence; Buondelmonte’s better reason was
overcome, yet he had resolution to answer, “Alas! it is now too late!”
“No,” replied Aldruda; “thou canst even yet have her; dare but to take
the step and let the consequences rest on my head.” “I do dare,” returned
the fascinated youth, and stepping forward again plighted a faith no
longer his to give.
Early on the 10th of February, the very day appointed for his original
nuptials, Buondelmonte passed by the Porta Santa Maria amidst all the
kinsfolk of his first betrothed, who had assembled near the dwellings of
the Amidei to assist at the expected marriage, yet not without certain
misgivings of his faithlessness. With a haughty demeanour he rode forward
through them all, bearing the marriage ring to the lady of his choice
and leaving her of the Amidei with the shame of an aggravated insult
by choosing the same moment for a violation of one contract and the
consummation of a second; for in those days, and for centuries after, the
old Roman custom of presenting a ring long before the marriage ceremony
took place was still in use.
Such insults were then impatiently borne; Oddo Arrighi assembled his
kindred in the no longer existing church of Santa Maria sopra Porta to
settle the mode of resenting this affront, and the moody aspect of each
individual marked the character of the meeting and all the vindictive
feeling of an injured family; there were, however, some of a more
temperate spirit that suggested personal chastisement or at most the
gashing of Buondelmonte’s face as the most reasonable and effectual
retribution. The assembly paused, but Mosca de’ Lamberti starting
suddenly forward exclaimed, “Beat or wound him as ye list, but first
prepare your own graves, for wounds bring equal consequences with death.”
“No. Mete him out his deserts and let him pay the penalty; but no delay.
Up and be doing.”
This turned the scale and Buondelmonte was doomed, but according to the
manners of that age, not in the field, which would have been hazardous,
but by the sure though inglorious means of noonday murder; wherefore, at
the very place where the insult was offered, beneath the battlements of
the Amidei, nay under the casement of the deserted maiden, and in his
way to a happy expecting bride, vengeance was prepared by these fierce
barons for the perjurer.
[Sidenote: [1215-1239 A.D.]]
On Easter morning, 1215, the murderers concealed themselves within the
courts and towers of the Amidei, which the young and heedless bridegroom
was sure to pass, and he was soon after seen at a distance carelessly
riding alone across the Ponte Vecchio on a milk-white palfrey, attired in
a vest of fine woollen cloth, a white mantle thrown across his shoulders
and the wedding garland on his head. The bridge was passed in thoughtless
gaiety, but scarcely had he reached the time-worn image of the Roman
Mars, the last relic of heathen worship then extant, when the mace of
Schiatto degli Uberti felled him to the ground, and at the base of this
grim idol the daggers of Oddo and his furious kinsmen finished the savage
deed; they met him gay and adorned for the altar, and left him with
the bridal wreath still dangling from his brow a bloody and ill-omened
sacrifice. The tidings of this murder spread rapidly, and disordered the
whole community of Florence; the people became more and more excited,
because both law and custom had awarded due penalties for faithless men,
and death was an unheard-of punishment.
Buondelmonte’s corpse was placed on a bier, with its head resting in the
lap of his affianced bride, the young and beautiful Donati, who hung like
a lily over the pallid features of her husband; and thus united were
they borne through the streets of Florence. It was the gloomy dawning of
a tempestuous day, for in that bloody moment was unchained the demon of
Florentine discord; the name of Guelf and Ghibelline were then for the
first time assumed by noble and commoner as the cry of faction; and long
after the original cause of enmity had ceased, they continued to steep
all Italy in blood.
It has been shown that there were already two parties existing in the
commonwealth; but it was not until after this outrage that the whole
community divided under the above appellations, one part siding with the
Buondelmonti, who were for the most part Guelfic chiefs and adherents of
the church; the other with the Uberti, leaders of the Ghibellines and
partisans of the empire. Of seventy-two powerful families mentioned by
Malespini, thirty-nine joined the Buondelmonti banner and thirty-three
fought under the colours of their enemies; but many more houses of
distinction took part in the civil war; many afterwards changed sides
through quarrels with their chiefs; many of the Buondelmonti who before
were Ghibellines now became Guelfs; the former were stigmatised with the
epithet of “_Paterini_,” and the latter with that of “_Traditori_.”
Nevertheless an attempt at reconciliation was made in 1239, by marrying
Neri Piccolino degli Uberti to the daughter of Rinieri Zingani de’
Buondelmonti, a lady celebrated for her wisdom, beauty, and talents.
Trusting to this tie the Uberti and some friends repaired with confidence
to visit Bertaldi de’ Buondelmonti of Campi, but were treacherously
attacked and beaten back with some bloodshed; this renewed the war with
greater violence and Neri dismissed his wife to her own relatives,
declaring that he disdained to become the propagator of a traitorous
brood from a deceitful stock. The unfortunate lady was then compelled by
her father to marry Count Pannochino de’ Pannochieschi, on whose mercy
she threw herself, imploring permission to retire into a convent; for
though abandoned by her husband she protested that she was still his wife
and therefore never could belong to another. Her motives were respected,
her prayer generously granted, and she immediately took the veil in the
convent of Montecelli.
[Sidenote: [1215-1225 A.D.]]
Immediately after Buondelmonte’s death a low and angry murmur rolled
sullenly through the whole Florentine population, and instinctive
preparations were everywhere in progress for some dimly apprehended
danger; as yet all was calm, but dark clouds were gathering around and
the echo of distant thunder marked the coming storm. Each house was armed
and fortified, towers were again mounted with warlike engines, _serragli_
(barricades) were erected, the shops all closed, the people in painful
doubt, and ancient citizens who remembered the troubles of other times
looked on and trembled. Nor was their apprehension vain; the curse of
heaven seemed to rest on this devoted city, and with but little cessation
during three and thirty years did Florence reek with the blood of her
children.[c]
The death of Innocent III [1216] and, two years afterwards, of Otto IV
broke the unnatural alliance between a pope and the heir of a Ghibelline
family. The Milanese, excommunicated by Innocent for having fought
against Frederick II, did not the less persist in making war on his
partisans; well convinced that the new pope, Honorius III, would soon
thank them for it. They refused Frederick the iron crown of Lombardy,
preserved at Monza, and contracted an alliance with the count Thomas of
Savoy, and with the cities of Crema, Piacenza, Lodi, Vercelli, Novara,
Tortona, Como, and Alessandria, to drive the Ghibellines from Lombardy.
The Ghibellines defeated them on the 6th of June, 1218, in a great battle
fought against the militias of Cremona, Parma, Reggio, and Modena, before
Ghibello. This reverse of fortune calmed for some time their military
ardour. The citizens of every town accused the nobles of having led
them into war from family enmities and interests foreign to the city;
at Milan, Piacenza, Cremona, and Modena, there were battles between the
nobles and the people. Laws were proposed to divide the public magistracy
in due proportions between them; finally the Milanese, in the year 1221,
expelled all the nobles from their city.
FREDERICK II CROWNED EMPEROR
The young Frederick re-entered Italy; and, after some differences with
Honorius III, received from him, on the 22nd of November, 1220, the crown
of the empire. He afterwards occupied himself in establishing order in
his kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where, during his minority, the popes
had encouraged a universal insubordination. Born in the march of Ancona,
at Jesi, in December, 1194, he was Italian as well by language as by
affection and character. The Italian language, spoken at his court, first
rose above the _patois_ in common use throughout Italy, regarded only
as a corruption of Latin; he expressed himself with elegance in this
language, which, from his time, was designated by the name of _lingua
cortigiana_; he encouraged the first poets, who employed it at his court,
and he himself made verses; he loved literature and encouraged learning;
he founded schools and universities; he promoted distinguished men;
he spoke, with equal facility, Latin, Italian, German, French, Greek,
and Arabic; he had the intellectual suppleness and finesse peculiar to
the men of the south, the art of pleasing, a taste for philosophy, and
great independence of opinion, with a leaning to infidelity; hence he is
accused of having written a book against the three revelations of Moses,
Jesus, and Mohammed, entitled _De Tribus Impostoribus_, which no one has
ever seen, and which perhaps never existed. His want of faith in the
sacred character of the Roman church, and the sanctity of popes, is less
doubtful; he was suspicious of them, and he employed all his address
to defend himself against their enterprises. Honorius III, desirous of
engaging him to recover the Holy Land from the Saracens, made him, in
1225, marry Yolande de Lusignan, heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem;
after which, Honorius and his successor Gregory IX pressed him to pass
into Palestine. A malady stopped him, in 1227, just as he was about to
depart; the pope, to punish him for this delay, excommunicated him.
He still pursued him with his anathema when he went to the Holy Land
the year following, and haughtily testified his indignation, because
Frederick, in the year 1229, recovered Jerusalem from the hands of the
sultan by treaty, rather than exterminate the infidels with the sword.
RENEWAL OF THE LOMBARD LEAGUE
[Sidenote: [1225-1233 A.D.]]
Meanwhile the Guelf party again raised their standard in Lombardy;
the republics of Milan, Bologna, Piacenza, Verona, Brescia, Faenza,
Mantua, Vercelli, Lodi, Bergamo, Turin, Alexandria, Vicenza, Padua, and
Treviso assembled their consuls in council at San Zenone in the Mantuan
territory, on the 2nd of March, 1226. They renewed the ancient league
of Lombardy for twenty-five years; and engaged to defend in concert,
their own liberty and the independence of the court of Rome. Three years
afterwards, they sent succour to Gregory IX, when he was attacked by
Frederick II on his return from the Holy Land; and they were included in
the treaty of peace between the pope and the emperor in 1230.
The pope, however, though defended by the arms of the Lombards, made them
pay dearly for the favour which he showed in naming them to the emperor
as his allies. He consented to protect their civil liberty only so far as
they sacrificed to him their liberty of conscience. The same spirit of
reformation which animated the Albigenses had spread throughout Europe;
many Christians, disgusted with the corruption and vices of the clergy,
or whose minds revolted against the violence on their reason exercised
by the church, devoted themselves to a contemplative life, renounced
all ambition and the pleasures of the world, and sought a new road to
salvation in the alliance of faith with reason. They called themselves
_cathari_, or the purified; _paterini_, or the resigned. The free towns
had, till then, refused permission to the tribunals of the Inquisition,
instituted by Innocent III, to proceed against them within their walls;
but Gregory IX declared the impossibility of acknowledging as allies of
the holy see republicans so indulgent to the enemies of the faith; at the
same time, he sent among them the most eloquent of the Dominicans, to
rouse their fanaticism. Leo da Perego, whom he afterwards made archbishop
of Milan, had an only too fatal success in that city, where he caused
a great number of _paterini_ to be burned. St. Peter Martyr, and the
monk Roland of Cremona, obtained an equal triumph in the other cities of
Lombardy.
The monk John of Vicenza had the cities of the march assigned to him
as a province, where the heretics were in still greater numbers than
in Lombardy, and included in their ranks some of the most powerful
nobles in the country; among others, Ezzelino II, of Romano. The monk
John announced himself the minister of peace, not of persecution. After
having preached successively in every town, he assembled, on the plain
of Paquara, the 28th of August, 1233, almost the whole population
of the towns of the march; he exhorted them to peace in a manner so
irresistible, that the greatest enemies, setting aside their animosities,
pardoned and embraced each other; and all, with tears of joy, celebrated
the warm charity of this man of God. This man of God, however, celebrated
the festival of this reconciliation by judging and condemning to the
flames sixty _cathari_ in the single town of Verona, whose sufferings he
witnessed in the public square; and afterwards obtained full power from
the towns of Vicenza and Padua to act there in the like manner.
FREDERICK II AND THE LOMBARD LEAGUE
[Sidenote: [1233-1236 A.D.]]
It was only a short period after the Peace of Paquara that Frederick
II, believing he had sufficiently re-established his power in southern
Italy, began to turn his attention towards Lombardy; he had no intention
of disputing the rights guaranteed by his grandfather at the Peace of
Constance; but it was his will that the cities should remain, what
they ought to be by the treaty, members of the empire, and not enemies
of the emperor. He had raised an army, over which he feared neither
the influence of the monks nor the pope. He had transported from the
mountains of Sicily, into the city of Luceria, in the capitanate,
and into that of Nocera, in the principato, two strong colonies of
Saracens, which could supply him with thirty thousand Mussulman soldiers,
strangers, by their language and religion, to all the intrigues of the
court of Rome. There was in the Veronese march a man endowed with great
military talents, ambitious, intrepid, and entirely devoted to the
emperor--Ezzelino III, of Romano, already powerful by the great fiefs he
held in the mountains, and the number of his soldiers, whom Frederick
made still more so, by placing him at the head of the Ghibelline party in
all the cities. Ezzelino, born on the 4th of April, 1194, was precisely
of the same age as the emperor. The pope had summoned him to arrest
his father, and deliver him to the tribunal of the Inquisition as a
_paterino_; but though Ezzelino knew neither virtue, pity, nor remorse,
he was not sufficiently depraved for such a crime.
[Illustration: A THIRTEENTH-CENTURY KNIGHT IN ARMOUR]
As Frederick was on the point of attacking the Guelfs of Lombardy on
the south with the Saracens, while Ezzelino advanced on the east, he
learned that his son Henry, whom he had in the year 1220 crowned king of
Germany, in spite of his extreme youth, seduced by the Guelfs and the
agents of the pope, had revolted against him. The Milanese, in 1234,
sent deputies to offer him the iron crown, which they had refused to his
father. The latter hastened into Germany, and ordered his son to meet him
at Worms, where he threw himself at the feet of his father, and entreated
forgiveness. Frederick deprived him of the crown, and sent him to Apulia,
where he died a few years afterwards. The emperor was obliged to employ
two years in restoring order in Germany; he after that returned into
Italy by the valley of Trento, and arrived, on the 16th of August, 1236,
at Verona with three thousand German cavalry. A senate of eighty members,
nobles and Ghibellines, then governed that republic; Frederick, by his
address in managing men, engaged them to name Ezzelino captain of the
people; this committed to him at the same time the command of the militia
and the judicial power; and, in the state of excitement in which parties
were much more occupied with the triumph of their faction than with the
security of their liberty, gave him almost sovereign power. Frederick,
obliged to return to Germany, left under the command of Ezzelino a body
of German soldiers, and another of Saracens, with which this able captain
made himself, the same year, master of Vicenza, which he barbarously
pillaged, and the following year of Padua. This last was the most
powerful city of the province, that in which the form of government was
the most democratic, and in which the Guelfs had always exercised the
most influence. Ezzelino judged it necessary to secure obedience by
taking hostages from the richest and most powerful families; he employed
his spies to discover the malcontents, whom he punished with torture, and
redoubled his cruelty in proportion to the hatred which he excited.
THE BATTLE OF CORTENUOVA
[Sidenote: [1236-1237 A.D.]]
The same year, 1237, Frederick approached Mantua, and thus giving courage
to the Ghibelline party, made them triumph over the Guelfs, who had, till
then, the ascendant in that city; he was joined there by ten thousand
Saracens, whom he summoned from Apulia, and afterwards advanced into
the Cremonese territory to attack the confederate army of the Guelfs,
commanded by the consuls of Milan, who knew no other art of war but
the bravery evinced in battle. Frederick was a more able captain; by
manœuvring between Brescia and Cremona, he drew the Milanese beyond the
Oglio, and finally succeeded, as they believed the campaign finished, in
placing himself between them and their country at Cortenuova near Crema.
The Guelfs, although thus cut off from retreat, boldly accepted battle on
the 27th of November, 1237, and long disputed the victory. Their defeat
was only the more bloody; it cost them ten thousand men killed or taken
prisoners, with the loss of the _carroccio_. The fugitives followed
during the night the course of the Oglio to enter the Bergamasque
Mountains; they would all, however, have fallen into the hands of the
Ghibellines, if Pagan della Torre, the lord of Valsassina, and a Guelf
noble, had not hastened to their assistance, opened the defiles covered
by his fortresses, and brought them thus safely to Milan. The citizens of
this town never forgot so important a service; and they contracted with
the house of della Torre an alliance which subsequently proved dangerous
to their freedom.
The defeat of the Guelfs at Cortenuova alarmed the towns of Lombardy,
the greater number of which detached themselves from Milan. Frederick,
entering Piedmont the following year, gave preponderance to the
Ghibelline party in the cities of Turin, Asti, Novara, Alexandria, and
several others. The constitution was not changed when the power in
council passed from one party to another; but the emperor generally
reckoned his partisans among the nobility, while the people were devoted
to the church; accordingly, the triumph of the aristocracy generally
accompanied that of the Ghibelline party. Four cities only, Milan,
Brescia, Piacenza, and Bologna, remained at the end of the year opposed
to the imperial power. Frederick began his attack on them by laying
siege to Brescia; but the Brescians dared to face the storm; they
supported, during sixty-eight days, the repeated attacks of the emperor,
rendered all his efforts fruitless, and forced him at last to raise the
siege with an army weakened and discouraged.
POPE AGAINST EMPEROR
[Sidenote: [1238-1243 A.D.]]
In the meantime, Gregory IX redoubled his efforts to save the Guelf party
from ruin. He saw, with alarm, an emperor, master of the Two Sicilies and
of Germany, on the point of vanquishing all resistance in upper Italy. He
anticipated that this monarch, whose Mussulman soldiers were constantly
passing through the states of Rome, would escape the influence of the
church, and soon evince no respect whatever for a religion which he
was accused of not believing. Gregory had recourse to the two maritime
republics of Venice and Genoa, which, in general occupied with their
conquests and commerce in the East, seldom took any part in the politics
of Italy. He represented to them that they would be soon deprived of
the freedom of the seas, if they did not make some effort to save the
champions of liberty and of the church in Lombardy. He at length obtained
their agreement to contract an alliance with the four only surviving
cities of the league of Lombardy; and finally, towards the beginning of
the year 1239, he fulminated another sentence of excommunication against
Frederick. This had a greater effect than Gregory ventured to hope. A
considerable number of nobles of Guelf origin, seduced by court favours,
had been won over to the imperial party. They perceived that, after the
anathema of the pope, the emperor distrusted them. The marquis d’Este
and the count di San Bonifazio were even warned that their heads were in
danger, and they made their escape from the imperial camp; all the other
Guelf nobles followed their example, and the Guelf cities gained captains
habituated to arms and familiarised with higher ideas of politics.
Gregory began to think he should give still greater weight to the
anathemas which he launched against the emperor if they were sanctioned
by a council. In the year 1241 he convoked at Rome all the prelates of
Christendom. Frederick, who had been established at Pisa since the autumn
of the year 1239, exerted himself to prevent the meeting of a council
which he dreaded. While the two other maritime republics had declared
for the Guelfs, Pisa was entirely of the Ghibelline party. The people
were enthusiastically attached to the emperor; and among the nobles, a
few only, proprietors of fiefs in Sardinia, headed by the Visconti of
Gallura, had forsaken him for the Guelfs. The Pisans, further excited
by their jealousy of the Genoese, promised Frederick that they would
brave for him all the thunders of the church, and assured him they knew
well how to hinder the meeting of the council. A considerable number of
French prelates had embarked at Nice for Ostia, on board Genoese galleys.
Ugolino Buzzacherino de Sismondi, admiral of the Pisans, lay in wait with
a powerful fleet before Meloria, attacked them on the 3rd of May, 1241,
sunk three vessels, took nineteen, and made prisoners all the French
prelates who were to join the council at Pisa. The republic loaded them
with chains, but they were chains made of silver, and imprisoned them in
the chapter house of the cathedral. Gregory, alarmed at this reverse of
fortune, survived only a few months; he died the 21st of August, 1241;
and the college of cardinals, reduced to a very small number, passed
nearly two years before they could agree on a new choice. At last, on
the 24th of June, 1243, Senibaldi de’ Fieschi, of Genoa, who took the
name of Innocent IV, was elected to the chair of St. Peter. His family,
powerful in Genoa and in the Ligurian Mountains, was also allied to
many noble families, who possessed castles on the northern side of the
Apennines; and this position gave him great influence in the neighbouring
cities of Placentia, Parma, Reggio, and Modena. The elevation of a
Fieschi to the pontificate gave courage to the Guelf party in all these
cities.
[Sidenote: [1243-1245 A.D.]]
Frederick had recourse in vain to the new pope to be reconciled to
the church; Innocent IV was determined to see in him only an enemy of
religion and of the pontifical power, and a chief of barbarians, who in
turns summoned his Germans and his Saracens to tyrannise over Italy. He
drew closer his alliance with the cities of the league of Lombardy, and
promised them to cause the emperor to be condemned and deposed by an
ecumenical council, as his predecessor would have done; but instead of
convoking the council in Italy, he fixed for that purpose on the city
of Lyons, one-half of which belonged to the empire and the other to the
kingdom of France. He determined on placing himself with the prelates
whom he had summoned under the protection of St. Louis, who then reigned
in France. He went from Rome to Genoa by sea, escaping the Pisan fleet
which watched to intercept his passage; he excited by his exhortations
the enthusiasm of the Guelfs of Genoa, and of the cities of Lombardy
and Piedmont, which he visited on his passage; and arriving at Lyons,
he opened, on the 28th of June, 1245, in the convent of St. Just, the
council of the universal church. He found the bishops of France, England,
and Germany eager to adopt his passions; so that he obtained from them
at their third sitting, on the 17th of July, a sentence of condemnation
against Frederick II. The council declared that for his crimes and
iniquities God had rejected him, and would no longer suffer him to be
either emperor or king. In consequence, the pope and the council released
his subjects from their oath of allegiance; forbade them under pain of
excommunication to obey him under any title whatever; and invited the
electors of the empire to proceed to the election of another emperor,
while the pope reserved to himself the nomination of another king of the
Two Sicilies.
Frederick at first opposed all his strength of soul against the sentence
of excommunication pronounced by the council on him. Causing his jewels
to be brought him, and placing the golden crown of the empire on his
head, he declared before a numerous assembly that he would still wear
it, and knew how to defend it; but, notwithstanding the enthusiasm of
the Ghibelline party, the devotion of his friends, and the progress of
philosophical opinions, which he had himself encouraged, the man whom
the church had condemned was in constant danger of being abandoned or
betrayed. The mendicant monks everywhere excited conspiracies against
him. They took advantage of the terrors inspired by sickness and age, to
make sinners return, as they said, to the ways of salvation, and desired
them to make amends for their past transgressions by delivering the
church of God from its most dangerous enemy. Insurrections frequently
broke forth in one or other of the Two Sicilies; still oftener the
emperor discovered amongst his courtiers plots to destroy him, either by
the dagger or poison; even his private secretary, his intimate friend,
Pietro delle Vigne, whom he had raised from abject poverty, to whom he
had entrusted his most important affairs, gave ear to the counsel of the
monks, and promised to poison his master.
[Sidenote: [1245-1248 A.D.]]
Frederick, on his part, became suspicious and cruel; his distrust fell
on his most faithful friends; and the executions which he ordered
sometimes preceded the proofs of guilt. He had confided Germany to
his son Conrad, and the exclusive government of the Veronese marches
to Ezzelino. The hatred which this ferocious man excited by his crimes
fell on the emperor. Ezzelino imprisoned in the most loathsome dungeons
those whom he considered his enemies, and frequently put them to death
by torture, or suffered them to perish by hunger; he was well aware that
the relatives of these victims must also be his enemies; they were,
in their turn, arrested; and the more he sacrificed to his barbarity,
the more he was called upon to strike. The citizens of Milan, Mantua,
Bergamo, and Brescia every day heard of new and horrible crimes committed
by the governor of the marches; they conceived the greater detestation
of the Ghibelline party, and entertained the firmer determination to
repel Frederick. He, on the contrary, had no thoughts of attacking them;
he established himself during the Council of Lyons at Turin, and thence
entered into a negotiation with St. Louis, to obtain by his mediation
a reconciliation with the church to which he made, in token of his
submission, the offer to accompany Louis to the Holy Land.
[Illustration: STREET COSTUME OF AN ITALIAN NOBLEMAN, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]
The revolt of Parma, on the 16th of June, 1247, obliged Frederick to
resume his arms at a moment when he was least disposed. The friends
and relatives of Pope Innocent IV, the Guelf nobles of the houses of
Corregio, Lupi, and Rossi, re-entering Parma, whence they had been
exiled, triumphed over their adversaries, and in their turn expelled
them from the city. Frederick was determined at any price to recover
Parma. He sent for a numerous band of Saracens from Apulia, commanded by
one of his natural sons, named Frederick, to whom he gave the title of
king of Antioch. He assembled the Lombard Ghibellines, under the command
of another of his illegitimate sons, named Hans or Hensius, called by
him king of Sardinia, and whom he had made imperial vicar in Lombardy.
Ezzelino arrived, too, at his camp from the Veronese march, with the
militias of Padua, Vicenza, and Verona, and the soldiers whom he had
raised in his hereditary fiefs.
On the other side, the Guelfs of Lombardy hastened to send succour to
a city which had just sacrificed itself for them. The Milanese set the
example; the militias of Mantua, Piacenza, and Ferrara followed it; and
the Guelfs, who had been exiled from Reggio, Modena, and other Ghibelline
cities, thinking they served their country in fighting for their faction,
arrived in great numbers to shut themselves up in Parma. Frederick was
prevented from hanging the hostages given previous to the revolt, before
the walls of the city, by the militia of Pavia, who declared it was
with the sword of Ghibelline soldiers only, and not with that of the
executioner, that they would secure the throne of the emperor. The siege
made little progress; the winter had begun, but Frederick persisted
in his attempt. He proclaimed his determination to raze Parma to the
ground, and to transfer those of the inhabitants who should be spared
into his fortified camp, of which he would make a new town, called
Vittoria. This camp, which he quitted on a hawking party, on the 8th of
February, 1248, was in his absence surprised by a sortie of a Guelf army
from Parma, taken, and pillaged; his soldiers were dispersed, and the
emperor had the humiliation of being forced to raise the siege.
THE GUELFS EXPELLED FROM FLORENCE; THE BATTLE OF FOSSALTA
[Sidenote: [1248-1249 A.D.]]
Before this event, he had sent his son, the king of Antioch, into Tuscany
with sixteen hundred German cavalry, to secure Florence to his party;
where, since the death of Buondelmonte, the Guelfs and Ghibellines,
always in opposition, had not ceased fighting. There was seldom an
assembly, a festival, a public ceremony, without some offence given,
either by one or other of the parties. Both flew to arms; chains were
thrown across the streets; barricades were immediately formed, and in
every quarter, round every noble family; the more contiguous, who had the
most frequent causes of quarrel, fought at the same time in ten different
places. Nevertheless the republic was supposed to lean towards the Guelf
party; and the Florentine Ghibellines, in their relations with other
people, had never sought to separate from their fellow-countrymen, or to
place themselves in opposition to their magistrates. Frederick, fearing
to lose Florence, wrote to the Uberti, the chiefs of the Ghibelline
faction, to assemble secretly in their palace all their party, to attack
afterwards in concert and at once all the posts of the Guelfs; whilst
his son, the king of Antioch, should present himself at the gates, and
thus expel their adversaries from the city. This plan was executed on the
night of Candlemas, 1248; the barricades of the Guelfs were forced in
every quarter, because they defended themselves in small bands against
the whole of the opposite party. The Ghibellines, masters of the town,
ordered all the Guelfs to quit it. They afterwards demolished thirty-six
palaces belonging to the same number of the most illustrious families
of that party; and intimidating the other cities of Tuscany, they
constrained them to follow their example, and declare for the emperor.
Frederick II, after the check experienced by him at Parma, returned
to his kingdom of Naples and Sicily, and left to his son Hensius, who
established himself at Modena, the direction of the war in Lombardy. The
pope, however, had sent a legate, the cardinal Octavian degli Ubaldini,
to the Guelf cities, to engage them to pursue their victory, and punish
the imperial party for what he called their revolt against the church.
The powerful city of Bologna, already celebrated for its university, and
superior to the neighbouring ones by its wealth, its population, and the
zeal which a democratic government excites, undertook to make the Guelf
party triumph throughout the Cispadane region. Bologna first attacked
Romagna, and forced the towns of Imola, Faenza, Forlì, and Cervia to
expel the Ghibellines, and declare for the church. The Bolognese next
turned their arms against Modena. The Modenese cavalry, entering Bologna
one day by surprise, carried off from a public fountain a bucket, which
henceforth was preserved in the tower of Modena as a glorious trophy. The
war which followed furnished Tassoni with the subject of his mock-heroic
poem, _La Secchia Rapita_. The vengeance of the Bolognese was, however,
anything but burlesque; after several bloody battles, the two armies
finally met at Fossalta on the 26th of May, 1249. Philip Ugoni of
Brescia, who was this year podesta of Bologna, commanded the Guelf army,
in which was united a detachment from the militias of all the cities of
the league of Lombardy. The Ghibellines were led by king Hensius; each
army consisted of from fifteen to twenty thousand combatants. The battle
was long and bloody, but ended with the complete defeat of the Ghibelline
party; King Hensius himself fell into the hands of the conquerors; he was
immediately taken to Bologna, and confined in the palace of the podesta.
The senate of that city rejected all offers of ransom, all intercession
in his favour. He was entertained in a splendid manner, but kept a
prisoner during the rest of his life, which lasted for twenty-two years.
DEATH OF FREDERICK II: THE SUCCESSION
[Sidenote: [1249-1250 A.D.]]
This last check overwhelmed Frederick. He had now during thirty years
combated the church and the Guelf party; his bodily as well as mental
energy was worn out in this long contest. His life was embittered by the
treason of those whom he believed his friends, by the disasters of his
partisans, and by the misfortunes which had pursued him even in his own
family. He saw his power in Italy decline; while the crown of Germany
was disputed with his son Conrad, by competitors favoured by the church.
He appeared to be at length himself disturbed by the excommunications of
the pope, and the fear of that hell with which he had been so incessantly
menaced. He implored anew the assistance and mediation of St. Louis of
France, who was then in the isle of Cyprus. He provided magnificently for
the wants of the crusade army, which this king commanded; he solicited
leave to join it. He offered to engage never to return from the Holy
Land, and to submit to the most humiliating expiations which the church
could impose. He succeeded in inspiring St. Louis with interest and
gratitude. Frederick, while waiting the effect of St. Louis’ good
offices, seemed occupied solely in the affairs of his kingdom of the Two
Sicilies, where he restored order, and established a prosperity not to be
seen elsewhere in Europe. On the 13th of December, 1250, he was seized
with a dysentery, of which he died, in the fifty-sixth year of his age,
at his castle of Florentino, in the capitanate where he had fixed his
residence.
The Italian cities, which for the most part date the commencement of
their liberty from the conflicts between the sovereigns of Italy and
Germany, or the invasion of Otto the Great, in 951, had already, at the
death of Frederick II, enjoyed for three centuries the protection and
progressive improvement of their municipal constitutions. These three
centuries, with reference to the rest of Europe, are utterly barbarous.
Their history is everywhere obscure and imperfectly known. It records
only some great revolution, or the victories and calamities of princes;
the people are always left in the shade: a writer would have thought it
beneath him to occupy himself about the fate of plebeians; they were not
supposed to be worthy of history. The towns of Italy, so prodigiously
superior to all others in wealth, intelligence, energy, and independence,
were equally regardless of preserving any record of past times. Some
grave chroniclers preserved the memory of an important crisis, but in
general the cities passed whole centuries without leaving any written
memorial; thinking it perhaps good policy not to attract notice, and to
envelope themselves in obscurity. They, however, of necessity departed
from this system in the last century, owing to the two conflicts, in
both of which they remained victorious. From 1150 to 1183, they had
fought to obtain the Peace of Constance, which they regarded as their
constitutional charter. From 1183 to 1250, they preserved the full
exercise of the privileges which they had so gloriously acquired; but
while they continually advanced in opulence, while intelligence and the
arts became more and more developed, they were led by two passions,
equally honourable, to range themselves under two opposite banners.
One party, listening only to their faith, their attachment, and their
gratitude to a family which had given them many great sovereigns, were
ready to venture their all for the cause of the Ghibellines; the other,
alarmed for the independence of the church, and the liberty of Italy,
by the always increasing grandeur of the house of Hohenstaufen, were
not less resolute in their endeavours to wrest from it the sceptre
which menaced them. The cities of the Lombard League had reached the
summit of their power at the period of this second conflict. During the
interregnum which lasted from the death of Frederick II to the entrance
into Italy of Henry VII in 1310, the Lombard republics, a prey to the
spirit of faction, and more intent on the triumph of either the Guelf
or Ghibelline parties, than on securing their own constitutions, all
submitted themselves to the military power of some nobles to whom they
had intrusted the command of their militias, and thus lost all their
liberty.
[Sidenote: [1250-1257 A.D.]]
On the death of Frederick II, his son, Conrad IV, king of Germany, did
not feel himself sufficiently strong to appear in Italy, and place on
his head, in succession, the iron crown at Monza, and the golden crown
at Rome. He wished first of all to secure that of the Two Sicilies; and
embarked at some port in Istria for Naples, in a Pisan vessel, during
the month of October, 1251. The remainder of his short life was passed
in combating and vanquishing the Neapolitan Guelfs. He died suddenly at
Lavello, on the 21st of May, 1254. His natural brother, Manfred, a young
hero, hardly twenty years of age, succeeded by his activity and courage
in recovering the kingdom which Innocent IV had already invaded, with
the intention of subduing it to the temporal power of the holy see. But
Manfred, beloved by the Saracens of Luceria, who were the first to defend
him, and admired by the Ghibellines of the Two Sicilies, was for a long
time detained there by the attacks of the Guelfs, before he could in his
turn pursue them through the rest of Italy. Conrad had left in Germany
a son, still an infant, afterwards known under the name of Conradin; he
was acknowledged king of Germany, under the name of Conrad V, by a small
party only. The electors left the empire without a head; and when they
afterwards proceeded to elect one in the year 1257, their suffrages were
divided between two princes, strangers to Germany, where they had never
set foot; one, an Englishman, Richard, earl of Cornwall; the other a
Spaniard, Alfonso X of Castile.
THE POPE AND THE CITIES
[Sidenote: [1251-1253 A.D.]]
Innocent IV was still in France when he learned of the death of Frederick
II; he returned thence in the beginning of the spring of 1251; wrote to
all the towns to celebrate the deliverance of the church; gave boundless
expression to his joy; and made his entry into Milan, and the principal
cities of Lombardy, with all the pomp of a triumph. He supposed that the
republicans of Italy had fought only for him, and that he alone would
henceforth be obeyed by them; of this he soon made them but too sensible.
He treated the Milanese with arrogance, and threatened to excommunicate
them for not having respected some ecclesiastical immunity. It was the
moment in which the republic, like a warrior reposing himself after
battle, began to feel its wounds. It had made immense sacrifices for the
Guelf party; it had emptied the treasury, obtained patriotic gifts from
every citizen who had anything to spare; pledged its revenues, and loaded
itself with debt to the extent of its credit. For the discharge of their
debts, the citizens resigned themselves to the necessity of giving to
their podesta, Beno de’ Gozzadini of Bologna, unlimited power to create
new imposts, and to raise money under every form he found possible. The
ingratitude of the pope, at a moment of universal suffering, deeply
offended the Milanese; and the influence of the Ghibellines in a city
where, till then, they had been treated as enemies, might be dated from
that period.
[Illustration: CLOISTERS OF SANTA MARIA NOVELLA, FLORENCE]
Innocent IV pursued his journey towards Rome; but found the capital
of Christendom still less disposed than the first city of Lombardy to
obey him. The Romans in 1253 called another Bolognese noble, named
Brancaleone d’Andolo, to the government of their republic; and gave him,
with the title of senator, almost unlimited authority. The citizens,
continually alarmed by the quarrels and battles of the Roman nobles, who
had converted the Colosseum, the tombs of Adrian, Augustus, and Cæcilia
Metella, the arches of triumph and other monuments of ancient Rome, into
so many fortresses, whence issued banditti, whom they kept in pay, to
pillage passengers and peaceable merchants, demanded of the government
above all things vigour and severity. They forgot the guarantee due to
the accused, in their attention to those only which were required by the
public peace. The senator Brancaleone, at the head of the Roman militia,
successively attacked these monuments, become the retreat of robbers and
assassins; he levelled to the ground the towers which surmounted them;
he hanged the adventurers who defended them, with their commanders the
nobles, at the palace windows of the latter; and thus established by
terror security in the streets of Rome. He hardly showed more respect
to Innocent than to the Roman nobility. The pope, in order to be at
a distance from him, had transferred his court to Assisi. Brancaleone
sent him word that it was not decorous in a pope to be wandering like a
vagabond from city to city; and that, if he did not immediately return to
the capital of Christendom of which he was the bishop, the Romans, with
their senator at their head, would march to Assisi and send him out of it
by setting fire to the town.
Thus, although the power of kings had given way to that of the people,
liberty was in general ill understood and insecure. The passions were
impetuous; a certain point of honour was attached to violence; the
nobles believed they gave proof of independence by rapine and outrage;
and the friends of order believed they had attained the highest purpose
of government, when they made such audacious disturbers tremble. The
turbulence and number of the noble criminals, the support which their
crimes found in a false point of honour, form an excuse for the judicial
institutions of the Italian republics, which were all more calculated to
strike terror into criminals too daring to conceal themselves, than to
protect the accused against the unjust suspicion of secret crimes. Order
could be maintained only by an iron hand; but this iron hand soon crushed
liberty. Nevertheless, among the Italian cities there was one which above
all others seemed to think of justice more than of peace, and of the
security of the citizen more than of the punishment of the guilty. It was
Florence; its judicial institutions are, indeed, far from meriting to be
held up as models; but they were the first in Italy which offered any
guarantee to the citizen; because Florence was the city where the love of
liberty was the most general and the most constant in every class; where
the cultivation of the understanding was carried farthest; and where
enlightenment of mind soonest appeared in the improvement of the laws.
FLORENTINE AFFAIRS; THE GUELFS RECALLED
[Sidenote: [1250-1260 A.D.]]
The Ghibelline nobles had taken possession of the sovereignty of Florence
with the help of the king of Antioch, two years before the death of his
father, Frederick II; but their power soon became insupportable to the
free and proud citizens of that republic, who had already become wealthy
by commerce and who reckoned amongst them some distinguished literary
men, such as Brunetto Latini, and Guido Cavalcanti, without having lost
simplicity of manners, their sobriety of habits, or their bodily vigour.
Frederick II still lived, when by a unanimous insurrection, on the 20th
of October, 1250, they set themselves free. All the citizens assembled
at the same moment in the square of Santa Croce; they divided themselves
into fifty groups, of which each group chose a captain and thus formed
companies of militia: a council of these officers was the first-born
authority of this newly revived republic. The podesta by his severity
and partiality had rendered himself universally detested: they deposed
him, and supplied his place by another judge, under the name of captain
of the people, but soon afterwards decreed that the podesta and the
captain should each have an independent tribunal, in order that they
should exercise upon each other a mutual control; at the same time, they
determined that both should be subordinate to the supreme magistracy of
the republic, which was charged with the administration, but divested
of the judicial power. They decreed that this magistracy, which they
called the _signoria_, should be always present, always assembled in
the palace of the republic, ever ready to control the podesta or the
captain, to whom they had been obliged to delegate so much power. The
town was divided into six parts, each _sestier_, as it was called, named
two _anziani_. These twelve magistrates ate together, slept at the public
palace, and could never go out but together; their function lasted only
two months. Twelve others, elected by the people, succeeded them; and
the republic was so rich in good citizens, and in men worthy of its
confidence, that this rapid succession of _anziani_ did not exhaust their
number. The Florentine militia at the same time attacked and demolished
all the towers which served as a refuge to the nobles, in order that all
should henceforth be forced to submit to the common law.
The new signoria was hardly informed of the death of Frederick, when by a
decree of the 7th of January, 1251, they recalled all the Guelf exiles to
Florence. They henceforth laboured to give that party the preponderance
throughout Tuscany. They declared war against the neighbouring cities of
Pistoia, Pisa, Siena, and Volterra; not to subjugate them, or to impose
hard conditions, but to force them to rally round the party which they
considered that of the church and of liberty. The year 1254, when the
Florentines were commanded by their podesta, Guiscardo Pietra Santa, a
Milanese, is distinguished in their history by the name of the “Year of
Victories.” They took the two cities of Pistoia and Volterra; they forced
those of Pisa and Siena to sign a peace favourable to the Guelf party;
they refused to profit by a treason which had given them possession
of the citadel of Arezzo and they restored it to the Aretini; lastly,
they built in the Lunigiana, beyond the territory of Lucca, a fortress
destined to shut the entry of Tuscany on the Ligurian side, which in
memory of their podesta bears to this day the name of Pietra Santa. The
signoria also showed themselves worthy to be the governors of a city
renowned for commerce, the arts, and liberty. The whole monetary system
of Europe was at this period abandoned to the depredations of sovereigns
who continually varied the title and weight of coins--sometimes to
defraud their creditors, at other times to force their debtors to pay
more than they had received, or the tax-payers more than was due. During
150 years more the kings of France violated their faith with the public,
making annually with the utmost effrontery some important change in the
coins. But the republic of Florence, in the year 1252, coined its golden
florin, of twenty-four carats fine, and of the weight of one drachma. It
placed the value under the guarantee of publicity and of commercial good
faith; and that coin remained unaltered as the standard for all other
values as long as the republic itself endured.
FLORENCE AND SIENA AT WAR; THE BATTLE OF MONTAPERTI
A conspiracy of Ghibellines to recover their power in Florence and to
concentrate it in the aristocratic faction, forced the republic, in the
year 1258, to exile the most illustrious chiefs of that party. It was
then directed by Farinata degli Uberti, who was looked upon as the most
eloquent orator and the ablest warrior in Tuscany. All the Florentine
Ghibellines were favourably received at Siena, although the two republics
had mutually engaged in their last treaty not to give refuge to the
rebels of either city. Farinata afterwards joined Manfred, whom he found
firmly established on the throne of the Two Sicilies, and represented
to him that, to guard his kingdom from all attack, he ought to secure
Tuscany and give supremacy to the Ghibelline party. He obtained from him
a considerable body of German cavalry, which he led to Siena.
[Sidenote: [1259-1260 A.D.]]
Hostilities between the two republics had already begun: the colours
of Manfred had been dragged with contempt through the streets by the
Florentines. Farinata resolved to take advantage of the irritation of
the Germans, in order to bring the two parties to a general battle. He
knew that some ignorant artisans had found their way into the signoria
of Florence, and he tried to profit by their presumption. He flattered
them with the hope that he would open to them one of the gates of Siena,
if they ordered their army to present itself under the walls of that
city. At the same time, his emissaries undertook to excite the ill will
of the plebeians against the nobles of the Guelf party, who, being
more clear-sighted, might discover his intrigues. Notwithstanding the
opposition of the nobles in council, the signoria resolved to march a
Guelf army through the territory of Siena.[b]
It is said[11] there were not less than thirty thousand, and auxiliary
troops came from all the allied cities, or those subjected to the
Florentines; but as the Ghibellines had been expelled from these cities,
the latter had united at Siena and the Guelfs at Florence, and the two
armies presented the sad spectacle of division and civil war in the whole
of Tuscany. From Arezzo alone it is asserted that nearly five thousand
came to the succour of the Florentines under the command of Donatello
Tarlati, whilst another band of outlaws, conducted by their bishop, had
joined in Siena, and if we are to believe Raffaello Roncioni, a chosen
body of three thousand Pisans also came to Siena. The army of the Guelfs
was superior in number to the Ghibellines, that faction being predominant
in Tuscany, but probably there was not that disproportion which some
historians wish to make us believe. The army of the Guelfs marched on as
to certain victory, hoping to enter Siena without fighting; arrived upon
the hills of Montaperti they halted to receive advice from the Sienese to
proceed further.
Nothing is more capable of disconcerting a leader and an army than to
see an enemy courageously advancing to meet them, whom they had believed
either beaten or fugitive; thus the Florentine generals, who went to
the certain conquest of Siena, when they perceived the enemy advancing
boldly, at the head of whom was the German troop, so formidable an enemy
to them, began to despair. They came to blows, and both sides fought
with great valour; but the Florentines, unable to resist the attack made
upon them by the Germans, gave way. Treachery aided to increase the
consternation. Many Ghibellines, hidden in time of the battle, went over
to the enemy. Among the rest, Bocca of the Abati, before going over to
the other side, aimed a treacherous blow at Jacopo Vacca, of the family
of the Pazzi, who carried the ensign of the republic, and brought him to
the ground with the loss of an arm.
This act spread terror among the Florentines, who could no longer
distinguish friends from foes; the only opposition was made around the
triumphant chariot which contained the flags, and around the better part
of the defenders, who were disposed rather to purchase for themselves
an illustrious death by valour, than their safety by flight. A part of
the broken army had taken refuge in the castle of Montaperti. The castle
being taken by force, the refugees were cut to pieces. It is not easy
to ascertain the number of killed in a battle, since the conquerors
always exaggerate it, and the conquered conceal it; the latter, or the
Florentine writers, acknowledge only twenty-five hundred killed, and
fifteen hundred prisoners--but the number must have been far greater.
This battle is reckoned among the most bloody of those times, and was
fought on the 4th of September, 1260. The Sienese celebrated the victory
with solemn pomp, in which the triumphant chariot (_carroccio_) of the
Florentines was seen dragged upon the ground, and the name of City of the
Virgin was taken by Siena on this occasion, as a devout attestation of
gratitude to heaven for the happy issue.[d]
The Florentine Guelfs found themselves too much weakened by the defeat
of Montaperti to maintain themselves in Florence. The circumference
of the walls was too vast, and the population too much discouraged by
the enormous loss which they had experienced to admit of defending the
city. All those accordingly who had exercised any authority in the
republic--all those whose names were sufficiently known to discover their
party--left Florence for Lucca together, on horseback. The Guelfs of
Prato, Pistoia, Volterra, and San Gemignano could not hope to maintain
their ground when those of Florence failed. All abandoned their dwellings
and joined the Florentines at Lucca. That city granted to the illustrious
fugitives the church and portico of San Friano and the surrounding
quarter, where they pitched their tents. The Ghibellines entered Florence
on the 27th of September, immediately abolished the popular government,
and formed a new magistracy, composed entirely of nobles, who took the
oath of fidelity to Manfred, king of the Two Sicilies.