of Pisa and Siena strongly represented that whilst Florence existed, the
preponderance of the Ghibelline party in Tuscany could never be secure.
They affirmed that the population of that proud and warlike city was
entirely devoted to the Guelf party, that there was no hope of mitigating
their hatred of the nobles and of the family of the last emperor, that
democratic habits were become a sort of second nature to every one
of the inhabitants; they concluded with demanding that the walls of
Florence should be razed to the ground, and the people dispersed among
the neighbouring towns. All the Ghibellines of Tuscany, all the deputies
of the cities jealous of Florence received the proposition favourably.
It was about to be adopted when Farinata degli Uberti rose, and repelled
with indignation this abuse of the victory which he had just gained.
He protested that he loved his country far better than his party; and
declared that he would, with those same companions in arms whose bravery
they had witnessed at the battle of Arbia, join the Guelfs and fight for
them, sooner than consent to the ruin of what was in the world most dear
to him. The enemies of Florence dared not answer him; and the diet of
Empoli contented itself with decreeing that the league of Tuscany should
take into pay one thousand of the soldiers of Manfred, to support in that
province the preponderance of the Guelf party. Dante has immortalised
Farinata as the saviour of Florence, and Bocca degli Abati as the traitor
who placed it on the brink of destruction. His poem is filled with
allusions to this memorable epoch.
THE TYRANT EZZELINO
[Sidenote: [1256-1260 A.D.]]
While the Ghibellines thus acquired the preponderance in Tuscany, the
tyrant fell who at the head of that party had caused so much blood to
flow in the Trevisan march. Ezzelino was hereditary lord of Bassano and
Piedmont: he succeeded in making himself named captain of the people by
the republics of Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Feltre, and Belluno. By this
title he united the judicial with the military power; he was subject
only to councils which he might assemble or not at his pleasure. It does
not appear that there was any permanent magistracy like the signoria of
Florence, to repress his abuse of power. Accordingly he soon changed the
authority which he derived from the people into a frightful tyranny:
fixing his suspicions upon all who rose to any distinction, who in any
way attracted the attention of their fellow citizens, he did not wait for
any expression of discontent, or symptom of resistance in the nobles,
merchants, priests, or lawyers, who by their eminence alone became
suspected, to throw them into prison and there, by the most excruciating
torture, extract confessions of crimes that might justify his suspicions.
The names which escaped their lips in the agony of torture were carefully
registered in order to supply fresh victims to the tyrant. In the single
town of Padua there were eight prisons always full, notwithstanding the
incessant toil of the executioner to empty them; two of these contained
each three hundred prisoners. A brother of Ezzelino, named Alberic,
governed Treviso with less ferocity, but with a power not less absolute.
Cremona was in like manner subject to a Ghibelline chief; Milan no
longer evinced any repugnance to that party. In that city, as well as in
Brescia, the factions of nobles and plebeians disputed for power.
Alexander IV, to destroy the monster that held in terror the Trevisan
march, caused a crusade to be preached in that country. He promised
those who combated the ferocious Ezzelino all the indulgences usually
reserved for the deliverers of the Holy Land. The marquis d’Este, the
count di San Bonifacio, with the cities of Ferrara, Mantua, and Bologna,
assembled their troops under the standard of the church; they were joined
by a horde of ignorant fanatics from the lowest class, anxious to obtain
indulgences, but unsusceptible of discipline and incapable of a single
act of valour. Their number, however, so frightened Ezzelino’s lieutenant
at Padua, that he defended but feebly the passage of the Bacchiglione and
the town. The legate Philip, elected archbishop of Ravenna, entered Padua
at the head of the crusaders, on the 18th of June, 1256; but he either
would not or could not restrain the fanatic and rapacious rabble which he
had summoned to the support of his soldiers: for seven days the city was
inhumanly pillaged by those whom it had received as its deliverers. As
soon as Ezzelino was informed of the loss he had sustained, he hastened
to separate and disarm the eleven thousand Paduans belonging to his
army; he confined them in prisons, where all, with the exception of two
hundred, met a violent or lingering death.
[Illustration: ITALIAN NOBLEMAN, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]
During the following two years the Guelfs experienced nothing but
disasters: the legate whom the pope had placed at their head proved
incompetent to command them; and the crowd of crusaders whom he called
to his ranks served only to compromise them, by want of courage and
discipline. The Ghibelline nobles of Brescia even delivered their country
into the hands of Ezzelino after he had put the legate’s army to flight,
in the year 1258. The following year this tyrant, unequalled in Italy
for bravery and military talent, always an enemy to luxury, and proof
against the seductions of women, making the boldest tremble with a look,
and preserving in his diminutive person, at the age of sixty-five,
all the vigour of a soldier, advanced into the centre of Lombardy in
the hope that the nobles of Milan, with whom he had already opened a
correspondence, would surrender this great city to him. He passed the
Oglio and afterwards the Adda, with the most brilliant army he had ever
yet commanded: but the marquis Palavicino, Buoso da Doara, the Cremonese
chieftain, and other Ghibellines, his ancient associates, disgusted
with his crimes, had secretly made an alliance with the Guelfs for his
destruction.
When they saw that he had advanced so far from his home they rushed
upon him from all sides. On the 16th of September, 1259, whilst he
was preparing to retire, he found himself stopped at the bridge of
Cassano. The Brescians, no longer obedient to his command, began their
movement to abandon him; all the points of retreat were cut off by the
Milanese, Cremonese, Ferrarians, and Mantuans: repulsed, pursued as far
as Vimercato, and at last wounded in the foot, he was made prisoner
and taken to Soncino: there, he refused to speak, rejected all aid of
medicine, tore off all the bandages from his wounds, and finally expired,
on the eleventh day of his captivity. His brother and all his family were
massacred in the following year.
THE BEGINNING OF FEUDAL TYRANNY IN LOMBARDY
[Sidenote: [1256-1264 A.D.]]
The defeat of Ezzelino, and the destruction of the family of Romano,
may be regarded as the last great effort of the Lombards against the
establishment of tyranny in their country. About this time the cities
began to be accustomed to absolute power in a single person. In each
republic, the nobles, always divided by hereditary feuds, regarded it as
disgraceful to submit to the laws, rather than do themselves justice by
force of arms: their quarrels, broils, and brigandage carried troubles
and disorder into every street and public place. The merchants were
continually on the watch to shut their shops on the first cry of alarm;
for the satellites of the nobles were most commonly banditti, to whom
they gave shelter in their palaces, and who took advantage of the tumult
to plunder the shops. At the same time that the nobles irritated the
plebeians by their arrogance, they ridiculed their incapacity, and
endeavoured to exclude them from all the public offices. The people
often, in their indignation, took arms; the streets were barricaded and
the nobles, besieged in their town houses, were driven to take refuge in
their castles; but if the militia of the towns afterwards presumed to
pursue in the plains of Lombardy the nobles whom they forced to emigrate,
they soon found themselves sadly inferior. In the course of this century,
the nobles had acquired the habit of fighting on horseback with a lance
and covered with heavy armour. Continual exercise could alone render them
expert in the manœuvres of cavalry, and accustom them to the enormous
weight of the cuirass and helmet; on the other hand, this armour
rendered them almost invulnerable. When they charged with couched lance,
and with all the impetuosity of their war-horses, they overthrew and
annihilated the ill-armed infantry opposed to them without experiencing
themselves any damage. The cities soon felt the necessity of opposing
cavalry to cavalry, and of taking into their pay either those nobles who
made common cause with the people, or foreigners and adventurers who
about this time began to exchange their valour for hire.
As the custom was prevalent of giving the command of the militia to
the first officer of justice, in order to give him authority either to
direct the public force against rebels or disturbers of order, or to
discipline the soldier by the fear of punishment, no commander could be
found who would undertake the military service of a town, without at the
same time possessing the power of the judicial sword--such power as was
intrusted to the podesta or captain of the people. It became necessary
then to deliver into his charge what was named the signoria; and the more
considerable this corps of cavalry, thus placed for a certain number of
years at the service of the republic, the more this signoria, to which
was attached the power of adjudging life or death in the tribunals,
became dangerous to liberty.
Among the first feudal lords who embraced the cause of the people and
undertook the service of a town, with a body of cavalry raised among
their vassals, or among the poor nobles, their adherents, was Pagan della
Torre, the lord of Valsassina. He had endeared himself to the Milanese by
saving their army from the pursuit of Frederick II after the battle of
Cortenuova. He was attached by hereditary affection to the Guelf party;
and although himself of illustrious birth, he seemed to partake the
resentment of the plebeians of Milan against the nobility who oppressed
them. When he died, his brother Martino, after him Raymond, then Philip,
lastly, Napoleon della Torre, succeeded each other as captains of the
people, commanders of a body of cavalry which they had raised and placed
at the service of the city; they were the acknowledged superiors of the
podesta and the tribunals. These five lords succeeded each other in less
than twenty years; and even the shortness of their lives accustomed the
people to regard their election as the confirmation of a dynasty become
hereditary. Other Guelf cities of Lombardy were induced to choose the
same captain and the same governor as Milan, because they believed him a
true Guelf, and a real lover of the people.
These towns found the advantage of drawing closer their alliance with
the city which directed their party; of placing themselves under a more
powerful protection; and of supporting their tribunals with a firmer
hand. Martin della Torre had been elected podesta of Milan in 1256; three
years later he obtained the title of elder, and lord of the people. At
the same time, Lodi also named him lord. In 1263, the city of Novara
conferred the same honour on him. Philip, who succeeded him in 1264,
was named lord by Milan, Como, Vercelli, and Bergamo. Thus began to be
formed among the Lombard republics, without their suspecting that they
divested themselves of their liberty, the powerful state which a century
and a half later became the duchy of Milan. But the pope, jealous of the
house of della Torre, appointed archbishop of Milan Otto Visconti, whose
family, powerful on the borders of Lake Maggiore, then shared the exile
of the nobles and Ghibellines. This prelate placed himself at the head of
their faction; and henceforward the rivalry between the families of Della
Torre and Visconti made that between the people and the nobles almost
forgotten.
PERENNIAL STRIFE OF GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES
[Sidenote: [1257-1261 A.D.]]
The bitter enmity between the two parties of the Guelfs and Ghibellines
was fatal to the cause of liberty. With the former, the question was
religion--the independence of the church and of Italy, menaced by the
Germans and Saracens, to whom Manfred granted not less confidence
than Frederick II; with the latter, honour and good faith towards an
illustrious family, and the support of the aristocracy as well as of
royalty; but both were more intent on avenging offences a thousand times
repeated, and guarding against exile, and the confiscation of property.
These party feelings deeply moved men who gloried in the sacrifices
which they or their ancestors had made to either party; while they
regarded as entirely secondary the support of the laws, the impartiality
of the tribunals, or the equal participation of the citizens in the
sovereignty. Every town of Lombardy forgot itself, to make its faction
triumph; and it looked for success in giving more unity and force to
power. The cities of Mantua and Ferrara, where the Guelfs were far the
more numerous, trusted for their defence, the one to the count di San
Bonifazio, the other to the marquis d’Este, with so much constancy, that
these nobles, under the name of captains of the people, had become almost
sovereigns. In the republic of Verona, the Ghibellines, on the contrary,
predominated; and as they feared their faction might sink at the death
of Ezzelino, they called to the command of their militia, and the
presidency of their tribunals, Mastino della Scala; lord of the castle
of that name in the Veronese territory; whose power became hereditary in
his family. The marquis Pelavicino, the most renowned Ghibelline in the
whole valley of the Po, whose strongest castle was San Donnino, between
Parma and Piacenza, and who had formed and disciplined a superb body of
cavalry, was named, alternately with his friend, Buoso da Doara, lord
of the city of Cremona. Pavia and Piacenza also chose him almost always
their captain; and this honour was at the same time conferred on him by
Milan, Brescia, Tortona, and Alexandria. The Ghibelline party had, since
the offence given by Innocent IV to the Guelfs of Milan, obtained the
ascendency in Lombardy. The house of Della Torre seemed even to lean
towards it; and it was all powerful in Tuscany. The city of Lucca had
been the last to accede to that party in 1263; and the Tuscan Guelfs,
obliged to leave their country, had formed a body of soldiers, which
placed itself in the pay of the few cities of Lombardy still faithful to
the Guelf party.
The court of Rome saw, with great uneasiness, this growing power of the
Ghibelline party, firmly established in the Two Sicilies, under the
sceptre of Manfred. Feared even in Rome and the neighbouring provinces,
master in Tuscany, and making daily progress in Lombardy, Manfred seemed
on the point of making the whole peninsula a single monarchy. It was
no longer with the arms of the Italians that the pope could expect to
subdue him. The Germans afforded no support. Divided between Richard
of Cornwall and Alfonso of Castile, they seemed desirous of delivering
themselves from the imperial authority, by dividing between foreigners an
empty title; while each state sought to establish a separate independence
at home, and abandon the supremacy of the empire over Italy. It was
accordingly necessary to have recourse to other barbarians to prevent
the formation of an Italian monarchy fatal to the power of the pontiff.
Alexander IV died on the 25th of May, 1261; three months afterwards, a
Frenchman, who took the name of Urban IV, was elected his successor; and
he did not hesitate to arm the French against Manfred.
CHARLES OF ANJOU CONQUERS SICILY
[Sidenote: [1261-1266 A.D.]]
His predecessor had already opened some negotiations, for the purpose of
giving the crown of Sicily to Edmund, son of Henry III, king of England.
Urban put an end to them by having recourse to a prince nearer, braver,
and more powerful. He addressed himself to Charles count of Anjou, the
brother of St. Louis, sovereign in right of his wife of the county of
Provence. Charles had already signalised himself in war; he was, like his
brother, a faithful believer, and still more fanatical and bitter towards
the enemies of the church, against whom he abandoned himself without
restraint to his harsh and pitiless character. His religious zeal,
however, did not interfere with his policy; his interests set limits
to his subjection to the church; he knew how to manage those whom he
wished to gain; and he could flatter, at his need, the public passions,
restrain his anger, and preserve in his language a moderation which was
not in his heart. Avarice appeared his ruling passion, but it was only
the means of serving his ambition, which was unbounded. He accepted the
offer of the pope. His wife Beatrice, ambitious of the title of queen,
borne by her three sisters, pawned all her jewels to aid in levying an
army of thirty thousand men, which she led herself through Lombardy. He
had preceded her. Having gone by sea to Rome, with one thousand knights,
he made his entry into that city on the 24th of May, 1265. A new pope,
like his predecessor a Frenchman, named Clement IV, had succeeded Urban,
and was not less favourable to Charles of Anjou. He caused him to be
elected senator by the Roman Republic, and invested him with the kingdom
of Sicily, which he charged him to conquer; under the condition, however,
that the crown should never be united to that of the empire, or to the
sovereignty of Lombardy and Tuscany. A tribute of eight thousand ounces
of gold, and a white palfrey, was, by this investiture, assigned to St.
Peter.
The French army, headed by Beatrice, did not pass through Italy till
towards the end of the summer of 1265; and in the month of February
of the following year, Charles entered, at its head, the kingdom of
Naples. He met Manfred, who awaited him in the plain of Grandella, near
Benevento, on the 26th of February. The battle was bloody. The Germans
and Saracens were true to their ancient valour; but the Apulians fled
like cowards, and the brave son of Frederick II, abandoned by them on the
field of battle, perished. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies was the price
of this victory. Resistance ceased, but not massacre. Charles gave up
the pillage of Benevento to his soldiers; and they cruelly put to death
all the inhabitants. The Italians, who believed they had experienced
from the Germans and Saracens of Frederick and Manfred all that could be
feared from the most barbarous enemies, now found that there was a degree
of ferocity still greater than that to which they had been accustomed
from the house of Hohenstaufen. The French seemed always ready to give
as to receive death. The two strong colonies of Saracens at Luceria and
Nocera were soon exterminated, and in a few years there remained not in
the Two Sicilies a single individual of that nation or religion, nor one
German who had been in the pay of Manfred. Charles willingly consented
to acknowledge the Apulians and Sicilians his subjects; but he oppressed
them, as their conqueror, with intolerable burdens. While he distributed
amongst his followers all the great fiefs of the kingdom, he so secured
with a hand of iron his detested dominion that two years afterwards,
when Conradin, the son of Conrad and the nephew of Manfred, arrived from
Germany to dispute the crown, few malcontents in the Two Sicilies had the
courage to declare for him.
[Sidenote: [1266-1268 A.D.]]
The victory of Charles of Anjou over Manfred restored the ascendant of
the Guelf party in Italy. Filippo della Torre, who for some time seemed
to hesitate between the two factions, at last gave passage through the
Milanese territory to the army of Beatrice. Buoso da Doara was accused
of having received money not to oppose her on the Oglio. The count di
San Bonifazio, the marquis d’Este, and afterwards the Bolognese, openly
joined her party. After the battle of Grandella, the Florentines rose,
and drove out, on the 11th of November, 1266, the German garrison,
commanded by Guido Novello, the lieutenant of Manfred. They soon
afterwards received about eight hundred French cavalry from Charles, to
whom they entrusted for ten years the signoria of Florence; that is to
say, they conferred on him the rights allowed by the Peace of Constance
to the emperors. At the same time they re-established, with full liberty,
their internal constitution; they augmented the power of their numerous
councils, from which they excluded the nobles and Ghibellines; and they
gave to the corporations of trade, into which all the industrious part of
the population was divided, a direct share in the government.
THE FALL OF CONRADIN; GREGORY X; OTTO VISCONTI
[Sidenote: [1268-1278 A.D.]]
It was about the end of the year 1267 that the young Conradin, aged
only sixteen years, arrived at Verona, with ten thousand cavalry, to
claim the inheritance of which the popes had despoiled his family. All
the Ghibellines and brave captains, who had distinguished themselves in
the service of his grandfather and uncle, hastened to join him, and to
aid him with their swords and counsel. The republics of Pisa and Siena,
always devoted to his family, but whose zeal was now redoubled by their
jealousy of the Florentines, made immense sacrifices for him. The Romans,
offended at the pope’s having abandoned their city for Viterbo, as well
as jealous of his pretensions in the republic, from the government of
which he had excluded the nobles, opened their gates to Conradin, and
promised him aid. But all these efforts, all this zeal, did not suffice
to defend the heir of the house of Hohenstaufen against the valour of the
French. Conradin entered the kingdom of his fathers by the Abruzzi and
met Charles of Anjou in the plain of Tagliacozzo, on the 23rd of August,
1268. A desperate battle ensued; victory long remained doubtful. Two
divisions of the army of Charles were already destroyed; and the Germans,
who considered themselves the victors, were dispersed in pursuit of the
enemy; when the French prince, who, till then, had not appeared on the
field, fell on them with his body of reserve, and completely routed them.
Conradin, forced to fly, was arrested, forty-five miles from Tagliacozzo,
as he was about to embark for Sicily. He was brought to Charles, who,
without pity for his youth, esteem for his courage, or respect for
his just right, exacted from the iniquitous judges before whom he
subjected him to the mockery of a trial, a sentence of death. Conradin
was beheaded in the market-place at Naples, on the 26th of October,
1268. With him perished several of his most illustrious companions in
arms--German princes, Ghibelline nobles, and citizens of Pisa; and, after
the sacrifice of these first victims, an uninterrupted succession of
executions long continued to fill the Two Sicilies with dismay.
The defeat and death of Conradin established the preponderance of the
Guelf party throughout the peninsula. Charles placed himself at the head
of it; the pope named him imperial vicar in Italy during the interregnum
of the empire, and sought to annex to that title all the rights formerly
exercised by the emperors in the free cities. Clement IV died on the
29th of November, 1268--one month after the execution of Conradin. The
cardinals remained thirty-three months without being able to agree on
the choice of a successor. During this interregnum--the longest the
pontifical chair had ever experienced--Charles remained sole chief of the
Guelf party, ruling over the whole of Italy, which had neither pope nor
emperor. He convoked, in 1269, a diet of the Lombard cities at Cremona,
in which the towns of Piacenza, Cremona, Parma, Modena, Ferrara, and
Reggio, consented to confer on him the signoria; Milan, Como, Vercelli,
Novara, Alessandria, Tortona, Turin, Pavia, Bergamo, and Bologna,
declared they should feel honoured by his alliance and friendship, but
could not take him for master. Italy already felt the weight of the
French yoke, which would have pressed still heavier if the crusade
against Tunis to which Charles of Anjou was summoned by his brother, St.
Louis, had not diverted his projects of ambition.
The conclave assembled at Viterbo at length raised to the vacant chair
Teobaldo Visconti, of Piacenza, who was at that time in the Holy Land.
On his return to Italy, in the year 1272, he took the name of Gregory X.
This wise and moderate man soon discovered that the court of Rome had
overreached itself; in crushing the house of Hohenstaufen, it had given
itself a new master not less dangerous than the preceding. Gregory,
instead of seeking to annihilate the Ghibellines, like his predecessors,
occupied himself only in endeavouring to restore an equilibrium and peace
between them and the Guelfs. He persuaded the Florentines and Sienese
to recall the exiled Ghibellines, for the purpose, as he announced, of
uniting all Christendom in the defence of the Holy Land; and testified
the strongest resentment against Charles, who threw obstacles in the way
of this reconciliation. He relieved Pisa from the interdict that had been
laid on it by the holy see. He showed favour to Venice and Genoa; both
of which, offended by the arrogance and injustice of Charles, had made
common cause with his enemies. He engaged the electors of Germany to take
advantage of the death of Richard of Cornwall, which took place in 1271,
and put an end to the interregnum by proceeding to a new election. The
electors conferred the crown, in 1273, on Rudolf of Habsburg, founder
of the house of Austria. The death of Gregory X, in the beginning of
January, 1276, deprived him of the opportunity to develop the projects
which these first steps seem to indicate; but Nicholas III, who succeeded
him in 1277, after three ephemeral popes, undertook more openly to
humble Charles, and to support the Ghibelline party. He forced the king
of Sicily to renounce the title of imperial vicar, to which Charles had
no title except during the interregnum of the empire; he still further
engaged him to resign the title of senator of Rome, and the dignity of
the signoria, which had been conferred on him by the cities of Lombardy
and Tuscany, by representing to him that his power over these provinces
was contrary to the bull of investiture, which had put him in possession
of the kingdom of Naples.
Rudolf of Habsburg, who had never visited Italy, and was ignorant of
the geography of that country, was, in his turn, persuaded by the pope
to confirm the charters of Louis le Débonnaire, of Otto I, and of Henry
VI, of which copies were sent to him. In these charters, whether true or
false, taken from the chancery at Rome, the sovereignty of the whole of
Emilia or Romagna, the Pentapolis, the march of Ancona, the patrimony
of St. Peter, and the Campagna of Rome, from Radicofani to Ceperano,
were assigned to the church. The imperial chancery confirmed, without
examination, a concession which had never been really made. The two
Fredericks, as well as their predecessors, had always considered this
whole extent of country as belonging to the empire, and always exercised
there the imperial rights. A chancellor of Rudolf arrived in these
provinces to demand homage and the oath of allegiance, which were yielded
without difficulty; but Nicholas appealed against this homage, and called
it a sacrilegious usurpation. Rudolf was obliged to acknowledge that it
was in contradiction to his own diplomas, and resigned his pretensions.
From that period, 1278, the republics held of the holy see and not of the
emperor.
[Sidenote: [1277-1280 A.D.]]
A revolution, not long previous, in the principal cities of Lombardy,
had secured the preponderance to the nobles and the Ghibelline party.
These, having been for a considerable period exiled from Milan,
experienced a continuation of disasters, and, instead of fear, excited
compassion. While Napoleon della Torre, chief of the republic of Milan,
was exasperating the plebeians and Guelfs with his arrogance and contempt
of their freedom, he was informed that Otto Visconti, whom he had
exiled, although archbishop of Milan, had assembled around him at Como
many nobles and Ghibellines, with whom he intended making an attack on
the Milanese territory. Napoleon marched to meet him; but, despising
enemies whom he had so often vanquished, he carelessly suffered himself
to be surprised by the Ghibellines at Desio, in the night of the 21st of
January, 1277. Having been made prisoner, with five of his relatives,
he and they were placed in three iron cages, in which the archbishop
kept them confined. This prelate was himself received with enthusiasm
at Milan, at Cremona, and Lodi. He formed anew the councils of these
republics, admitting only Ghibellines and nobles, who, ruined by a
long exile, and often supported by the liberality of the archbishop,
were become humble and obsequious; their deference degenerated into
submission, and the republic of Milan, henceforth governed by the
Visconti, became soon no more than a principality.
GHIBELLINE SUCCESSES; THE SICILIAN VESPERS
Nicholas III, of the noble Roman family of the Orsini, felt a hereditary
affection for the Ghibellines, and everywhere favoured them. A rivalry
between two illustrious families of Bologna, the Gieremei and the
Lambertazzi, terminated, in 1274, in the exile of the latter (who were
Ghibellines) with all their adherents. The quarrel between the two
families became, from that period, a bloody war throughout Romagna. Guido
de Montefeltro, lord of the mountains in the neighbourhood of Urbino, who
had never joined any republic, received the Ghibellines into his country;
and in commanding them gained the reputation of a great captain. Nicholas
III sent a legate to Romagna, to compel Bologna and all the Guelf
republics to recall the Ghibellines, and establish peace throughout the
province. He succeeded in 1279. Another legate on a similar mission, and
with equal success, was sent to Florence and Siena. The balance seemed at
last on the point of being established in Italy, when Nicholas died, on
the 19th of August, 1280.
[Sidenote: [1280-1282 A.D.]]
Charles, who had submitted without opposition, and without even
manifesting any displeasure, to the depression of a party on which were
founded all his hopes, and to a reconciliation which destroyed his
influence in the Guelf republics, hastened to Viterbo as soon as he
learned the death of the pope, fully resolved not to suffer another of
his enemies to ascend the chair of St. Peter. He caused three cardinals,
relatives of Nicholas, whom he regarded as being adverse to him, to
be removed by force from the conclave; and, striking terror into the
rest, he obtained, on the 22nd of January, 1281, the election of a pope
entirely devoted to him. This was a canon of Tours, who took the name of
Martin IV. He seemed to have no higher mission than that of seconding
the ambition of the king of the Two Sicilies, and serving him in his
enmities. Far from thinking of forming any balance to his power, he
laboured to give him the sovereignty of all Italy. He conferred on him
the title of senator of Rome; he gave the government of all the provinces
of the church to his French officers; he caused the Ghibellines to be
exiled from all the cities; and he encouraged, with all his power, the
new design of Charles to take possession of the Eastern Empire.
Constantinople had been taken from the Latins on the 25th of July, 1261;
and the son of the last Latin emperor was son-in-law of Charles of Anjou.
Martin IV excommunicated Michael Palæologus, the Greek emperor, who had
vainly endeavoured to reconcile the two churches. The new armament, which
Charles was about to lead into Greece, was in preparation at the same
time in all the ports of the Two Sicilies. The king’s agents collected
the taxes with redoubled insolence, and levied money with greater
severity. The judges endeavoured to smother resistance by striking
terror. In the meanwhile a noble of Salerno, named John da Procida,
the friend, confidant, and physician of Frederick II and of Manfred,
visited in disguise the Two Sicilies, to reanimate the zeal of the
ancient Ghibellines, and rouse their hatred of the French and of Charles.
After having traversed Greece and Spain to excite new enemies against
him, he obtained assurances that Michael Palæologus and Constanza, the
daughter of Manfred and wife of Don Pedro of Aragon, would not suffer
the Sicilians to be destroyed, if these had the courage to rise against
their oppressors. Their assistance was, in fact, promised--it was even
prepared; but Sicily was destined to be delivered by a sudden and popular
explosion, which took place at Palermo, on the 30th of March, 1282. It
was excited by a French soldier, who treated rudely the person of a young
bride as she was proceeding to the church of Montreal, with her betrothed
husband, to receive the nuptial benediction. The indignation of her
relations and friends was communicated with the rapidity of lightning to
the whole population of Palermo. At that moment the bells of the churches
were ringing for vespers; the people answered by the cry, “To arms--death
to the French!”
The French were attacked furiously on all sides. Those who attempted
to defend themselves were soon overpowered; others, who endeavoured
to pass for Italians, were known by their pronunciation of two words,
which they were made to repeat--_ceci_ and _ciceri_, and were, on their
mispronunciation, immediately put to death. In a few hours more than
four thousand weltered in their blood. Every town in Sicily followed the
example of Palermo. Thus the Sicilian Vespers overthrew the tyranny of
Charles of Anjou and of the Guelfs; separated the kingdom of Sicily from
that of Naples; and transferred the crown of the former to Don Pedro of
Aragon, the son-in-law of Manfred, who was considered the heir to the
house of Hohenstaufen.
[Sidenote: [1282-1288 A.D.]]
Charles of Anjou, the first French king of the Two Sicilies, survived
the Sicilian Vespers only three years. He died on the 7th of January,
1285, aged sixty-five years. At this period his son, Charles II, was
a prisoner in the hands of the Sicilians; he was set at liberty in
1288, in pursuance of a treaty by which he acknowledged the separation
and independence of the two crowns of Naples and Sicily. The first
was assigned to the Guelfs and the house of Anjou; the second to the
Ghibellines and the house of Aragon; but Nicholas IV, by whose influence
the treaty was made, broke it, released Charles from his oath, and
authorised him to begin the war anew.
WANING INFLUENCE OF KING, EMPEROR, AND POPE
[Sidenote: [1288-1303 A.D.]]
This war, which lasted twenty-four years, occupied the whole reign of
Charles II. This prince was milder than his father, but weaker also.
He had neither the stern character of Charles of Anjou, which excited
hatred, nor his talents, which commanded admiration or respect. He always
called himself the protector of the Guelf party, but ceased to be its
champion; and neither the court of Rome, nor the Guelf republics, any
longer demanded counsel, direction, or support from the court of Naples.
He died on the 5th of May, 1309, and was succeeded by his son Robert.
The influence of the emperors, as protectors of the Ghibelline party,
during this period was almost extinct in Italy. Rudolf of Habsburg, who
reigned with glory in Germany from 1273 to 1291, never passed the Alps
to be acknowledged emperor and king of the Lombards; after him, Adolphus
of Nassau, and his successor, Albert of Austria--the one assassinated
in 1298, the other in 1308--remained alike strangers to Italy. The
Ghibelline party was, accordingly, no longer supported or directed by
the emperors, but it maintained itself by its own resources, by the
attachment of the nobles to the imperial name, and still more by the
self-interest of the captains, who, raised to the signoria either by the
choice of the people or of their faction, created for themselves, in the
name of the empire, a sovereignty to which the Italians unhesitatingly
gave the name of tyranny.
Lastly, the third power, that of the pope, which till then had directed
the politics of Italy, ceased about this time to follow a regular system,
and consequently to give a powerful impulse to faction. Martin IV,
whose life terminated two months after that of Charles I, had always
acted as his creature, had seconded him in his enmities, in his thirst
of vengeance against the Sicilians, and in his efforts to recover his
dominion over Italy. But Honorius IV, who reigned after him, from 1285
to 1287, appeared to have no other thought than that of aggrandising the
noble house of Savelli at Rome, of which he was himself a member; after
him, Nicholas IV, from 1288 to 1292, was not less zealous in his efforts
to do as much for that of Colonna. His predecessor, Nicholas III, had a
few years previously set the example, by applying all his power as pope
to the elevation of the Orsini. These are nearly the first examples of
the nepotism of the popes, who had hardly yet begun to feel themselves
sovereigns. They raised these three great Roman families above all their
ancient rivals; almost all the castles in the patrimony of St. Peter, and
in the Campagna of Rome, became their property. The houses of Colonna,
Orsini, and Savelli, to support their nobility, soon began to traffic in
their valour, by hiring themselves out with a body of cavalry to such as
would employ them in war; whilst the peasants, their vassals, seduced
by the spirit of adventure, and still more by the hope of plunder,
abandoned agriculture to enlist in the troops of their liege lord. The
effect of their disorderly lives was that the two provinces nearest
Rome soon became the worst cultivated and the least populous in all
Italy, although the treasures of Europe poured into the capital of the
faithful. After Nicholas IV, a poor hermit, humble, timid, and ignorant,
was raised, in 1294, to the chair of St. Peter, under the name of
Celestine V. His election was the effect of a sudden burst of religious
enthusiasm, which seized the college of cardinals; although this holy
senate had never before shown themselves more ready to consult religion
than policy. Celestine V maintained himself only a few months on the
throne; all his sanctity could not serve as an excuse for his incapacity;
and the cardinal Benedict Cajetan, who persuaded him to abdicate, was
elected pope in his place, under the name of Boniface VIII. Boniface,
able, expert, intriguing, and unscrupulous, would have restored the
authority of the holy see, which during the latter pontificates had been
continually sinking, if the violence of his character, his ungovernable
pride, and his transports of passion, had not continually thwarted his
policy. He endeavoured at first to augment the power of the Guelfs by
the aid of France; he afterwards engaged in a violent quarrel with the
family of Colonna, whom he would willingly have exterminated; and,
finally, taking offence against Philip the Fair, he treated him with as
much haughtiness as if he had been the lowest of his vassals. Insulted,
and even arrested, by the French prince, in his palace of Anagni, on the
7th of September, 1303, Boniface died a few weeks afterwards of rage and
humiliation.
THE REPUBLIC OF PISA
[Sidenote: [1282-1288 A.D.]]
The republic of Pisa was one of the first to make known to the world
the riches and power which a small state might acquire by the aid of
commerce and liberty. Pisa had astonished the shores of the Mediterranean
by the number of vessels and galleys that sailed under her flag, by the
succour she had given the crusaders, by the fear she had inspired at
Constantinople, and by the conquest of Sardinia and the Balearic Isles.
Pisa was the first to introduce into Tuscany the arts that ennoble
wealth; her dome, her baptistery, her leaning tower, and her Campo Santo,
which the traveller’s eye embraces at one glance, but does not weary of
beholding, had been successively built from the year 1063 to the end of
the twelfth century. These _chefs-d’œuvre_ had animated the genius of
the Pisans; the great architects of the thirteenth century were, for the
most, pupils of Nicholas of Pisa. But the moment was come in which the
ruin of this glorious republic was at hand; a deep-rooted jealousy, to
be dated from the conquest of Sardinia, had frequently, during the last
two centuries, armed against each other the republics of Genoa and Pisa;
a new war between them broke out in 1282. It is difficult to comprehend
how two simple cities could put to sea such prodigious fleets as those of
Pisa and Genoa. In 1282, Ginicel Sismondi commanded thirty Pisan galleys,
of which he lost the half in a tempest on the 9th of September; the
following year Rosso Sismondi commanded sixty-four; in 1284, Guido Jacia
commanded twenty-four, and was vanquished.[b]
These repeated losses obliged the Pisans to ask succour from the
Venetians, in alliance with whom, in the Levant, they had often beaten
the Genoese. Alberto Morosini, a Venetian, mayor of Pisa, endeavoured to
effect a confederacy, but in vain; the Venetians chose to remain neutral.
True policy, however, ought to have counselled them to support a power,
by the ruin of which, their determined enemies, the Genoese, increased so
much in strength; and they had reason enough afterwards to perceive their
error. The last misfortune, instead of discouraging the Pisans, inflamed
them still more with a desire for vengeance; they made one of their
greatest efforts by arming seventy-two galleys, the command of which was
given to Count Ugolino, already very powerful in Pisa; the flower of the
nobility and Pisan citizens accompanied it, to which were added other
smaller vessels. But instead of attacking the Genoese fleet, only thirty
galleys strong, which were in Sardinia under the command of Giacaria,
and which they might have easily overpowered, they lost precious time by
insulting the city of Genoa, showing themselves before the port, throwing
against it a few mortars, and challenging the Genoese to battle; and
after these useless bravadoes returning home.
_Pisa Defeated by Genoa near Meloria_
[Illustration: THE BAPTISTERY, FLORENCE]
Nothing is more valuable in war than season and opportunity. The Genoese
had recalled the army of Giacaria with all expedition from Sardinia and
soon equipped a fleet of eighty-eight galleys with many other smaller
vessels, the command of which was given to Obert Doria. Putting to sea,
and hearing that the Pisan armament was near Meloria, they advanced to
that port. Doria, fearing that the superior number of their vessels might
oblige the Pisans to refuse battle, and retire into harbour, advanced
with only fifty-eight galleys, ordering the division of Giacaria to
remain behind with the remaining thirty. The Pisans accepted battle,
which was fought on the 6th of August with all the fury and animosity of
two nations seeking to destroy each other. The succour which arrived to
the Genoese with Giacaria, and which the Pisans did not expect, probably
decided the fate of that day. The galley upon which was the mayor of
Pisa, Alberto Morosini, fought furiously with the admiral’s ship,
commanded by Admiral Doria, who was joined, however, by other principal
galleys commanded by Admiral Giacaria. Even the galley which bore the
great Pisan standard was taken by the galley called _St. Matthew_ (_San
Matteo_), where were many of the family of Doria, and by the galley
_Finale_ the great standard was torn and broken down, and the defeat was
complete. Twenty-seven Pisan galleys were taken, and seven sunk; the
remainder, rendered unserviceable, with the advantage of night they saved
themselves in the neighbouring Pisan port, and with three of these the
count Ugolino escaped. The killed amounted to four thousand, and many
prisoners, among whom was the son of Count Ugolino.
These losses with those in anterior battles, amounted to about eleven
thousand, and all of the most considerable persons. This event destroyed
the maritime power of Pisa, which could never again recover itself and
assume the rank of her rivals. Many illustrious republics, as ancient and
modern history demonstrate, have risen after the most heavy losses. Pisa,
however, was no longer in this condition, and various causes combined to
prevent her regaining it; the first of which was the loss of her bravest
and wisest citizens taken prisoners, and whom the Genoese, actuated by
a cruel and useless policy, refused to set at liberty; and being kept
in prison for nearly fifteen years, or so long as the war lasted, the
greater part of them finished their life in wretchedness.[d]
_Perfidy and Fall of Ugolino_
[Sidenote: [1288-1293 A.D.]]
While the republic was thus exhausted by this great reverse of fortune,
it was attacked by the league of the Tuscan Guelfs; and a powerful
citizen, to whom it had entrusted itself, betrayed his country to enslave
it. Ugolino was count of the Gherardesca, a mountainous country situated
along the coast, between Leghorn and Piombino; he was of Ghibelline
origin, but had married his sister to Giovan di Gallura, chief of the
Guelfs of Pisa and of Sardinia. From that time he artfully opposed the
Guelfs to the Ghibellines; and though several accused him of having
decided the issue of the battle of Meloria, others regarded him as the
person most able, most powerful by his alliance, and most proper, to
reconcile Pisa with the Guelf league. The Pisans, amidst the dangers
of the republic, felt the necessity of a dictator. They named Ugolino
captain-general for ten years; and the new commander did, indeed,
obtain peace with the Guelf league; but not till he had caused all the
fortresses of the Pisan territory to be opened by his creatures to the
Lucchese and Florentines--a condition of his treaty with them which he
dared not publicly avow. From that time he sought only to strengthen
his own despotism, by depriving all the magistrates of power, and by
intimidating the archbishop Roger degli Ubaldini, who held jointly with
him the highest rank in the city. The nephew of Ubaldini, having opposed
him with some haughtiness, was killed by him on the spot with his own
hand. His violence, and the number of executions which he ordered, soon
rendered him equally odious to the two parties; but he had the art, in
his frequent changes from one to the other, to make the opposite party
believe him powerfully supported by that with which he at the moment
sided. In the summer of 1282 the Guelfs were exiled; but finding in the
Ghibelline chiefs, the Gualandi Sismondi and Lanfranchi, a haughtiness
which he thought he had subdued, he charged his son to introduce anew
the Guelfs into the city. His project was discovered and prevented; the
Ghibellines called the people on all sides to arms and liberty. On the
1st of July, 1288, Ugolino was besieged in the palace of the signoria;
the insurgents, unable to vanquish the obstinate resistance opposed to
them by himself, his sons, and his adherents, set fire to the palace;
and, having entered it amidst the flames, dragged forth Ugolino, two of
his sons, and two of his grandsons, and threw them into the tower of the
Sette Vie. The key was given to the archbishop, from whom was expected
the vigilance of an enemy, but the charity of a priest. That charity,
however, was soon exhausted; the key after a few months was thrown into
the river; and the wretched count perished in those agonies of hunger,
and of paternal and filial love, upon which poetry, sculpture, and
painting have conferred celebrity.
The victory over Count Ugolino, achieved by the most ardent of the
Ghibellines, redoubled the enthusiasm and audacity of that party, and
soon determined them to renew the war with the Guelfs of Tuscany.
Notwithstanding the danger into which the republic was thrown by the
ambition of the last captain-general, it continued to believe, when
engaged in a hazardous war, that the authority of a single person over
the military, the finances, and the tribunals was necessary to its
protection; and it trusted that the terrible chastisement just inflicted
on the tyrant would hinder any other from following his example.
Accordingly Guido de Montefeltro was named captain. He had acquired a
high reputation in defending Forlì against the French forces of Charles
of Anjou; and the republic had not to repent of its choice. He recovered
by force of arms all the fortresses which Ugolino had given up to the
Lucchese and Florentines. The Pisan militia, whom Montefeltro armed with
crossbows, which he had trained them to use with precision, became the
terror of Tuscany. The Guelfs of Florence and Lucca were glad to make
peace in 1293.
FLORENCE; THE FEUD OF THE BIANCHI AND THE NERI
[Sidenote: [1292-1300 A.D.]]
While the Pisans became habituated to trusting the government to a single
person, the Florentines became still more attached to the most democratic
forms of liberty. In 1282 they removed the _anziani_, whom they had at
first set at the head of their government, to make room for the _priori
delle arti_, whose name and office were preserved not only to the end
of the republic, but even to our day. The corporation of trades, which
they called the _arti_, were distinguished by the titles of major and
minor. At first only three, afterwards six, major _arti_ were admitted
into the government. The college, consisting of six _priori delle arti_,
always assembled, and living together, during two months, in the public
palace, formed the signoria, which represented the republic. Ten years
later, the Florentines completed this signoria, by placing at its head
the gonfalonier of justice, elected also for two months, from among
the representatives of the arts, manufactures, and commerce. When he
displayed the gonfalon, or standard of the state, the citizens were
obliged to rise and assist in the execution of the law. The arrogance
of the nobles, their quarrels, and the disturbance of the public peace
by their frequent battles in the streets, had, in 1292, irritated the
whole population against them. Giano della Bella, himself a noble, but
sympathising in the passions and resentment of the people, proposed to
bring them to order by summary justice, and to confide the execution of
it to the gonfalonier whom he caused to be elected. The Guelfs had been
so long at the head of the republic, that their noble families, whose
wealth had immensely increased, placed themselves above all law. Giano
determined that their nobility itself should be a title of exclusion,
and a commencement of punishment; a rigorous edict, bearing the title of
“ordinance of justice,” first designated thirty-seven Guelf families of
Florence, whom it declared noble and great, and on this account excluded
forever from the signoria; refusing them at the same time the privilege
of renouncing their nobility, in order to place themselves on a footing
with the other citizens. When these families troubled the public peace by
battle or assassination, a summary information, or even common report,
was sufficient to induce the gonfalonier to attack them at the head of
the militia, raze their houses to the ground, and deliver their persons
to the podesta, to be punished according to their crimes. If other
families committed the same disorders, if they troubled the state by
their private feuds and outrages, the signoria was authorised to ennoble
them, as a punishment of their crimes, in order to subject them to the
same summary justice. A similar organisation, under different names,
was made at Siena, Pistoia, and Lucca. In all the republics of Tuscany,
and in the greater number of those of Lombardy, the nobility by its
turbulence was excluded from all the magistracies; and in more than one,
a register of nobles was opened, as at Florence, on which to inscribe, by
way of punishment, the names of those who violated the public peace.
[Illustration: DOOR OF THE BAPTISTERY, FLORENCE]
However rigorous these precautions were, they did not suffice to retain
in subjection to the laws an order of men who believed themselves formed
to rule, and who despised the citizens with whom they were associated.
These very nobles, to whom was denied all participation in the government
of the republic, and almost the protection and equality of the law,
were no sooner entered into their mountain castles, than they became
sovereigns, and exercised despotic power over their vassals. The most
cultivated and wooded part of the Apennines belonged to the republic
of Pistoia. It was a considerable district, bordering on the Lucchese,
Modenese, Bolognese, and Florentine territory, and was emphatically
designated by the name of the “Mountain.” It was covered with castles
belonging either to the Cancellieri, or Panciatichi, the two families
most powerful in arms and wealth in all Italy; the first was Guelf,
the second Ghibelline; and as the party of the former then ruled in
Tuscany, they had obtained the exile of the Panciatichi from Pistoia. The
Cancellieri took advantage of this exile to increase their power by the
purchase of land, by conquest, and by alliance; in their family alone
they reckoned one hundred men at arms.[b]
The Cerchi and the Donati were, for riches, nobility, and the number
and influence of their followers, perhaps the two most distinguished
families in Florence. Being neighbours, both in the city and the country,
there had arisen between them some slight displeasure, which however had
not occasioned an open quarrel, and perhaps never would have produced
any serious effect if the malignant humours had not been increased by
new causes. It happened that Lore, son of Gulielmo, and Geri, son of
Bertacca, both of the family of Cancellieri, playing together, and coming
to words, Geri was slightly wounded by Lore. This displeased Gulielmo;
and, designing by a suitable apology to remove all cause of further
animosity, he ordered his son to go to the house of the father of the
youth whom he had wounded, and ask pardon. Lore obeyed his father; but
this act of virtue failed to soften the cruel mind of Bertacca, and
having caused Lore to be seized, in order to add the greatest indignity
to his brutal act, he ordered his servants to chop off the youth’s hand
upon a block used for cutting meat and then said to him, “Go to thy
father, and tell him that sword-wounds are cured with iron and not with
words.”
[Sidenote: [1300-1301 A.D.]]
The unfeeling barbarity of this act so greatly exasperated Gulielmo that
he ordered his people to take arms for his revenge. Bertacca prepared for
his defence, and not only that family, but the whole city of Pistoia,
became divided. And as the Cancellieri were descended from a Cancelliere
who had had two wives, of whom one was called Bianca (white), one party
was named by those who were descended from her, _Bianca_; and the other,
by way of greater distinction, was called _Nera_ (black). Much and
long-continued strife took place between the two, attended with the death
of many men and the destruction of much property; and not being able to
effect a union amongst themselves, but weary of the evil, and anxious
either to bring it to an end or, by engaging others in their quarrel,
increase it, they came to Florence, where the Neri, on account of their
familiarity with the Donati, were favoured by Corso, the head of that
family; and on this account the Bianchi, that they might have a powerful
head to defend them against the Donati, had recourse to Veri de Cerchi, a
man in no respect inferior to Corso.
This quarrel, and the parties in it, brought from Pistoia, increased
the old animosity between the Cerchi and the Donati, and it was already
so manifest, that the priors and all well-disposed men were in hourly
apprehension of its breaking out, and causing a division of the whole
city. They therefore applied to the pontiff, praying that he would
interpose his authority between these turbulent parties, and provide
the remedy which they found themselves unable to furnish. The pope sent
for Veri, and charged him to make peace with the Donati, at which Veri
exhibited great astonishment, saying that he had no enmity against
them, and that as pacification presupposes war, he did not know, there
being no war between them, how peace-making could be necessary. Veri
having returned from Rome without anything being effected, the rage of
the parties increased to such a degree that any trivial accident seemed
sufficient to make it burst forth, as indeed presently happened.
It was in the month of May, during which, and upon holidays, it is the
custom of Florence to hold festivals and public rejoicings throughout
the city. Some youths of the Donati family, with their friends, upon
horseback, were standing near the church of the Holy Trinity to look at a
party of ladies who were dancing; thither also came some of the Cerchi,
like the Donati, accompanied with many of the nobility, and, not knowing
that the Donati were before them, pushed their horses and jostled them;
thereupon the Donati, thinking themselves insulted, drew their swords,
nor were the Cerchi at all backward to do the same, and not till after
the interchange of many wounds, they separated. This disturbance was the
beginning of great evils; for the whole city became divided, the people
as well as the nobility, and the parties took the names of the Bianchi
and the Neri. The Cerchi were at the head of the Bianca faction, to which
adhered the Adimari, the Abati, a part of the Tosinghi, of the Bardi,
of the Rossi, of the Frescobaldi, of the Nerli, and of the Manelli;
all the Mozzi, the Scali, Gherardini, Cavalcanti, Malespini, Bostichi,
Giandonati, Vecchietti, and Arrigucci. To these were joined many families
of the people, and all the Ghibellines then in Florence, so that their
great numbers gave them almost the entire government of the city.
The Donati, at the head of whom was Corso, joined the Nera party, to
which also adhered those members of the above-named families who did not
take part with the Bianchi; and besides these, the whole of the Pazzi,
the Bisdomini, Manieri, Bagnesi, Tornaquinci, Spini, Buondelmonti,
Gianfigliazzi, and the Brunelleschi. Nor did the evil confine itself to
the city alone, for the whole country was divided upon it, so that the
captains of the Six Parts, and whoever were attached to the Guelfic party
or the well-being of the republic, were very much afraid that this new
division would occasion the destruction of the city, and give new life
to the Ghibelline faction. They therefore sent again to Pope Boniface,
desiring that, unless he wished that city which had always been the
shield of the church should either be ruined or become Ghibelline, he
would consider of some means for her relief. The pontiff thereupon sent
to Florence, as his legate, Cardinal Matteo d’Acquasparta, a Portuguese,
who, finding the Bianchi, as the most powerful, the least in fear, not
quite submissive to him, he interdicted the city, and left it in anger;
so that greater confusion now prevailed than previously to his coming.
The minds of men being in great excitement, it happened that at a funeral
which many of the Donati and the Cerchi attended, they first came to
words and then to arms, from which however nothing but merely tumult
resulted at the moment. However, having each retired to their houses,
the Cerchi determined to attack the Donati, but, by the valour of Corso,
they were repulsed and great numbers of them wounded. The city was in
arms. The laws and the seigniory were set at nought by the rage of the
nobility, and the best and wisest citizens were full of apprehension.
The Donati and their followers, being the least powerful, were in the
greatest fear, and to provide for their safety, they called together
Corso, the captains of the Parts, and the other leaders of the Neri, and
resolved to apply to the pope to appoint some personage of royal blood,
that he might reform Florence, thinking by this means to overcome the
Bianchi. Their meeting and determination became known to the priors, and
the adverse party represented it as a conspiracy against the liberties
of the republic. Both parties being in arms, the seigniory, one of whom
at that time was the poet Dante, took courage, and from his advice and
prudence, caused the people to rise for the preservation of order, and
being joined by many from the country, they compelled the leaders of both
parties to lay aside their arms, and banished Corso Donati, with many of
the Neri. And as an evidence of the impartiality of their motives, they
also banished many of the Bianchi, who, however, soon afterwards, under
pretence of some justifiable cause, returned.
_The Pope sends Charles of Valois as Conciliator_ (1301 A.D.)
Corso and his friends, thinking the pope favourable to their party,
went to Rome, and laid their grievances before him, having previously
forwarded a statement of them in writing. Charles of Valois, brother of
the king of France, was then at the papal court, having been called into
Italy by the king of Naples, to go over into Sicily. The pope, therefore,
at the earnest prayers of the banished Florentines, consented to send
Charles to Florence, till the season suitable for his going to Sicily
should arrive. He therefore came, and although the Bianchi, who then
governed, were very apprehensive, still, as the head of the Guelfs, and
appointed by the pope, they did not dare to oppose him. He had, however,
agreed not to seek to acquire sovereign authority over the city, and is
said to have pocketed 17,000 florins to bind the bargain.
[Sidenote: [1301-1302 A.D.]]
Thus authorised, Charles armed all his friends and followers, which step
gave the people so strong a suspicion that he designed to rob them of
their liberty, that each took arms, and kept at his own house, in order
to be ready, if Charles should make any such attempt. The Cerchi and
the leaders of the Bianchi faction had acquired universal hatred, by
having, whilst at the head of the republic, conducted themselves with
unbecoming pride; and this induced Corso and the banished of the Nera
party to return to Florence, knowing well that Charles and the captains
of the Parts were favourable to them. And whilst the citizens, for fear
of Charles, kept themselves in arms, Corso, with all the banished, and
followed by many others, entered Florence without the least impediment.
And although Veri de Cerchi was advised to oppose him, he refused to do
so, saying that he wished the people of Florence, against whom he came,
should punish him. However the contrary happened, for he was welcomed,
not punished by them; and it behooved Veri to save himself by flight.
Corso, having forced the Pinti Gate, assembled his party at San Pietro
Maggiore, near his own house, where, having drawn together a great
number of friends and people desirous of change, he set at liberty all
who had been imprisoned for offences, whether against the state or
against individuals. He compelled the existing seigniory to withdraw
privately to their own houses, elected a new one from the people of the
Nera party, and for five days plundered the leaders of the Bianchi. The
Cerchi and the other heads of their faction, finding Charles opposed to
them, and the greater part of the people their enemies, withdrew from
the city, and retired to their strongholds. And although at first they
would not listen to the advice of the pope, they were now compelled to
turn to him for assistance, declaring that instead of uniting the city,
Charles had caused greater disunion than before. The pope again sent
Matteo d’Acquasparta, his legate, who made peace between the Cerchi and
the Donati, and strengthened it with marriages and new betrothals. But
wishing that the Bianchi should participate in the employments of the
government, to which the Neri who were then at the head of it would not
consent, he withdrew, with no more satisfaction nor less enraged than on
the former occasion, and left the city interdicted for disobedience.
Both parties remained in Florence, and were equally discontented, the
Neri from seeing their enemies at hand, and apprehending the loss of
their power, and the Bianchi from finding themselves without either
honour or authority; and to these natural causes of animosity new
injuries were added. Niccolo de’ Cerchi, with many of his friends, went
to his estates, and being arrived at the bridge of Affrico, was attacked
by Simone, son of Corso Donati. The contest was obstinate, and on each
side had a sorrowful conclusion; for Niccolo was slain, and Simone was so
severely wounded that he died on the following night.
This event again disturbed the entire city; and although the Neri were
most to blame, they were defended by those who were at the head of
affairs; and before sentence was delivered, a conspiracy of the Bianchi
with Piero Ferrante, one of the barons who had accompanied Charles,
was discovered, by whose assistance they sought to be replaced in the
government. The matter became known by letters addressed to him by the
Cerchi, although some were of the opinion that they were not genuine, but
written and pretended to be found by the Donati, to abate the infamy
which their party had acquired by the death of Niccolo. The whole of the
Cerchi were however banished with their followers of the Bianca party, of
whom was Dante the poet, their property was confiscated, and their houses
were pulled down,[f] Dante was at Siena at the time of the pretended
conspiracy. It was decreed that if he ever returned to his native city
he should be burned alive. Another of the banished was Ser Petracco
di Parenzo dall’Incisa, whose son Francesco Petrarch saw the light in
exile.[h] Charles, having effected the purpose of his coming, left the
city, and returned to the pope to pursue his enterprise against Sicily,
in which he was neither wiser nor more fortunate than he had been at
Florence; so that with disgrace and the loss of many of his followers, he
withdrew to France.[f]
FOOTNOTES
[11] [The account here given by Pignotti is based chiefly upon the
contemporary writer Malepina.[e]]
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