Chapter IV: The Thirteenth Century (2)

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.

At a diet of the Ghibelline cities assembled at Empoli, the ambassadors 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.

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]