JOHN OF BOHEMIA COMES TO ITALY
[1329-1335 A.D.]
The Ghibelline party, which had produced such great captains, thus saw them all disappear at once in the middle of their careers. Passerino de’ Bonacossi, tyrant of Mantua, who belonged to the same party, had been assassinated on the 14th of August, 1328, by the Gonzagas, who thus avenged an affront offered to the wife of one of them. They took possession of the sovereignty of Mantua, and kept it in their family till the eighteenth century. Of all the princes who had well received Ludwig of Bavaria in Italy, the marquis d’Este was the only one who preserved his power. He was lord of Ferrara; and even this prince, though a Guelf by birth, was forced by the intrigues of the pope’s legate to join the Ghibellines.
The Ghibelline party, which had been rendered so formidable by the ability of its captains, was now completely disorganised. The Lombards placed no confidence in those who remained, they had forgotten liberty and dared no longer aspire to it; but they longed for a prince capable of defending them, and who, by his moderation and good faith, could give them hopes of peace. They saw none such in Italy; Germany unexpectedly offered one. John, king of Bohemia, the son of Henry VII, arrived at Trent towards the end of the year 1330. The memory of his father was rendered dearer to the Italians by the comparison of his conduct with that of his successor; and John was calculated to heighten this predilection. He could not submit to the barbarism of Bohemia, and inhabited, in preference, the county of Luxemburg, or Paris; and having acquired a spirit of heroism, by his constant reading or listening to the French romances of chivalry, he aspired to the glory of being a complete knight. All that could at first sight seduce the people was united in him—beauty, valour, dexterity in all corporeal exercises, eloquence, an engaging manner. His conduct in France and Germany, where he had been by turns warrior and pacificator, was noble. He never sought anything for himself; he seemed to be actuated only by the love of the general good or glory.
The Italians, justly disgusted with their own princes, eagerly offered to throw themselves into his arms; the city of Brescia sent deputies to Trent, to offer John the sovereignty of their republic. He arrived there, to take possession of it, on the 31st of December, 1330. Almost immediately after, Bergamo, Cremona, Pavia, Vercelli, and Novara followed the example of Brescia. Azzo Visconti himself, son of Galeazzo, who, in 1328, had repurchased Milan from Ludwig of Bavaria, could not withstand the enthusiasm of his subjects; he nominally ceded the government to John, taking henceforth the title of his vicar only. Parma, Modena, Reggio, and lastly Lucca also soon gave themselves to John of Bohemia. John, in all these cities, recalled indiscriminately the Guelf and Ghibelline exiles, restored peace, and made them at last taste the first-fruits of good government.
The Florentines did not find sufficient strength in the Guelf party to oppose the menacing greatness of the king of Bohemia. Robert of Naples was become old; he wanted energy, and his soldiers courage. The republic of Bologna, formerly so rich and powerful, had lost its vigour under the government of the legate, Bertrand de Poiet; those of Perugia and Siena had within themselves few resources, and those few their jealousy of Florence prevented their liberally employing. There remained no free cities in Lombardy; and all those in the states of the church, which during the preceding century had shown so much spirit, had fallen under the yoke of some petty tyrant, who immediately declared for the Ghibelline party. The Florentines felt the necessity of silencing their hereditary enmities and their ancient repugnances, and of making an alliance with the Lombard Ghibellines against John of Bohemia, with the condition that in dividing his spoils they should all agree to prevent the aggrandisement of any single power, and preserve between themselves an exact equilibrium, in order that Italy after their conquests should incur no danger of being subjugated by one of them. The treaty of alliance against the king of Bohemia, and the partition of the states which he had just acquired in Italy, was signed in the month of September, 1332. Cremona was to be given to Visconti; Parma to Mastino della Scala, the nephew and successor of Can’ Grande; Reggio to Gonzaga; Modena to the marquis d’Este; and Lucca to the Florentines.
John did not oppose to this league the resistance that was expected from his courage and talents. Of an inconstant character, becoming weary of everything, always pursuing something new, thinking only of shining in courts and tournaments, he soon regarded all these little Italian principalities, of which he had already lost some, as too citizen-like and unlordly: he sold every town which had given itself to him, to whatever noble desired to rule over it; and he departed for Paris on the 15th of October, 1333, leaving Italy in still greater confusion than before. The Lombard Ghibellines, confederates of the Florentines, succeeded, before the end of the summer of 1335, in taking possession of the cities abandoned by the king of Bohemia. Lucca, which alone fell to the share of Florence, was defended by a band of German soldiers, who made it the centre of their depredations, and barbarously tyrannised over the Lucchese. Mastino della Scala offered to treat for the Florentines with the captains who then commanded at Lucca, and he succeeded in obtaining the surrender of the town to him, on the 20th of December, 1335. As soon as he became master of it he began to flatter himself that it would afford him the means of subjugating the rest of Tuscany; and, instead of delivering it as he had engaged to the Florentines, he sought to renew against them a Ghibelline league jointly with the Pisans and all the independent nobles of the Apennines.