THE GUELFS EXPELLED FROM FLORENCE; THE BATTLE OF FOSSALTA
[1248-1249 A.D.]
Before this event, he had sent his son, the king of Antioch, into Tuscany with sixteen hundred German cavalry, to secure Florence to his party; where, since the death of Buondelmonte, the Guelfs and Ghibellines, always in opposition, had not ceased fighting. There was seldom an assembly, a festival, a public ceremony, without some offence given, either by one or other of the parties. Both flew to arms; chains were thrown across the streets; barricades were immediately formed, and in every quarter, round every noble family; the more contiguous, who had the most frequent causes of quarrel, fought at the same time in ten different places. Nevertheless the republic was supposed to lean towards the Guelf party; and the Florentine Ghibellines, in their relations with other people, had never sought to separate from their fellow-countrymen, or to place themselves in opposition to their magistrates. Frederick, fearing to lose Florence, wrote to the Uberti, the chiefs of the Ghibelline faction, to assemble secretly in their palace all their party, to attack afterwards in concert and at once all the posts of the Guelfs; whilst his son, the king of Antioch, should present himself at the gates, and thus expel their adversaries from the city. This plan was executed on the night of Candlemas, 1248; the barricades of the Guelfs were forced in every quarter, because they defended themselves in small bands against the whole of the opposite party. The Ghibellines, masters of the town, ordered all the Guelfs to quit it. They afterwards demolished thirty-six palaces belonging to the same number of the most illustrious families of that party; and intimidating the other cities of Tuscany, they constrained them to follow their example, and declare for the emperor.
Frederick II, after the check experienced by him at Parma, returned to his kingdom of Naples and Sicily, and left to his son Hensius, who established himself at Modena, the direction of the war in Lombardy. The pope, however, had sent a legate, the cardinal Octavian degli Ubaldini, to the Guelf cities, to engage them to pursue their victory, and punish the imperial party for what he called their revolt against the church. The powerful city of Bologna, already celebrated for its university, and superior to the neighbouring ones by its wealth, its population, and the zeal which a democratic government excites, undertook to make the Guelf party triumph throughout the Cispadane region. Bologna first attacked Romagna, and forced the towns of Imola, Faenza, Forlì, and Cervia to expel the Ghibellines, and declare for the church. The Bolognese next turned their arms against Modena. The Modenese cavalry, entering Bologna one day by surprise, carried off from a public fountain a bucket, which henceforth was preserved in the tower of Modena as a glorious trophy. The war which followed furnished Tassoni with the subject of his mock-heroic poem, La Secchia Rapita. The vengeance of the Bolognese was, however, anything but burlesque; after several bloody battles, the two armies finally met at Fossalta on the 26th of May, 1249. Philip Ugoni of Brescia, who was this year podesta of Bologna, commanded the Guelf army, in which was united a detachment from the militias of all the cities of the league of Lombardy. The Ghibellines were led by king Hensius; each army consisted of from fifteen to twenty thousand combatants. The battle was long and bloody, but ended with the complete defeat of the Ghibelline party; King Hensius himself fell into the hands of the conquerors; he was immediately taken to Bologna, and confined in the palace of the podesta. The senate of that city rejected all offers of ransom, all intercession in his favour. He was entertained in a splendid manner, but kept a prisoner during the rest of his life, which lasted for twenty-two years.