A fierce war, on a large scale for two such small states, broke out in 1308 between San Gimignano and Volterra. There were no serious battles, but much harrying of the country and burning on both sides, and it was only ended by the intervention of Florence, Siena and Lucca. On the advent of Henry of Luxemburg, the Sangimignanesi sent men to aid King Robert and the Florentines. The Emperor came to Poggibonsi, from which he sentenced San Gimignano to pay a fine, and its walls and towers to be destroyed. Naturally, it was a mere idle threat.
This was the epoch in which the poet of San Gimignano, Messer Folgore, flourished. As we have seen, his principal work is associated with Siena; but there is a second series of sonnets, eight in number, for the different days of the week, which is more connected with his native city. They are dedicated to the Florentine, Carlo di Messer Guerra Cavicciuoli, who had served San Gimignano as condottiere in the war against Volterra. A more strenuous and virile note is struck here than in the better-known Sienese series for the months, in as much as, amidst the singing and love-making, the feasting and jousting, hunting and hawking, there is at least one day of genuine fighting to be done:—
“To a new world on Tuesday shifts my song,
Where beat of drum is heard, and trumpet-blast;
Where footmen armed and horsemen armed go past,
And bells say ding to bells that answer dong;
Where he the first and after him the throng,
Armed all of them with coats and hoods of steel,
Shall see their foes and make their foes to feel,
And so in wrack and rout drive them along.”[180]
For the rest, Folgore was a furious Guelf, and when his party was crushed by Uguccione della Faggiuola, on the tremendous day of Montecatini in 1315, he hurled his defiance at God Himself:—“I praise Thee not, O God, nor adore Thee; I pray not to Thee, and I thank Thee not; and I serve Thee not, for I am more sick of it than are the souls of being in Purgatory. For Thou hast put the Guelfs to such torment that the Ghibellines mock us and harrow us, and, if Uguccione demanded duty from Thee, Thou wouldst pay it readily.”[181]
In 1319 two brothers of the Baroncetti, Messer Tribaldo and Fresco, conspired to make the first-named despot of the town. He was a leader of the Guelfs, potent in their councils, lavish with his money. With their allies and friends the two attempted to surprise the Palace; but the people rose in arms and drove them from the town; they were sentenced to perpetual banishment and their goods confiscated. “There was a knight of the Baroncetti,” writes Fra Matteo Ciaccheri in his rhymed chronicle, “and he was a mighty man: Messer Tribaldo was his name. He sought by every way and means to become lord of all, and to make himself fine with the noble mantle. Therefore was he hunted out with great fury, and Messer Fresco, for they were brothers: for all the town rose in tumult.”[182] After this the Captain of the People, whose office had hitherto been frequently held by the Podestà, became more important, and the special council over which he presided was limited to popolani. Guards were continually kept on the Tower of the Podestà and the Tower of the People; chains were made for the streets and gates, and special custodians of them appointed for each of the four contrade. But the factions grew more and more embittered, and the days of the little Republic were numbered.
Led by the Ardinghelli, the fuorusciti were ravaging the contado, when in 1332 the Sangimignanesi, headed by their Podestà, Messer Piero di Duccio Saracini of Siena, took and burned Camporbiano, which had sheltered them. But Camporbiano was in the contado of Florence. The Florentines instantly summoned the Podestà and the leaders of the expedition to appear before them, and, when they did not appear, condemned the Commune of San Gimignano to pay a heavy fine, and their Podestà, with one hundred and forty-eight men of the town, to be burned alive. When the Florentine troops were actually on the march, the Sangimignanesi begged pardon, and threw themselves on the mercy of the Commune and People of Florence, who forgave them fairly magnanimously, on the condition of taking back the exiles and making good the damage that they had done to Camporbiano, according to the valuation of the men of the latter place themselves and of the Florentine ambassadors. After this, the Florentines soon began to treat San Gimignano as a vassal State, demanding soldiers and tributes, forcing its councils to ratify their corrections of the statutes. When the Duke of Athens made himself lord of Florence in 1342, the Ardinghelli (who had been expelled again) attempted in the night to surprise the town, with the aid of the ducal forces, at the Porta della Fonte. The attempt failed, but in the following February the Commune was forced to submit to the Duke, who began to build a castle to secure his hold. A few months later, on his fall, it was razed to the ground and his adherents expelled. Again the Ardinghelli, led by Primerano and Francesco, in secret understanding with their friends within, attempted to get possession of the town, and again they were unsuccessful. Civil war now broke out in the contado, and in 1346 the Ardinghelli, with a strong force of armed men collected from all quarters, again assailed the walls. At last, by the intervention of the Florentines, a peace was patched up, and the Ardinghelli returned.
Broken in spirit by the pestilence of 1348, hopelessly in debt to the banking houses of Florence and with factions still devastating the town, in the spring of 1349 the Commune of San Gimignano was compelled to surrender the custody and government of the State to the Florentines for three years, with the conditions that the Commune of Florence should every six months send a cittadino popolano from Florence as Captain of the Guard and another as Podestà (the latter, however, elected by the Sangimignanesi themselves), and that the citizens of San Gimignano should be declared true and lawful citizens of Florence, with the same rights and privileges as the Florentines.
The mutual hatred of the Ardinghelli and the Salvucci now blazed out afresh. Temporarily allayed by the appearance of some three hundred Florentine cavalry in the town, it came to a head in 1352. In a street brawl, a certain Ser Ilario struck Michele di Pietro, one of the Nine; Rossellino di Messer Gualtieri degli Ardinghelli (the brother of the Primerano already mentioned), who was present, was made responsible and fined. The Salvucci declared that Bartolommeo Altoviti, who was Captain of the town for the Florentines, had favoured Rossellino, and contrived that he should be succeeded by Benedetto di Giovanni Strozzi. Benedetto was easily convinced by them that Rossellino and Primerano were plotting with Altoviti against him. He promptly arrested the two brothers, “young men of great expectation and following,” says Matteo Villani, “and Guelfs by disposition and birth,” and imprisoned them. They threw a letter out of their prison tower, calling upon their friends to deliver them. It fell into the hands of the Captain, who, impelled “either by zeal of his office or by his own evil disposition or by the instigation of the Salvucci, their enemies,” determined to put them to death. The Commune of Florence, believing them innocent, sent an express command to Benedetto that he should not take their lives: but the Elsa had risen in flood, and the messengers could not pass that night. The Captain, hearing that they were on the way, hurried on the execution; on August 9th, he had the two young nobles publicly beheaded in the Piazza at the foot of the steps of the Palace, together with the supposed accomplice to whom they had written the fatal letter.
Thirsting for vengeance, the Ardinghelli, on December 20th, introduced the soldiery of the lords of Picchena and of the exiled Rossi of Florence into the town by the Porta di Quercecchio. Followed by the majority of the people, they assailed the houses of the Salvucci, who were taken by surprise and made little resistance, drove them out of the place, sacked and burned their palaces and those of their adherents, and occupied the town for themselves. On Christmas Day, the Salvucci and their friends appeared in Florence, demanding the aid of the Commune under whose guardianship (they said) they had been thus robbed and maltreated. On the other side the Ardinghelli, in the name and with the authority of the Commune of San Gimignano, sent ambassadors, declaring that they had driven out the Ghibellines and would hold the town in honour of the Commune of Florence and of the Parte Guelfa. In February, the Florentines sent their Podestà, Paolo Vaiani of Rome, with a strong force of horse and foot, to restore order. Reaching the town and receiving no answer to their summons, they set their camp in hostile array and began to waste the country; but none sallied out nor made any resistance. Then the people forced the Ardinghelli to surrender. It was agreed that the Florentines should make peace between them and the exiles, should have the custody of the town for five more years, and should keep a Captain of the Guard there with seventy-five horsemen at the cost of the inhabitants, and that the Salvucci should return after six months. But the lords of Picchena having made no apology to Florence for their share in the matter, the Florentines in June destroyed their walls and fortress, “in order that this castle might no more be the cause of San Gimignano and Colle being stirred up to any rebellion.”[183]
Very striking is the last, piteous appeal of Fra Matteo Ciaccheri to his countrymen, to let the dead rest and save San Gimignano before it is too late:—