Their plan was this: the next day, as it happened, was the feast of S. Anne, July 26, 1343, and they decided that then a tumult should be raised in the Mercato Vecchio, upon which all were to take arms and excite thepeople to liberty. And the next day, the signal being given by sounding a bell as had been agreed, all took arms and, crying out, "Liberty, liberty," excited the people, who took arms likewise. The Duke, alarmed at this noise, fortified himself in the Palazzo and then, calling home his servants who were lodged through the city, set forth with them to the Mercato. Many times were they assaulted on the way and many too were slain, so that though recruited with three hundred horse he knew not himself what to do. Meantime the Medici, Cavicciulli, and Rucellai, who were afraid lest he should attack, drawing together a force, advanced so that many of those who had stood for the Duke rallied over to their side, and though the Duke was again reinforced, yet was he beaten and went backward into the Palazzo. Meanwhile Corso and Amerigo Donati with part of the people broke up the prisons, burned the records of the Potestà, sacked the houses of the rettori, and killed all the Duke's officers they could meet with. And the Duke remained besieged in the Palazzo. Has not Boccaccio told us the story:—
"Upon a day they armyd in stele bright
Magnates first with comons of the toun
All of assent roos up anon right
Gan to make an hydous soun:
Late sle this tyrant, late us pull him doun.
Leyde a syege by mighty violence
A forn his paleys where he lay in Florence."[321]
While the Duke was thus besieged, the citizens to give some form to their government met in S. Reparata (S. Maria del Fiore) and created fourteen of their number, half grandi half people, to rule with the Bishop. Then the Duke asked for a truce. They refused it, except Guglielmo of Assisi, with his son, and Cerrettieri Bisdomini, who had always been of his party, should be delivered into their hands. This for long the Duke refused, but at last, seeing no way out, he consented. "Greater, doubtless," says Machiavelli, "is the insolence and contumacy of the people and more dreadful the evils which they do in pursuit of liberty than when they have acquired it." So it proved here. Guglielmo and his son were brought forth and delivered up among thousands of their enemies. His son was a youth of less than eighteen years; yet that did not spare him nor his beauty neither. Those who could not get near enough to do it whilst he was alive wounded him when he was dead; and as if their swords had been partial and too moderate, they fell to it with their teeth and their hands, biting his flesh and tearing it in pieces. And that all their senses might participate in their revenge, having feasted their ears upon groans, their eyes upon wounds, their touch upon the bowels of their enemies which they rent out of their bodies with their hands, they regaled their taste also. Those two gentlemen, father and son, were eaten in the Piazza; only Cerrettieri escaped, for the people, being tired, forgot him altogether and left him in the Palazzo not so much as demanded, and the next night he was conveyed out of the city.
Satiated thus with blood, they suffered the Duke to depart peacefully on August 6, attended by a host of citizens who saw him on the way to the Casentino, where, in fact, though unwillingly it seems, he ratified the renunciation.