CHAPTER XXII
THE ILLS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
The fourteenth century undoubtedly felt itself emancipated from the limitations of the Middle Ages, and with justice, so far as the classical revival was concerned, but it did little or nothing to free itself from ills that were distinctly of a mediæval character,—plague, lawlessness, and tyranny. In that respect, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World was slow and made a striking contrast with the rapid evolution of art.
The chief of these ills was the plague. Only in remote places of the East, if at all, does the scourge of disease now fall as it then did in the most civilized cities of the world, and it was from the East that these plagues came, brought by sailors. One blasted Tuscany in 1340, one Lombardy in 1361; but the worst was the awful Black Death of 1348, which wrought havoc in various parts of Italy and then swept northward across the Alps on its destructive path. It was this plague which Boccaccio describes in the beginning of the "Decameron." It spread like fire among dry wood which has been sprinkled with oil. At first swellings appeared the size of an egg or an apple, then black and hard spots; on the third day came death. Even animals caught the disease. Boccaccio saw two pigs which had chewed the garment of a plague-stricken man die in convulsions. Medicine was useless. Some thought the wisest course was to live on the daintiest food and drink, and never speak of the plague; others believed in carousing and jollity, and went about from tavern to tavern seeking diversion, but always keeping sober enough to avoid the sick. Private houses were deserted and lay open to anybody. Loyalty disappeared. All who could fled into the country. Thousands fell sick daily. In place of decent burial, dead bodies were tossed huggermugger into trenches. Between March and July, Boccaccio says, more than 100,000 people died within the walls of Florence.
Florence was not singular. In Siena 80,000 people, three quarters of the population, died; in Genoa, 40,000; in Pisa, seven out of ten, and so on in Venice, Rome, Naples, and Sicily. These figures seem incredible; but Petrarch says: "Posterity will not believe that there ever was a period in which the world remained almost entirely depopulated, houses empty of families, cities of inhabitants, the country of peasants. How will the future believe it, when we ourselves can hardly credit our eyes? We go outdoors, walk through street after street, and find them full of dead and dying; when we get home again we find no live thing within the house, all having perished within the brief interval of absence. Happy posterity, to whom such calamities will seem imaginings and dreams." Poor Petrarch! The lovely Laura, of whom he wrote so many perfect sonnets, died of the Black Death in Avignon. Giovanni Villani, the historian, died in Florence. This terrible calamity throws into high relief the great classical impulse, to which the last chapter was devoted. In earlier times men would have turned to religion and the Church; but now Petrarch, a most devout Christian, and his disciples continued to worship Cicero and the heroes of the Augustan age, and to talk of Cæsar and Pompey, Scylla and Charybdis, as the most important and interesting of things.
Another great evil which rivalled the plague as a curse, was the host of mercenary soldiers who swarmed over Italy like locusts. In the days of Barbarossa, battles like that of Legnano had been fought between the train-bands of the communes on one side and the feudal chivalry and men-at-arms on the other. But since then a great change had come over the methods of raising soldiers. Under the feudal system the term of service in the field for the liegemen of the Emperor had been forty days; but that time was too short for an effective campaign. When the Emperor wished to cross the Alps and go to Rome in order to receive the Imperial crown, he was obliged to hire soldiers; and, as years went on and these Imperial descents became mere adventurous expeditions, the character of the soldiers degenerated, until in Petrarch's time the Imperial armies were made up of ruffians recruited anywhere. There were also other reasons for establishing mercenaries in place of militia. The despots of Northern Italy did not wish their subjects trained to arms. The burghers of mercantile cities did not wish to leave their counting-rooms, nor to have their employees mustered out, so they too preferred hired soldiers to a native militia. Moreover, warfare had changed; cavalry needed frequent man[oe]uvres, bowmen and pikemen required drill and continuous discipline. Thus the old train-band system of the communes, under which the militia hurried to their appointed posts on the ringing of the bells, gave way to the system of mercenary troops led by soldiers of fortune, condottieri, as the Italians call them.
These soldiers, who had come down from the North to serve Emperors, or despots like the Visconti, or perhaps had sailed from Spain to fight under the House of Aragon in Sicily, as soon as the immediate war was ended, having been left unpaid or having taken a liking to a trade in which the labor was congenial, the risk small and booty enormous, decided not to disband, but to continue to try their luck together. They sold their services to whatever city or despot would pay them most, or wandered about in a nomadic fashion, capturing a city if they could, if not, living on the country-side. One can imagine these rogues among unwarlike peasants, or in a pleasant little city like Lucca or Cremona. They were very fickle, fought one another only upon compulsion, and then most reluctantly and gently, and were very nearly as terrible to their employers as to their adversaries. They were organized, sometimes very well, in bands under a general or a council of officers, and had such names as The Company of St. George, or The Great Company. Some of their leaders became very famous, like Duke Werner, who proclaimed himself "Lord of the Great Company, enemy to God, to Pity, and to Mercy." The most interesting of these leaders, at least for us, is John Hawkwood, an English adventurer, who began life as a London tailor, but dropped scissors and needle to enlist for Edward III's French campaign, and then, seeing fortune smile most sweetly from distraught Italy, crossed the Alps and led his company all over the peninsula. There is a full length fresco of him on horseback in the Duomo at Florence, painted in gratitude for his deeds in life or merely for his death.
For a hundred years and more these ruffians swaggered about Italy. Petrarch finds in them one cause the more to hold out his arms toward the mighty past. He writes in a letter: "Oh, would that you were alive, Brutus, Great-heart, that I might turn to you. O Manlius—O Great Pompey—O Julius Cæsar [etc., etc., etc.], O Jesus, Lord of the world, what has happened? Why do I moan and groan for grief? Oh! a vile handful of robbers, spewed out of their nasty dens, walks and rides over the ancient queen of the world, Italy. Christ Jesus, in tears and supplication I turn to Thee. Oh, if we have abused Thy goodness more than was right, if we have shown ourselves too proud in Thy aid and favour, if we have borne ourselves ill towards Thee, well mayst Thou not permit us to be free; but let not this slaughter, these sacrileges, these robberies, these deeds of violence, these ravishings of wives and maidens, find mercy in Thine eyes. Put an end to this evil. To the wicked who have said in their hearts 'There is no God,' show that Thou art; and to us however unworthy, show that we are Thy children. O Almighty Father, help us; in Thee alone we put our hope, and in supplication we invoke Thy name, weeping and confessing that there is none who shall fight for us, unless Thou, our Lord, be he."