{Footnote 1: Distinguish always the personal from the religious feud; personal feud is more treacherous and violent in Italy than in Scotland; but not the political or religious feud, unless involved with vast material interests.}
{Footnote 2: Sismondi, vol. ii., chap. ii.; G. Villani, vi., 33.}
98. Such being the general state of matters in Florence, in this year 1248, Frederick writes to the Uberti, who headed the Ghibellines, to engage them in serious effort to bring the city distinctly to the Imperial side. He was besieging Parma; and sent his natural son, Frederick, king of Antioch, with sixteen hundred German knights, to give the Ghibellines assured preponderance in the next quarrel.
The Uberti took arms before their arrival; rallied all their Ghibelline friends into a united body, and so attacked and carried the Guelph barricades, one by one, till their antagonists, driven together by local defeat, stood in consistency as complete as their own, by the gate of St. Peter, 'Scheraggio.' Young Frederick, with his German riders, arrived at this crisis; the Ghibellines opening the gates to him; the Guelphs, nevertheless, fought at their outmost barricade for four days more; but at last, tired, withdrew from the city, in a body, on the night of Candlemas, 2nd February, 1248; leaving the Ghibellines and their German friends to work their pleasure,—who immediately set themselves to throw down the Guelph palaces, and destroyed six-and-thirty of them, towers and all, with the good help of Niccola Pisano,—for this is the occasion of that beautiful piece of new engineering of his.
99. It is the first interference of the Germans in Florentine affairs which belongs to the real cycle of modern history. Six hundred years later, a troop of German riders entered Florence again, to restore its Grand Duke; and our warmhearted and loving English poetess, looking on from Casa Guidi windows, gives the said Germans many hard words, and thinks her darling Florentines entirely innocent in the matter. But if she had had clear eyes, (yeux de lin {1} the Romance of the Rose calls them,) she would have seen that white-coated cavalry with its heavy guns to be nothing more than the rear-guard of young Frederick of Antioch; and that Florence's own Ghibellines had opened her gates to them. Destiny little regards cost of time; she does her justice at that telescopic distance just as easily and accurately as close at hand.
{Footnote 1: Lynx.}
100. "Frederick of Antioch." Note the titular coincidence. The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch; here we have our lieutenant of Antichrist also named from that town. The anti-Christian Germans got into Florence upon Sunday morning; the Guelphs fought on till Wednesday, which was Candlemas;—the Tower of the Death-watch was thrown down next day. It was so called because it stood on the Piazza of St John; and all dying people in Florence called on St. John for help; and looked, if it might be, to the top of this highest and best-built of towers. The wicked anti-Christian Ghibellines, Nicholas of Pisa helping, cut the side of it "so that the tower might fall on the Baptistery. But as it pleased God, for better reverencing of the blessed St. John, the tower, which was a hundred and eighty feet high, as it was coming down, plainly appeared to eschew the holy church, and turned aside, and fell right across the square; at which all the Florentines marvelled, (pious or impious,) and the people (anti-Ghibelline) were greatly delighted."
101. I have no doubt that this story is apocryphal, not only in its attribution of these religious scruples to the falling tower; but in its accusation of the Ghibellines as having definitely intended the destruction of the Baptistery. It is only modern reformers who feel the absolute need of enforcing their religious opinions in so practical a manner. Such a piece of sacrilege would have been revolting to Farinata; how much more to the group of Florentines whose temper is centrally represented by Dante's, to all of whom their "bel San Giovanni" was dear, at least for its beauty, if not for its sanctity. And Niccola himself was too good a workman to become the instrument of the destruction of so noble a work,—not to insist on the extreme probability that he was also too good an engineer to have had his purpose, if once fixed, thwarted by any tenderness in the conscience of the collapsing tower. The tradition itself probably arose after the rage of the exiled Ghibellines had half consented to the destruction, on political grounds, of Florence itself; but the form it took is of extreme historical value, indicating thus early at least the suspected existence of passions like those of the Cromwellian or Garibaldian soldiery in the Florentine noble; and the distinct character of the Ghibelline party as not only anti-Papal, but profane.
102. Upon the castles, and the persons of their antagonists, however, the pride, or fear, of the Ghibellines had little mercy; and in their day of triumph they provoked against themselves nearly every rational as well as religious person in the commonwealth. They despised too much the force of the newly-risen popular power, founded on economy, sobriety, and common sense; and, alike by impertinence and pillage, increased the irritation of the civil body; until, as aforesaid, on the 20th October, 1250, all the rich burgesses of Florence took arms; met in the square before the church of Santa Croce, ("where," says Sismondi, "the republic of the dead is still assembled today,") thence traversed the city to the palace of the Ghibelline podesta; forced him to resign; named Uberto of Lucca in his place, under the title of Captain of the People; divided themselves into twenty companies, each, in its own district of the city, having its captain {1} and standard; and elected a council of twelve ancients, constituting a seniory or signoria, to deliberate on and direct public affairs.
{Footnote 1: 'Corporal,' literally'.}