Henry VII. in the last struggle before his death had clearly and correctly perceived that the key to the situation was in |Struggle in Tuscany.| Tuscany, that if the Ghibelline cause could triumph in that province the overthrow of the Guelfs might be confidently expected. And not long after his death the desired state of things seemed not unlikely to be realised. One of the most famous adventurers of the age, Castruccio Castracani, who had risen to prominence by his military ability, made himself lord of Lucca and there became a formidable neighbour to Florence. In 1325 he reduced the intermediate town of Pistoia, and defeated the Florentine forces at Altopascio. So terrified were the Florentines that they resolved to sacrifice their independence as the price of safety and the victory of their party. They offered the lordship of the city to Robert of Naples, who accepted it for his only son, Charles of Calabria. The progress of Castruccio was checked, and the appearance of Neapolitan forces in Tuscany impelled the Ghibelline leaders to call in the assistance of Lewis of Bavaria (vide p. [104]). Lewis |Lewis the Bavarian in Italy.| entered Italy in 1327, but his coming brought little real gain to his allies. In Milan he imprisoned his host, Galeazzo Visconti, and restored to the citizens a mockery of republican independence. Pisa, in spite of her Ghibelline traditions, stood a month’s siege before she would open her gates to a prince who might hand her over as a reward to his chief supporter Castruccio Castracani. No attempt was made to attack the Duke of Calabria in Florence, and Lewis hurried on to Rome. There he was crowned emperor. John XXII. was deposed as a heretic, and an Antipope was elected. Castruccio was formally created Duke of Lucca, Pistoia, and Volterra. But the news came that the Florentines had captured Pistoia by stratagem, and Castruccio had to hurry north for the defence of his duchy. He was indignant that Lewis had given the lordship of Pisa to the empress, and in defiance of imperial authority he took measures to secure his own rule in the city. From Pisa he advanced to a successful siege of Pistoia, but he died almost immediately after (September 3, 1328) of a fever contracted in the trenches.
The death of Castruccio and the humiliating failure of Lewis the Bavarian, who was forced to evacuate Rome in the autumn of 1328, deprived the Ghibellines of the advantages which they had secured in the early part of the year. Lucca, which had threatened to subdue both Florence and Pisa, became a prize for which many states and adventurers contended. But the Guelfs did not profit as much as might have been expected from the disasters of their opponents. Charles of Calabria, having served the purpose of the Florentines by saving them from Castruccio, died on November 9, 1328, and Florence recovered her independence. Robert of Naples, profoundly discouraged by the death of his only son, abandoned most of his ambitious projects and ceased to interfere in the politics of northern Italy. Soon afterwards the emperor found it necessary to leave Italy in order to look after his interests in Germany. Before his departure he restored Milan to the rule of Azzo Visconti, the son of the deposed Galeazzo, who had perished, like Castruccio, of a disease contracted during the siege of Pistoia.
The departure of Lewis and the inactivity of the Neapolitan king left the parties in northern Italy to fight out their quarrels without foreign aid. The Ghibellines had lost their short-lived ascendency in Tuscany, but they were still omnipotent on the Lombard plain. By far the most powerful Ghibelline prince at this time was |Power of Mastino della Scala.| Mastino della Scala, who in 1329 had succeeded his uncle Cangrande in the government of Verona. Cangrande, a typical Italian despot in his combination of relentless cruelty with the patronage of letters, had established a strong territorial power in eastern Lombardy. He had forced Marsilio Carrara to govern Padua as his lieutenant, while he had brought into direct submission the towns of Vicenza, Feltre, Belluno, and Treviso, and was thus enabled to control the most important eastern passes through the Alps. Mastino inherited his uncle’s ambition with his territories, and on receiving an appeal for aid from the Ghibelline exiles of Brescia, he eagerly seized the pretext for laying siege to that city. This aggression led to the most interesting and unique instance of foreign intervention in Italy. John of Bohemia |John of Bohemia.| (vide p. [18]) happened to be at the moment on the Italian borders at Trent, negotiating the marriage of his second son with the heiress of Tyrol, Margaret Maultasch (vide p. [107]). He had never taken part in Italian politics, but he enjoyed a brilliant reputation in Europe, and there was much in his position to attract the attention of the Italians. He was known to be on the most intimate terms with the Pope and the French king, both patrons of the Guelf cause. At the same time, as the son of Henry VII., he had strong claims on the allegiance of the Ghibellines. If any man could act as a mediator in the party feuds of Italy, it was the head of the house of Luxemburg.
To King John the besieged Brescians appealed for assistance, and offered in return the sovereignty over the city. |Successes of John in Italy.| The prospect of a new field for adventure was more than John could resist. He ordered levies to be collected in Bohemia, and warned Mastino della Scala to desist from attacking a city which owned his lordship. Mastino obeyed on condition that the Ghibelline exiles should be restored; and this promise, to the great chagrin of the dominant party in Brescia, the king fulfilled. On his entry into the city (December 31, 1330) John announced that he would belong to no party, that his one aim was to restore peace and justice, and that he hoped that before long there would be no more Guelfs and Ghibellines. The immediate effect of such unprecedented language was almost magical. The Italians, exhausted with continual party warfare, welcomed as a protecting angel the prince who promised impartiality. One after another the cities of northern Italy, Bergamo, Cremona, Pavia, Vercelli, and Novara, placed themselves under the rule of John of Bohemia. Even Azzo Visconti, the powerful lord of Milan, found it advisable to acknowledge the suzerainty of the king, and to accept the title of royal vicar. Soon afterwards John’s dominions were extended southwards by the submission of Parma, Reggio, Modena, and the unfortunate Lucca, which had been tossed from hand to hand since the death of Castruccio Castracani. In every case the exiles, of either faction, were allowed to return, and the government was established without any regard to party divisions. For a moment it seemed that the spontaneous action of the Italians themselves might create the monarchy that had so long seemed an impossible dream.
But John’s success was too sudden to be lasting. Party enmities were too deeply rooted to be torn up at the first |Opposition to John.| effort. Men began to ask in whose name had he come; did he represent the Emperor or the Pope? An appeal to these potentates produced only negative answers. John XXII. was indignant with the king for restoring the Ghibelline exiles in Guelf strongholds; Lewis was jealous that a rival should succeed where he had failed. And John had enemies both in Italy and outside. Mastino della Scala felt himself threatened by the rise of a conterminous principality in Lombardy, and Florence was afraid lest a power which extended so far as Lucca might endanger her own independence. In the north the dukes of Austria and the kings of Poland and Hungary formed a league against him, and John had to cross the Alps for the defence of Bohemia. His absence only hastened the destruction of a dominion that rested on too shallow a foundation to endure. If he had succeeded for a moment in uniting Guelfs and Ghibellines under his rule, a still more wonderful union was brought about for his overthrow. In 1332 the strange spectacle was seen of a close league of Florence and Naples with Azzo Visconti, Mastino della Scala, and other Ghibelline princes of the north. Mastino had already succeeded in capturing Brescia, and Azzo had seized upon Bergamo and Vercelli. The rest of John’s possessions were to be partitioned among the allies. Cremona was to go to Visconti, Parma to Mastino, Modena to the house of Este, Reggio to the Gonzagas of Mantua, and Lucca to the Florentines.
John of Bohemia had succeeded in dividing the northern league, and had proceeded to France and Avignon in order to secure the support of Philip VI. and the Pope. He now hurried back to the aid of his son Charles, whom he had left in charge of his Italian dominions. But he found that he had no sufficient native support to |Collapse of his power.| enable him to face the hostile coalition. The two parties whom he had tried to conciliate were now united in opposition. He had few real interests at stake in Italy, whither he had been mainly attracted by the love of adventure. Instead of prosecuting the struggle, he sold his prerogatives in each town to the highest bidder he could find, and quitted Italy with his son in 1333. The episode is interesting as throwing light on the character of John, and on the impulsive character of the Italians, but in an indirect way it was of unforeseen importance. The future emperor, Charles IV., never forgot the experience of Italian politics which he had obtained during the two years in which he acted as his father’s deputy, and one of the dominant influences which shaped his subsequent policy in Germany (see chapter [vi.]), was a desire to save that country from falling into the same condition as Italy.
The chief gainers by the overthrow of John of Bohemia were the Ghibelline leaders of the confederacy against him, |League against Mastino della Scala.| and especially Mastino della Scala, who not only took his own share of the plunder, but refused to give up Lucca, which should have fallen to Florence. It was reckoned by contemporaries that only one European prince, the king of France, drew a larger revenue from his subjects than the lord of Verona. But the rapid growth of his power only served to excite the enmity of his neighbours. Venice was impelled by self-interest to attack a potentate who not only dominated the district from which the republic drew its most available supplies of food, but also commanded the all-important Alpine passes. Florence was eager to punish the ill-faith which withheld from her the coveted possession of Lucca. Marsilio Carrara was tempted by the prospect of recovering the independent lordship of Padua, while Azzo Visconti and the other Lombard despots welcomed the opportunity of destroying the ascendency in Lombardy which for the last decade had been enjoyed by the Scaligers. The result was the formation of a powerful league which Mastino was unable to resist. In 1338 he was forced to conclude a treaty which put an end to the preponderance of Verona in the north. Venice received Treviso, with the adjacent territory, Castelbaldo and Bassano, thus securing a land fertile in corn and cattle, and at the same time access to the foot of the Alps. The Carrara dynasty was established in Padua as a buffer between Venice and the growing power of the Visconti, who seized Brescia and Bergamo. Only Verona and Vicenza remained to the house of Scala.
But the unfortunate Florentines were again duped of the reward which should have attended their alliance with the Ghibelline princes. Lucca was indeed ceded by Mastino for a money payment, but the Pisans intervened to prevent such an addition to the dominions of their rivals. In 1341 the Pisans defeated the forces of Florence, and in the next year they obtained the surrender of Lucca. This disappointment was the last of a series of disasters which weakened and discredited the government of the popolo grasso in Florence (vide p. [32]). In their chagrin the citizens resorted to the expedient, so familiar in the mediæval history of Italy, of intrusting a temporary dictatorship to a foreigner. Their choice fell upon Walter |Walter de Brienne in Florence, 1343.| de Brienne, who had previously been active in Florence as a follower of Charles of Calabria. His ancestors had gained the duchy of Athens at the time when the Fourth Crusade had given to western princes the dominion of the eastern empire, and though his father had been forced to resign in 1312, Walter still called himself Duke of Athens. The temporary military and judicial authority intrusted to the duke failed to satisfy his ambition, and he set himself to establish a permanent despotism in Florence. It was not difficult for him to gain over the grandi and the lower classes, who were jealous of the monopoly of power claimed by the wealthy burgesses. With their aid a parliament was convoked which insisted on voting the signory to the duke for his life. But ten months of arbitrary rule sufficed to disgust the most liberty-loving people in Italy, and the nobles and lesser guilds combined with the greater guilds to overthrow the despotism which had risen through the jealousy of classes. Walter de Brienne ordered his hired horsemen to ‘course the city,’ i.e. to gallop along the principal streets and disperse the insurgents. But the citizens had erected barricades to bar the progress of the cavalry, and the duke, besieged in the Palazzo Vecchio, was compelled to abdicate. His fall was followed by concessions to the grandi who had taken an active part in the struggle. The Ordinances of Justice |Constitutional changes.| (vide p. [32]) were repealed, and the office of gonfalonier, whose original function was to enforce the ordinances, was abolished. The government was to be intrusted to twelve priors, three from each quarter of the city; and of these three, one was to be a noble and two burghers. Other offices were also thrown open to the nobles. But the old jealousy of the grandi was too deeply seated to allow this arrangement to be permanent. A rising of the mob forced the four noble priors to quit the palazzo. The nobles took up arms to defend their cause, but the civil strife was fatal to the power of their whole class. The ordinances, and with them the office of gonfalonier, were revived, and the only permanent result of the crisis was the extension of political privileges to the popolo minuto, or members of the lesser guilds. The number of priors was fixed at eight, two from each quarter, and half the number were to belong to the lesser guilds. The gonfalonier was to be chosen alternately from the two classes of citizens. But while the exclusion of the noble class from office was rendered permanent, some five hundred members of that class were freed from its disabilities by being disennobled and ‘raised’ to the rank of ordinary burghers.
The martial spirit which enabled the Florentines to defeat the schemes of the Duke of Athens, was by no means common in Italy at the time, and did not endure long even in Florence. The fourteenth century witnessed a change in the military system of |Rise of Mercenaries in Italy.| Italy which was destined to exercise the most vital and lasting effects upon the history of the peninsula. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the military force of each state had consisted of the male population of the state organised as a militia. The central rallying-point of the army was the carroccio or city standard, and the regiments were arranged according to local divisions, or sometimes according to the guild organisation of the city. Such a force was the firmest security for the maintenance of political liberty. But when despots began to overthrow republican independence in most of the communes, their first aim was to disarm their subjects, and to procure troops who had no natural sympathy with the native population. The example was set by Frederick II., whose government of his southern kingdom furnished in many ways a model for the imitation of later rulers. In his struggle with the Popes he incurred great odium by taking Saracens into his pay. The northern despots tried to secure their power by enlisting foreign soldiers under their standard. Each of the successive invasions of Henry VII., Lewis the Bavarian, and John of Bohemia, left behind a number of German adventurers who were willing to take Italian pay. These men were formed into body-guards by the Visconti and other Italian despots, who were thus enabled to disarm their subjects, and to trample on their liberties. And the republics which retained their independence soon found it necessary to follow the example of the princes. The mercenary troops were for the most part heavy-armed cavalry, and the civic infantry were no match for them in the open field. The republics would only have courted destruction by continuing to employ a force which was inadequate for their defence. Moreover, under the altered conditions of warfare, campaigns were much longer than when the struggle was decided by a single contest between the armed populace of two rival cities. The ordinary citizen could no longer afford to sacrifice his time and his business to do work which he might pay others to do for him. It was cheaper to be heavily taxed for the maintenance of a hired force, than to leave the shop or the counting-house for a protracted campaign. The Florentines soon adopted the custom of employing mercenaries, and in 1351 commuted personal service for a money payment. The Venetians, though they employed native crews and native commanders in their fleet, always hired foreigners to fight their battles on land. One result of the change was that infantry was wholly superseded by heavy-armed cavalry, until the general use of gunpowder, and the intervention of the great powers in Italy, brought about another great change in the art of war.
At first the mercenary troops in Italy were employed as the body-guard of a tyrant, or as the standing army of a republic. But as the leaders of these forces became conscious |Foreign Condottieri.| of their power, they began to form independent armies, which might live at the expense of the unwarlike natives, or might acquire wealth by letting out their services to the highest bidder. The first notable instance of such an army was in 1343, when a German, Werner, or, as the Italians called him, Guarnieri, formed the Great Company. He levied contributions on the states which he entered with his forces, and only occasionally took part in the Italian wars. The same company, or another with the same name, appears in 1353 under the command of Fra Moreale, who was afterwards put to death by Rienzi. When the treaty of Bretigny put an end for a time to the English wars in France, a new flood of foreign adventurers poured into Italy, where they formed the White Company under the famous Englishman, John Hawkwood or Giovanni Acuto. He was distinguished among condottieri for the fidelity with which he performed his contracts, and the Florentines expressed their sense of his services by giving him a tomb and a monument in the Duomo.