The man appointed by Innocent VI to undertake the difficult task of raising a state on such insecure and insufficient soil was a Spaniard. Don Gil Albornoz was born at Cuenca of illustrious family. Alfonso XI of Aragon procured him the archbishopric of Toledo; he fought the Moors who had invaded Andalusia and directed the siege of Algeciras; but when Peter the Cruel succeeded to the throne he fled from Spain to Avignon, where Clement VI promoted him to be cardinal (1350). This man, cultured, zealous, and with the habits of a knight and of a resolute character, was the friend and adviser of Innocent VI, who finding in him the man fitted to punish the tyrants, sent him as legate to Italy. He wished him to be accompanied by Cola di Rienzi, whom in accordance with the wish of the Romans he liberated from prison, being persuaded, as the pope said when announcing the liberation to the people of Rome, that if he had done evil, he had also done good (September, 1353). Thus Innocent VI combined the strongest and most courageous cardinal of the century with the man of fancies, the skilled politician, the only person who could excite the feeling of the Romans, and to these two men he entrusted the restoration of pontifical authority in Italy.
So Cola di Rienzi, who was the Roman of authority in 1347, being now persuaded of the real state of affairs, had to lower himself to take part in the party struggle; and as he had made himself a Ghibelline at the court of Charles IV at Prague so far as to boast of being the bastard of Henry VII, so he now adhered to the idea of Guelf in the prison of Avignon. The prison of Avignon had not been too hard for him, for although he had been shut up in a tower he had been given a certain amount of liberty, and he had been able to follow his wish of studying the Bible, and the famous histories of Titus Livius, and several other books.
[1353-1354 A.D.]
In Rome, at the beginning of 1353, Bertoldo Orsini and Stefano Colonna were senators, and amid the turbulent vortex of factions they had succeeded in occupying the lordship after the flight of Cerrone. The two senators were not loved, and before long they were hated by the people, who, harassed with want of provisions, rose up in fury on the 15th of February, 1353. Colonna fled to his palace, but Orsini put on his armour and descended the stairway to mount his horse in view of the people. Then braving the populace he advanced until his strength failed him and he was buried under a storm of stones.
The people then took a second tribune, Francesco Baroncelli, a friend of Cola’s, who governed according to his powers, but not with vigour. He was not recognised by the pope, who had different views on the government of the city. The Baroncelli were descended from a civil family, and he was the orator sent to Florence by Cola to announce his elevation to the tribune at the beginning of his reign.
Albornoz and Cola then left Avignon together to put down the tyrants and reorganise Rome. The cardinal Egidio (Gil), as he was called, was in Lombardy in the summer of 1353. Hordes of Tuscans increased the numbers of Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Germans in his following. He went down to Montefiascone which he made the centre of his doings in Romagna. Cola being in the service of the cardinal in the war was against the prefect Da Vico, who retook Viterbo, and other places in the patrimony, and being reinforced he had turned the anarchy of Rome to his own advantage. The resistance was obstinate and it only terminated after a long struggle on the 5th of June, when the prefect surrendered. Whilst Viterbo was fighting, and the tyrants Bernardo Polenta, lord of Ravenna and Cervia, Galeotto Malatesta of Rimini, Francesco Ordelaffi of Forlì were being expelled from Romagna, the Roman people looked once more for salvation from Cola, forgetting his bad government and the little peace he had procured them.
The feeling for Cola revived from the time he was incarcerated in the Avignon prison; and now that he was near Rome with the legate, it increased still more, although it was not the spontaneous, universal acclamation of 1347. Suspected by the Baroncelli of having communication with the prefect, the public aversion towards him increased, until at the end of 1353 rebellion broke out and the poor tribune was expelled and nearly killed.
The Romans devoted themselves to the legate and assisted him in the siege of Viterbo. The war and the negotiations proceeded prosperously for the church. Roman Tuscany, Umbria, and Sabina gradually gave in, and the way was being cleared for Cola to return to the government of Rome. But he had not the necessary money to provide an army of mercenaries, with which to maintain his dominion. The money he had in Perugia was from the two young brothers Moriale (Monreal). Fra Moriale was a gentleman of Provence by birth. The terrible freebooter from 1345 took part in the majority of the Italian wars, fought with Louis of Hungary in the Neapolitan enterprise, and in the neighbourhood of Rome both for and against the prefect Da Vico. Subsequently tired of serving, he formed (1352) a company of his own of fifteen hundred helmeted men and two thousand foot-soldiers, and marched against Malatesta da Rimini, against whom he had fought in the wars of Naples. The successful enterprises increased the company, into which he introduced regulations like those of a regular standing army independent of every state. Pisa, Siena, Arezzo, Florence, and other cities of Tuscany and Romagna had dearly paid the price of immunity from his terrible devastations.
In the July of 1354 he sent his company under the rightful vicar, Count Lando, to fight for the league against the Visconti. Being a citizen of Perugia, he there amassed the treasures extorted by terror or gained by sacking the populations of all Italy. His brothers Arimbaldo, doctor of law, and Brettone, cavaliere di Narbona, lived there; and they with their brother’s permission gave Cola 4,000 florins to collect some followers and to make other necessary provisions.
Fra Moriale, wiser than the brothers, did not believe in the success of the enterprise. “My reason contradicts it,” said he; but he let the money be given whilst preparing “magnificent things” with his mercenaries.