These nobles, who had usurped the sovereignty of their country, were at this time engaged in a quarrel with the legate, Gil Albornoz, who asserted that Bologna belonged to the holy see. The archbishop was already treated by the pope as an enemy, and preferred exciting still further his wrath, to the renunciation of so important an acquisition. When Clement VI summoned him to come and justify himself at the court of Avignon, he answered that he would present himself there at the head of twelve thousand cavalry and six thousand infantry. The pope, in his alarm, ceded to him the fief of Bologna, on the 5th of May, 1352, on condition of receiving from him an annual tribute of 12,000 florins. Florence saw with terror this city, which had so long been her most powerful and faithful ally, the Guelf city of letters, commerce, and liberty, thus pass under the yoke of a tyrant, who had designs upon her liberty also; who laid snares around her; who formed alliances against her with all the petty tyrants of Romagna, and all the Ghibelline lords of the Apennines. She was at peace with him, it was true; but she well knew that the Visconti neither believed themselves bound by any treaty, nor kept any pledge.
The number of free cities continually diminished. Pisa was still free, but had, from attachment to the Ghibelline party, made alliance with the Visconti. Siena and Perugia were free also, but weak and jealous; they were incessantly disturbed by internal dissensions. The Florentines could not reckon on them. The archbishop of Milan suddenly ordered, towards the end of the summer, 1351, Giovanni Visconti da Oleggio, his lieutenant at Bologna, to push into Tuscany at the head of a formidable army, without any declaration of war. The republic had no ally, and but slight reliance on the mercenaries in its service; but the Florentines, who showed little bravery in the open field, defended themselves obstinately behind walls; and the great village of Scarperia, in the Mugello, although so ill fortified that the walls of many of the houses served instead of a surrounding wall, and having a garrison only of two hundred cuirassiers and three hundred infantry, stopped the Milanese general sixty-one days. He was at last obliged, on the 16th of October, to retire to Bologna.
[1351-1356 A.D.]
The republics of Venice and Genoa were, it might have been thought, the natural allies to whom the Florentines should have had recourse for their common defence. Their interests were the same; and the Visconti had resolved not to suffer any free state to subsist in Italy, lest their subjects should learn that there was a better government than their own. Unhappily, these two republics, irritated by commercial quarrels in the East, were then engaged in an obstinate war with each other.
Genoa had sacrificed her liberty to her thirst of vengeance; for although the republic had not conferred the signoria on the archbishop Visconti without imposing conditions, it soon experienced that oaths are not binding on a prelate and a tyrant. The freedom of Venice also was in the utmost danger from the consequences of the same war.
Though the war of the maritime republics might have deprived Florence of the aid of Venice or Genoa, it had at least diverted the attention of Giovanni Visconti, made him direct his exertions elsewhere, and procured some repose to Tuscany. He died on the 5th of October, 1354, before he could renew his attacks; and his three nephews, the sons of his brother Stephen, agreed to succeed him in common. The eldest, who showed less talent for government and more sensuality and vice than his brothers, was poisoned by them the year following. The two survivors, Barnabò and Galeazzo, divided Lombardy between them, preserving an equal right on Milan and in the government. Their relative, Visconti da’ Oleggio, who was their lieutenant at Bologna, made himself independent in that city nearly about the same time that the Genoese, indignant at seeing all their conventions violated, rose in insurrection on the 15th of November, 1356, drove out the Milanese garrison, and again set themselves free.
Charles IV in Italy
The entry of Charles IV into Tuscany formed also a favourable diversion, by suspending the projects of the Visconti against the Florentines; but it cost them one hundred thousand florins, which they agreed to pay Charles by treaty on the 12th of March, 1355, to purchase his rights on their city, and to obtain his engagement that he should nowhere enter the Florentine territory. The republics of Pisa and Siena, who received him within their walls, paid still dearer for the hospitality which they granted him. The emperor encouraged the malcontents in both cities; he aided them to overthrow the existing governments; he hoped by so doing to make these republics little principalities, which he intended to bestow as an appanage on his brother, the patriarch of Aquileia; but after having caused the ruin of his partisans, after having ordered or permitted the execution of the former magistrates, who were innocent of any crime, insurrections of the people forced him to quit both cities, without retaining the smallest influence in either. After he had quitted Italy, the Visconti were engaged in the war to which we have already alluded, against the marquises of Este, of Montferrat, Della Scala, Gonzaga, and Carrara. The siege of Pavia and the ravages of the Great Company exhausted their resources, but did not make them abandon their projects on Tuscany. The influence which they retained in the republic of Pisa, as chiefs of the Ghibelline party, seemed to facilitate their schemes.
[1342-1364 A.D.]
Pisa, in losing its maritime power and its possessions in Sardinia, had not lost its warlike character; it was still the state in Italy where the citizens were best exercised in the use of arms, and evinced the most bravery. It had given proofs of it in conquering, under the eye of the Florentines, the city of Lucca, which it still retained. Nevertheless, since the peace made by the duke of Athens on the 14th of October, 1342, commercial interests had reconciled the two republics. The Florentines had obtained a complete enfranchisement from all imposts in the port of Pisa; they had established there their counting-houses, and attracted thither a rich trade. From that time the democratic party predominated in the Pisan Republic; at its head was a rich merchant, named Francesco Gambacorta, who attached himself to the Florentines, and to the maintenance of peace. His party was called that of the Bergolini; while that of the great Ghibelline families attached to the counts of la Gherardesca, who despised commerce and excited war, was called the Raspanti party. The Visconti sought the alliance of the latter; the moment did not appear to them yet arrived in which they could assume to themselves the dominion over all Tuscany. It was sufficient for their present views to exhaust the Florentine Republic by a war, which would disturb its commerce; to weaken the spirit of liberty and energy in the Pisans, by subduing them to the power of the aristocracy, in the hope that when once they had ceased to be free, and had submitted to a domestic tyrant, they would soon prefer a great to a little prince, and throw themselves into his arms. The revolution, which in 1355 had favoured the emperor in restoring power to the Raspanti, facilitated this project.