In pursuance of this view, the party of the Raspanti, at the suggestion of the Visconti, in 1357, began to disturb the Florentines in the enjoyment of the franchises secured to them at Pisa by the treaty of peace. The Florentines, guessing the project of the Lombard tyrant, instead of defending their right by arms, resolved on braving an unwholesome climate, and submitting to the inconvenience of longer and worse roads, transported all their counting-houses to Telamone, a port in the Maremma of Siena. They persisted till 1361 in despising all the insults of the Pisans, as well as in rejecting all their offers of reconciliation; at length, animosity increasing on both sides, the war broke out, in 1362. The Visconti supplied the Pisans with soldiers. France during this period had been laid waste by the war with the English; and as the sovereigns were rarely in a state to pay their troops, there had been formed, as in Italy, companies of adventurers, English, Gascon, and French, who lived at the cost of the country, plundering it with the utmost barbarity. The Peace of Bretigny permitted several of these companies to pass into Italy; they carried with them the plague, which made not less ravages in 1361 than it had done in 1348. The English company commanded by John Hawkwood, an adventurer, who rendered himself celebrated in Italy was sent to the Pisans by Barnabò Visconti. After various successes, the two republics, at last exhausted by the plague and by the rapacity and want of discipline of the adventurers whom they had taken into pay, made peace on the 17th of August, 1364. But the purpose of the Visconti was not the less attained. The Pisans, having exhausted their resources, were at a loss to make the last payment of thirty thousand florins to their army; they were reduced to accept the offer made them by Giovanni Agnello, one of their fellow-citizens, of advancing that sum, on condition of being named doge of Pisa. The money had for this purpose been secretly advanced by Barnabò Visconti, to whom Agnello had pledged his word never to consider himself more than his lieutenant at Pisa. Thus the field fertilised by liberty became continually more circumscribed; and Florence, always threatened by the tyrants of Lombardy, saw around her those only who had alienated their liberty, and who had no longer any sentiment in common with the republic.
[1364-1367 A.D.]
The chief magistrates of the Florentine Republic could not conceal from themselves the danger which now menaced the liberty of Italy. They found themselves closed in, blockaded as it were, by the tyrants, who daily made some new progress. The two brothers Visconti, masters of Lombardy, had at their disposal immense wealth and numerous armies; and their ambition was insatiable. They were allied, by marriage, to the two houses of France and England; their intrigues extended throughout Italy, and every tyrant was under their protection. At the same time, their own subjects trembled under frightful cruelties. They shamelessly published an edict, by which the execution of state criminals was prolonged to the period of forty days. In it the particular tortures to be inflicted, day by day, were detailed, and the members to be mutilated designated, before death was reached. On the other hand, their finances were in good order; they liberally recompensed their partisans, and won over traitors in every state inimical to them. They pensioned the captain of every company of adventurers, on condition that he engaged to return to their service whenever called upon. Meanwhile these captains with their soldiers overran, plundered, and exhausted Italy during the intervals of peace; reducing the country to such a state as to be incapable of resisting any new attack. All the Ghibellines, all the nobles who had preserved their independence in the Apennines, were allied to the Visconti. The march of these usurpers was slow, but it seemed sure. The moment was foreseen to approach when Tuscany would be theirs, as well as Lombardy; particularly as Florence had no aid to expect either from Genoa or Venice. These two maritime republics appeared to have withdrawn themselves from Italy, and to place their whole existence in distant regions explored by their commerce.
A Florentine, Fourteenth Century
For a moment, the few Italian states still free were led to believe that the succour now so necessary to enable them to resist the Visconti would arrive both from France and Germany. The pope and the emperor announced their determination to deliver the country, over which they assumed a supreme right, from every other yoke. Urban V, moved by the complaints of the Christian world, declared that his duty as bishop of Rome was to return and live there; and Charles IV protested that he would deliver his Roman Empire from the devastations of the adventurers, and from the usurpations of the Lombard tyrants. In 1367, Urban returned to Italy; and the same year formed a league with the emperor, the king of Hungary, the lords of Padua, Ferrara, and Mantua, and with the queen of Naples, against the Visconti. But when Charles entered Italy, on the 5th of May, 1368, he thought only of profiting by the terror with which he inspired the Visconti, to obtain from them large sums of money; in return for which he granted them peace. He afterwards continued his march through the peninsula, with no other object than that of collecting money.
[1367-1370 A.D.]
His presence, however, caused some changes favourable to liberty. A festival was prepared for him at Lucca, on the 7th of September; on which day he intended confirming, by his investiture, the sovereignty of the doge Giovanni Agnello over Pisa and Lucca. But the stage on which Agnello had mounted gave way, and in the fall he broke his leg. The Pisans profited by this accident to recover their freedom, and the emperor kept Lucca for himself. At Siena he favoured a revolution which overthrew the ruling aristocracy; intending, on his return to that city, after a devotional visit to Rome, to take advantage of the disturbance, and get himself appointed to the signoria; but a sedition against him broke forth on the 18th of January, 1369. Barricades were raised on all sides; his guards were separated from him, and disarmed; his palace was broken into. No attempt, indeed, was made on his person; but he was left alone several hours in the public square, addressing himself in turn to the armed troops which closed the entrance of every street, and which, immovable and silent, remained insensible to all his entreaties. It was not till he began to suffer from hunger that his equipages were restored to him, and he was permitted to leave the town. He returned to Lucca, where he had already lived, in the time of his father, as prince royal of Bohemia. The Lucchese were attached to him, and placed in him their last hope to be delivered from a foreign yoke, which had weighed upon them since the year 1314. They declared themselves ready to make the greatest sacrifices for the recovery of their freedom; and they at the same time testified to him so much confidence and affection as to touch his heart. By a diploma, on the 6th of April, 1369, Charles restored them to liberty, and granted them various privileges; but, on quitting their city, he left in it a German garrison, with orders not to evacuate that town till the Lucchese had paid the price of their liberty. It was not till the month of April, 1370, and not without the aid of Florence and their other allies, that they could acquit the enormous sum of three hundred thousand florins, the price of the re-establishment of their republic. The Guelf exiles were then immediately recalled; a close alliance was contracted with Florence; and the signoria, composed of a gonfalonier and ten anziani, to be changed every two months, was reconstituted.
Urban V, on his arrival in Italy, endeavoured also to oppose the usurpations of the Visconti, who had just taken possession of San Miniato, in Tuscany, and who, even in the states of the church, were rendering themselves more powerful than the pope himself. Of the two brothers, Barnabò Visconti was more troublesome to him, by his intrigues. Urban had recourse to a bull of excommunication, and sent two legates to bear it to him; but Barnabò forced these two legates to eat, in his presence, the parchment on which the bull was written, together with the leaden seals and silken strings. The pope, frightened at the thought of combating men who seemed to hold religion in no respect, and wearied, moreover, with his ill-success, was glad to return to the repose of Avignon, where he arrived in the month of September, 1370, and died the November following.