[1390-1391 A.D.]
The extensive commerce of the Florentines had accustomed them to include all Europe in their negotiations; and, as they liberally applied their wealth to the defence of their liberty, they easily found allies abroad. After having called the duke of Bavaria from Germany, in 1390, they, in the year following sent to France for the count d’Armagnac with a formidable army; but the Germans as well as the French found, with astonishment, that they could no longer cope with the new Italian militia, which had substituted military science for the routine of the transalpine soldier. Armagnac was vanquished and taken prisoner, on the 25th of July, 1391, by Jacopo del Verme, and died a few days afterwards. John Hawkwood, who, in the hope of joining him, had advanced far into Lombardy with the Florentine army, was placed in the most imminent peril.[e] He was in the heart of an enemy’s country; before him were the whole forces of Milan, victorious and now far superior in numbers, which approached to overpower him, and, in his rear, were three great rivers which he could not hope to pass with impunity in their presence. But the confidence which he felt in the resources of his own genius in no degree abandoned him. After remaining inactive behind his entrenchments, as if paralysed by terror, until the Milanese, their temerity and carelessness increasing as he tamely received their insults, were thrown off their guard, he suddenly fell upon them with so much impetuosity that he routed them and captured twelve hundred horse. Having thus gained his object of inspiring his enemy with respect, and deterring him from too close a pursuit, Hawkwood commenced a masterly retreat, and had repassed both the Oglio and Mincio before a single trooper of Gian Galeazzo dared appear on their banks.
But he had yet the rapid Adige to cross, and the difficulty was the greater as the enemy had already fortified themselves on the dykes, which confine the waters of that river to its bed. The Lombard plains are almost everywhere on a lower level than that of the streams which intersect them, and are only preserved from continual inundations by artificial embankments, between which the impetuous torrents that descend from the melting of Alpine snows are securely conducted to the sea. But when these dykes are burst or cut, the adjacent plains are at once flooded. Hawkwood, on reaching the range of low land which is known as the Veronese valley, found the Adige, the Po, and the Polesino before him on the north, the south, and the west, and Jacopo del Verme hanging on his rear; and in this situation the enemy suddenly cut the dykes of the Adige, and let the river loose from its bed upon him. The lower ground about the Florentine camp was at once inundated. As far as the eye could stretch, the country, in every direction but one, was converted into a vast lake of hourly increasing depth; the waters even menaced the rising spot on which the army lay; provisions began to fail; and Jacopo del Verme, his whole force guarding the only outlet, sent by a trumpet a fox enclosed in a cage to the English captain. Hawkwood received the taunting present with dry composure, and bade the messenger tell his general that his fox appeared nothing sad, and doubtless knew by what door he would quit his cage.
[1391-1402 A.D.]
A leader of less courageous enterprise and skilful resource than Hawkwood might have despaired of bursting from the toils; but the wily veteran knew both how to inspire his troops with unlimited confidence in his guidance, and to avail himself of their devotion. Leaving his tents standing, he silently and boldly led his cavalry before daylight into the inundated plain towards the Adige; and, with the waters already at the horses’ girths, marched the whole of the same day and the following night beside the dykes of that river, until he found a spot where its bed had been left dry by the escape of the waters; and crossing it at length gave repose to his wearied troops on the Paduan frontiers. Part of his infantry had perished, and he had lost many men and horses in the mud, and in canals and ditches—the danger of which could not be distinguished amidst the general inundation; but the army of the league was saved, and Jacopo del Verme dared not pursue its hazardous retreat.[i]
After this campaign, the republic, feeling the want of repose, made peace with Galeazzo, on the 28th of January, 1392, well knowing that it could place no trust in him, and that this treaty was no security against his intrigues and treachery.
These expectations were not belied; for one plot followed another in rapid succession. The Florentines about this time reckoned on the friendship of the Pisans, who had placed at the head of their republic Pietro Gambacorta, a rich merchant, formerly an exile at Florence, and warmly attached to peace and liberty; but he was old, and had for his secretary Jacopo Appiano, the friend of his childhood, who was nearly of his own age. Yet Galeazzo found means to seduce the secretary; he instigated him to the assassination of Gambacorta and his children, on the 21st of October, 1392. Appiano, seconded by the satellites furnished him by the duke of Milan, made himself master of Pisa; but after his death his son, who could with difficulty maintain himself there, sold the city to Gian Galeazzo, in the month of February, 1399, reserving only the principality of Piombino, which he transmitted to his descendants. At Perugia, Pandolfo Baglione, chief of the noble and Ghibelline party, had, in 1390, put himself under the protection of Gian Galeazzo, who aided him in changing the limited authority conferred on him into a tyranny; but three years afterwards he was assassinated, and the republic of Perugia, distracted by the convulsions of opposing factions, was compelled to yield itself up to Gian Galeazzo, on the 21st of January, 1400.
The Germans observed with jealousy the continually increasing greatness of Visconti, which appeared to them to annihilate the rights of the empire, and dry up the sources of tribute, on a partition of which they always reckoned. They pressed Wenceslaus to make war on Gian Galeazzo. But that indolent and sensual monarch, after some threats, gave it to be understood that for money he would willingly sanction the usurpations of Gian Galeazzo; and, in fact, on the 1st of May, 1395, he granted him, for the sum of 100,000 florins, a diploma which installed him duke of Milan and count of Pavia, comprehending in this investiture twenty-six cities and their territory, as far as the Lagune of Venice. These were the same cities which, more than three centuries before, had signed the glorious league of Lombardy. The duchy of Milan, according to the imperial bull, was to pass solely to the legitimate male heir of Gian Galeazzo. This concession of Wenceslaus caused great discontent in Germany; it was one of the grievances for which the diet of the empire, on the 20th of August, 1400, deposed the emperor, and appointed Robert elector palatine in his stead. Robert concluded a treaty of subsidy with the Florentines, or rather entered into their pay, to oppose Gian Galeazzo; but when, on the 21st of October, 1401, he met the Milanese troops, commanded by Jacopo del Verme, not far from Brescia, he experienced, to his surprise and discomfiture, how much the German cavalry were inferior to the Italian. He was saved from a complete defeat only by Jacopo da Carrara, who led a body of Italian cavalry to his aid. Robert found it necessary to retreat, with disgrace, into Germany, after having received from the Florentines an immense sum of money.
Gian Galeazzo Visconti continued his course of usurpation. In 1397, he attacked, at the same time, Francesco da Gonzaga at Mantua, and the Florentines, without any previous declaration of war. After having ravaged Tuscany and the Mantuan territory, he consented, on the 11th of May, 1398, to sign, under the guarantee of Venice, a truce of ten years, during which period he was to undertake nothing against Tuscany. That, however, did not prevent him, in 1399, from taking under his protection the counts of Poppi and Ubertini, in the Apennines; or from engaging the republic of Siena to surrender itself to him, on the 11th of November in the same year.[e]