[19] Brother or son of Batu, grandson of Jenghiz Khan.
CHAPTER XI. THE GUILDS AND THE SEIGNIORY IN FLORENCE
[1350-1400 A.D.]
In an earlier chapter we left the affairs of Florence shortly after the time of the great plague in the middle of the fourteenth century. Succeeding chapters have outlined the history of the Neapolitan kingdom, of the Lombard tyrannies, and of the maritime republics, and, in so doing, have necessarily brought us pretty constantly in contact with Florentine affairs. We are now to give more specific attention to the great Tuscan city, with regard to its internal conditions during the last century following the great plague. The central events of this period have to do with the struggles that culminated in the insurrection of the ciompi, and the momentary assumption of power by the masses.
The growing discontent of the workmen gives us an illustration of the old-time conflict between capital and labour. The attempt of the wool manufactures to put themselves on a political equality with the supposedly higher arts was one of those socialistic movements which from time to time have made themselves felt among all European civilised peoples. Nothing comparable to this was ever seen in the old Orient, under despotic governments which subordinated and enslaved the individual; but such uprisings occurred in Rome under the commonwealth, and were only prevented from frequent repetition in imperial Rome by the pauperising ministrations of the paternal government. The violent outbreak of such a movement in Florence evidences the wide prevalence there of the democratic spirit, and the discontent that is the natural accompaniment of conditions making it possible for the individual to better his social state. Again and again in Italy of this period men came up from the masses and acquired the utmost distinction. Where such a defiance of hereditary traditions is possible there must be a state of social unrest; but, on the other hand, it is precisely this state of unrest that makes a great progressive civilisation possible. The present socialistic uprising in Florence did not reach more than a temporary success, so far as the precise ambitions of its promoters were concerned; but, doubtless it contributed their numberless ancillary channels to the augmentation of the great stream of progress that was sweeping humanity forward toward the deep waters of the Renaissance.
While our present concern has to do solely with these internal affairs of Florence, it will be well to bear in mind the external political conditions with which these struggles of the guilds were contemporary, as they have been already outlined in previous chapters. It must be recalled that during all this time of internecine strife Florence was pretty well occupied with external warfares as well. This was the half-century when the tyrants of Milan were making their power secure, and were reaching out with more and more expectant grasp for the lands of influence that might make them supreme in all Italy. Galeazzo Visconti was the enemy of Florence during the early decades of the period, and his son Gian Galeazzo, who succeeded him in 1385—just after the period of the ciompi’s insurrection—terrorised northern Italy throughout the remainder of the century. It was in the wars of these Lombard tyrants that Sir John Hawkwood appeared. First he warred for Visconti; then, lured by the gold of Florence, he turned enemy to his old employer. Opposed to Hawkwood in his later campaigns was that other great leader of mercenaries, Jacopo del Verme, the leader whose famous feat of cutting the dams and flooding the plain about Hawkwood’s army gave the redoubtable Englishman an opportunity to make that famous retreat which is one of the most picturesque incidents of military annals.
Almost precisely contemporary with the insurrection of the ciompi, was the termination of the so-called Babylonish Captivity of the popes at Avignon, an event soon followed by the Great Schism and its attendant dissensions. In the same decade, too, occurred the famous overthrow of the Genoese by Venice in the war of Chioggia. All these events have been treated elsewhere and will be disregarded in the present chapter; but, as has been said, it will be well for the reader to bear in mind these great political upheavals which furnish the setting for the local insurrections in Florence, and which were of necessity closely associated with them in the minds of contemporaries.[a]