The Italians, justly disgusted with their own princes, eagerly offered to throw themselves into his arms; the city of Brescia sent deputies to Trent, to offer John the sovereignty of their republic. He arrived there, to take possession of it, on the 31st of December, 1330. Almost immediately after, Bergamo, Cremona, Pavia, Vercelli, and Novara followed the example of Brescia. Azzo Visconti himself, son of Galeazzo, who, in 1328, had repurchased Milan from Ludwig of Bavaria, could not withstand the enthusiasm of his subjects; he nominally ceded the government to John, taking henceforth the title of his vicar only. Parma, Modena, Reggio, and lastly Lucca also soon gave themselves to John of Bohemia. John, in all these cities, recalled indiscriminately the Guelf and Ghibelline exiles, restored peace, and made them at last taste the first-fruits of good government.
The Florentines did not find sufficient strength in the Guelf party to oppose the menacing greatness of the king of Bohemia. Robert of Naples was become old; he wanted energy, and his soldiers courage. The republic of Bologna, formerly so rich and powerful, had lost its vigour under the government of the legate, Bertrand de Poiet; those of Perugia and Siena had within themselves few resources, and those few their jealousy of Florence prevented their liberally employing. There remained no free cities in Lombardy; and all those in the states of the church, which during the preceding century had shown so much spirit, had fallen under the yoke of some petty tyrant, who immediately declared for the Ghibelline party. The Florentines felt the necessity of silencing their hereditary enmities and their ancient repugnances, and of making an alliance with the Lombard Ghibellines against John of Bohemia, with the condition that in dividing his spoils they should all agree to prevent the aggrandisement of any single power, and preserve between themselves an exact equilibrium, in order that Italy after their conquests should incur no danger of being subjugated by one of them. The treaty of alliance against the king of Bohemia, and the partition of the states which he had just acquired in Italy, was signed in the month of September, 1332. Cremona was to be given to Visconti; Parma to Mastino della Scala, the nephew and successor of Can’ Grande; Reggio to Gonzaga; Modena to the marquis d’Este; and Lucca to the Florentines.
John did not oppose to this league the resistance that was expected from his courage and talents. Of an inconstant character, becoming weary of everything, always pursuing something new, thinking only of shining in courts and tournaments, he soon regarded all these little Italian principalities, of which he had already lost some, as too citizen-like and unlordly: he sold every town which had given itself to him, to whatever noble desired to rule over it; and he departed for Paris on the 15th of October, 1333, leaving Italy in still greater confusion than before. The Lombard Ghibellines, confederates of the Florentines, succeeded, before the end of the summer of 1335, in taking possession of the cities abandoned by the king of Bohemia. Lucca, which alone fell to the share of Florence, was defended by a band of German soldiers, who made it the centre of their depredations, and barbarously tyrannised over the Lucchese. Mastino della Scala offered to treat for the Florentines with the captains who then commanded at Lucca, and he succeeded in obtaining the surrender of the town to him, on the 20th of December, 1335. As soon as he became master of it he began to flatter himself that it would afford him the means of subjugating the rest of Tuscany; and, instead of delivering it as he had engaged to the Florentines, he sought to renew against them a Ghibelline league jointly with the Pisans and all the independent nobles of the Apennines.
LUCCA A BONE OF CONTENTION
A Florentine Well Head, Fourteenth Century
[1334-1342 A.D.]
The Florentines, forced to defend themselves against their ally, who after they had contributed to his elevation betrayed them, sought the alliance of the Venetians, who also had reason to complain of Mastino. A treaty was signed between the two republics on the 21st of June, 1336. The war, to which Florence liberally contributed in money, was made only in Lombardy and was successful. Padua was taken from Mastino on the 3rd of August, 1337, and, as that town showed no ardent desire of liberty, it was given in sovereignty to the Guelf house of Carrara. The Venetians took possession of Treviso, Castelfranco, and Ceneda. It was the first acquisition they had made beyond the Lagune, their first establishment on terra firma, which henceforward was to mingle their interests with those of the rest of Italy. But their ambition at this moment extended no further. Satisfied themselves, and sacrificing their allies, they made peace with Mastino della Scala on the 18th of December, 1338, without stipulating that the city of Lucca, the object of the war, should be given up to the Florentines, for which these had contracted a debt of 450,000 florins. The Florentines, successively betrayed by all their allies, saw the danger of their position augment daily; the Guelfs lost, one after the other, every supporter of their party; the vigour of the king of Naples, now seventy-five years of age, was gone. The pope, John XXII, had died at Avignon, on the 4th of December, 1334; and his successor, Benedict XII, like him a Frenchman, neither understood nor took any part in the affairs of Italy. A few months previous, on the 17th of March, 1334, the cardinal Bertrand de Poiet had been driven by the people from Bologna; and this ambitious legate, no longer supported by the pope his father, had disappeared from the political scene.
But the Bolognese did not long preserve the liberty which they had recovered. One of their citizens, named Taddeo de Pepoli, the richest man in all Italy, had seduced the German guard which they held in pay, and by its aid took possession of the sovereignty of Bologna on the 28th of August, 1337. He then made alliance with the Ghibellines. The number of the free cities on the aid, or at least the sympathy, of which Florence could reckon continually diminished. The Genoese, from the commencement of the century, had consumed their strength in internal wars between the great Guelf and Ghibelline families; as long as they were free, however, the Florentines, without any treaty of alliance, regarded them as friendly; but the long-protracted civil wars had disgusted the people with the government; they rose on the 23rd of September, 1339, and overthrew it, replacing the signoria by a single chief, Boccanera, on whom they conferred the title of doge. It might have been feared that they had only given themselves a tyrant; but the first doge of Genoa was a friend to liberty; and the Genoese people, having imitated Venice in giving themselves a first officer in the state with that title, were not long before they carried the imitation further, by seeking to combine liberty with power vested in a single person. In the meanwhile Mastino della Scala suffered a Parmesan noble to take from him the city of Parma. As from that time he had no further communication with Lucca, he offered to sell it to the Florentines. The bargain was concluded in the month of August, 1341; but it appeared to the Pisans the signal of their own servitude, for it cut off all communication between them and the Ghibellines of Lombardy. They immediately advanced their militia into the Lucchese states, to prevent the Florentines from taking possession of the town; vanquished them in a great battle, on the 2nd of October, 1341, under the walls of Lucca; and, on the 6th of July following, took possession of that city for themselves.[c]
A republic like the Florentine, whose strength depends upon commerce, should take no part in wars which do not affect her. The conquests she can make are always more expensive than the revenues she can derive from them are important, and awaken the jealousy of the neighbouring states, engaging her in fresh broils with them. At the end of a war which had been carried on for the acquisition of Lucca, the republic found herself greatly in debt, without having been able to obtain the city; and the chief source of her riches, commerce, received a terrible shock in the failure of the trading firms of Peruzzi and Bardi. These commercial houses had lent to Edward III, king of England, an immense sum of money. The king was involved in a war with France; but, although he was for the most part conqueror, and had frequently invaded the French provinces, nevertheless the luxury and the magnificence of his court, the incalculable expenses of war, which are burdensome even to conquerors, rendered him unable to satisfy his creditors; and he was obliged to fail in his contracts with these merchants for 1,365,000 florins in gold. Giving money its value in those times we shall find it equivalent to about 7,000,000 sequins [about £3,052,000 or $15,260,000]; and such a sum being lost by the city of Florence, we may easily conceive what injury was done to her commerce. She might, indeed, have been given up for ruined; these temporary mischiefs, however, are easily repaired, when the primary fountains of riches are not exhausted or diverted into another channel, and as these remained untouched in Florence they very soon filled up the momentary deficiency. But this could not have happened at a more unlucky moment than when the public, which draws its revenues from private individuals, was so much in debt. To this evil was added the dearth of provisions; and, what very frequently accompanies it, a pestilential fever whereby, if the old writers have not exaggerated, no less than fifteen thousand persons died that year within the walls of Florence.