both him and the pope as dangerous to their own liberties and
accepted the protection of King Robert of Naples, disregarding
Henry’s summons to submission. In 1312 Henry was crowned
emperor as Henry VII. in Rome, but instead of the universal
ruler and pacifier which he tried to be, he was forced by circumstances
into being merely a German kaiser who tried to subjugate
free Italian communes. He besieged Florence without success,
and died of disease in 1313.
The Pisans, fearing the vengeance of the Guelphs now that Henry was dead, had accepted the lordship of Uguccione della Fagginola, imperial vicar in Genoa. A brave general and an ambitious man, he captured Lucca and defeated the Florentines and their allies from Naples at Montecatini Uguccione della Fagginola and Castruccio Castracani. in 1315, but the following year he lost both Pisa and Lucca and had to fly from Tuscany. A new danger now threatened Florence in the person of Castruccio Castracani degli Antelminelli (q.v.), who made himself lord of Lucca and secured help from Matteo Visconti, lord of Milan, and other Ghibellines of northern Italy. Between 1320 and 1323 he harried the Florentines and defeated them several times, captured Pistoia, devastated their territory up to the walls of the city in spite of assistance from Naples under Raymundo de Cardona and the duke of Calabria (King Robert’s son); never before had Florence been so humiliated, but while Castruccio was preparing to attack Florence he died in 1328. Two months later the duke of Calabria, who had been appointed protector of the city in 1325, died, and further constitutional reforms were made. The former councils were replaced by the consiglio del popolo, consisting of 300 popolani and presided over by the capitano, and the consiglio del comune of 250 members, half of them nobles and half popolani, presided over by the podestà. The priori and other officers were drawn by lot from among the Guelphs over thirty years old who were declared fit for public office by a special board of 98 citizens (1329). The system worked well at first, but abuses soon crept in, and many persons were unjustly excluded from office; trouble being expected in 1335 a captain of the guard was created. But the first one appointed, Jacopo dei Gabrielli of Gubbio, used his dictatorial powers so ruthlessly that at the end of his year of office no successor was chosen.
The Florentines now turned their eyes towards Lucca; they
might have acquired the city immediately after Castruccio’s
death for 80,000 florins, but failed to do so owing to
differences of opinion in the signory; Martino della
Scala, lord of Verona, promised it to them in 1335, but
Attempt to capture Lucca.
broke his word, and although their finances were not
then very flourishing they allied themselves with Venice to make
war on him. They were successful at first, but Venice made a
truce with the Scala independently of the Florentines, and by
the peace of 1339 they only obtained a part of Lucchese territory.
At the same time they purchased from the Tarlati the protectorate
over Arezzo for ten years. But misfortunes fell on the city:
Edward III. of England repudiated the heavy debts contracted
for his wars in France with the Florentine banking houses of
Bardi and Peruzzi (1339), which eventually led to their failure
and to that of many smaller firms, and shook Florentine credit
all over the world; Philip VI. of France extorted large sums
from the Florentine merchants and bankers in his dominions
by accusing them of usury; in 1340 plague and famine wrought
terrible havoc in Florence, and riots again broke out between the
grandi and the popolo, partly on account of the late unsuccessful
wars and the unsatisfactory state of the finances. To put an
The duke
of Athens (1342–43).
end to these disorders, Walter of Brienne, duke of
Athens, was elected “conservator” and captain of
the guard in 1342. An astute, dissolute and ambitious
man, half French and half Levantine, he began his
government by a policy of conciliation and impartial justice
which won him great popularity. But as soon as he thought
the ground was secure he succeeded in getting himself acclaimed
by the populace lord of Florence for life, and on the 8th of
September was carried in triumph to the Palazzo della Signoria.
The podestà and the capitano assenting to this treachery, he
dismissed the gonfaloniere, reduced the priori to a position of
impotence, disarmed the citizens, and soon afterwards accepted
the lordship of Arezzo, Volterra, Colle, San Gimignano and
Pistoia. He increased his bodyguard to 800 men, all Frenchmen,
who behaved with the greatest licence and brutality; by his
oppressive taxes, and his ferocious cruelty towards all who
opposed him, and the unsatisfactory treaties he concluded with
Pisa, he accumulated bitter hatred against his rule. The
grandi were disappointed because he had not crushed the
popolo, and the latter because he had destroyed their liberties
and interfered with the organization of the arti. Many unsuccessful
plots against him were hatched, and having discovered one
that was conducted by Antonio degli Adimari, the duke summoned
the latter to the palace and detained him a prisoner. He also
summoned 300 leading citizens on the pretext of wishing to
consult them, but fearing treachery they refused to come. On
the 26th of July 1343, the citizens rose in arms, demanded the
duke’s abdication, and besieged him in the palace. Help came
to the Florentines from neighbouring cities, the podestà was expelled,
and a balìa or provisional government of 14 was elected.
The duke was forced to set Adimari and his other prisoners free,
and several of his men-at-arms were killed by the populace;
three of his chief henchmen, whom he was obliged to surrender,
were literally torn to pieces, and finally on the 1st of August he
had to resign his lordship. He departed from Florence under a
strong guard a few days later, and the Fourteen cancelled all
his enactments.
The expulsion of the duke of Athens was followed by several measures to humble the grandi still further, while the popolo minuto or artisans began to show signs of discontent at the rule of the merchants, and the populace destroyed the houses of many nobles. As soon as order was New constitution. restored a balìa was appointed to reform the government, in which task it was assisted by the Sienese and Perugian ambassadors and by Simone da Battifolle. The priori were reduced to 8 (2 popolani grassi, 3 mediani and 3 artifici minuti), while the gonfaloniere was to be chosen in turn from each of those classes; the grandi were excluded from the administration, but they were still admitted to the consiglio del comune, the cinque di mercanzia, and other offices pertaining to the commune; the Ordinamenti were maintained but in a somewhat attenuated form, and certain grandi as a favour were declared to be of the popolo. Florence was now a thoroughly democratic and commercial republic, and its whole policy was mainly dominated by commercial considerations: its rivalry with Pisa was due to an ambition to gain secure access to the sea; its strong Guelphism was the outcome of its determination to secure the bank-business of the papacy; and its desire to extend its territory in Tuscany to the necessity for keeping open the land trade routes. Florentine democracy, however, was limited to the walls of the city, for no one of the contado nor any citizen of the subject towns enjoyed political rights, which were reserved for the inhabitants of Florence alone and not by any means for all of them.
Florence was in the 14th century a city of about 100,000 inhabitants, of whom 25,000 could bear arms; there were 110 churches, 39 religious houses; the shops of the arte della lana numbered over 200, producing cloth worth 1,200,000 florins; Florentine bankers and merchants were found Statistics. all over the world, often occupying responsible positions in the service of foreign governments; the revenues of the republic, derived chiefly from the city customs, amounted to some 300,000 florins, whereas its ordinary expenses, exclusive of military matters and public buildings, were barely 40,000. It was already a centre of art and letters and full of fine buildings, pictures and libraries. But now that the grandi were suppressed politically, the lowest classes came into prominence, “adventurers without sense or virtue and of no authority for the most part, who had usurped public offices by illicit and dishonest practices” (Matteo Villani, iv. 69); this paved the way for tyranny.
In 1347 Florence was again stricken with famine, followed the next year by the most terrible plague it had ever experienced, which carried off three-fifths of the population (according to
