Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second EditionHutton, Edward
History
Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition
Hutton, Edward
Art -- Italy -- Florence; Genoa (Italy) -- History; Tuscany (Italy) -- Description and travel
Bernabo Visconti was sending her help for 150,000 florins.[40] The
English were on the way; already over the mountains, Hawkwood and his
White Company were coming to save her; meantime she tried to strike for
herself. Pietro Farnese of the Florentines laid her low, taking one
hundred and fifty prisoners and her general. The English tarried, but a
new ally was already by her side. The Black Death which had brought down
her pride, now fell upon the enemy, both in camp and in their city of
the Lily: and then--the English were come. On the 1st of February 1364,
Hawkwood, with a thousand horse and two thousand foot, drove the
Florentines through the Val di Nievole; he harried them above Vinci and
chased them through Serravalle, crushed them at Castel di Montale, and
scattered them in the valley of Arno. They found their city at last, as
foxes find their holes, and went to earth. There Pisa halted. Before the
gates of Pisa the Florentines for years had struck money: so the Pisans
did before Florence. Nor was this all. Halting there three days, says
the chronicle,[41] "they caused three palii to be run well-nigh to the
gates of Florence. One was on horseback, another was on foot, and the
third was run by loose women (_le feminine mundane_); and they caused
newly-made priests to sing Mass there, and they coined money of divers
kinds of gold and of silver; and on one side thereof was Our Lady, with
Her Son in Her arms; on the other side was the Eagle, with the Lion
beneath its feet.... Thereafter for further dispite they set up a pair
of gallows over against the gate of Florence, and hanged thereon three
asses."
Florence refused to submit. Other Free Companies such as Hawkwood's
joined in the war. The Florentines hired that of the Star. But Hawkwood
was not to be denied. He marched up Arno, devastating the country, and
at last deigned to return to Pisa by Cortona and Siena.
Then Florence did what might have been expected. She bribed Baumgarten,
who with his Germans had fought since the rout with Hawkwood. They met
at the Borgo di Cascina on 28th July. Hawkwood was caught napping, and
Pisa in her turn was humbled. The Florentines returned with two thousand
prisoners, having slain a thousand men. They took with them "forty-two
wagons full of prisoners, all packed together 'like melons,' with a dead
eagle tied by the neck and dragging along the ground."[42] Such was war
in Italy in the fourteenth century.
Then followed the Doge Agnello: the greatness of Pisa was past.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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