she fell into the power of Duke Charles of Durazzo, in his expedition against Queen Johanna. Four years later the town was taken by the French army under Duke Louis of Anjou, marching to the assistance of the queen; and the commander, Enguerraud de Coney, sold it four years afterwards to the Florentines for 50,000 gold florins. But there were other political connections beside that of subjection. The Accomandigia, or assumption of a protectorate, was an act, more or less solemn, by which a possession, either of the Church or the commune, was recommended to protection, that might extend to the person of the possessor, who was then called _Raccomandato_. It was a very old connection, which united Florence with other communes, as for instance with Siena. As in the earliest times of the commonwealth, the distinguished family of the Buondelmonti recommended their castle, Montebuoni, to the Florentine bishop for protection, so did numerous and powerful lords of the commune recommend themselves afterwards. A kind of homage was always combined with the Accomandigia; it usually consisted of a pallium or banner of brocade or gold and silver cloth, presented on St. John’s day. Those recommended for protection promised to be friendly to the commune, to assist it at its summons in its feuds, to share friendship and enmity with it, to grant free passage through their territories, not to hinder the transport of provisions and merchandise, and to grant refuge to none who had been banished by the commune. The commune, on the other hand, allowed the _Raccomandati_ law of arms on their own territory, promised defence or compensation for loss, and empowered the planting of the Florentine banner on their castles. The second half of the fourteenth century and the first of the following were exceedingly rich in such Accomandigie, because the smaller landowners felt themselves more and more weakened and threatened in their independence, in consequence of the great diminution of the number of independent communes, and thereby the accession of power to those still remaining, as Florence, Siena, and Lucca. Florence had begun by drawing the nobles in the nearer vicinity of the Arno valley into such a connection with herself, and also to absorb the smaller communes. Then the Accomandigia expanded more and more, till all the great noble families, so to say, for the most part originally free, imperial and Ghibellines, had lost their independence in the higher sense of the word. At last the turn came to others, even distant, where the relation of protection was essentially altered, as with the Grimaldi of Monaco, the Genoese Campofregoso, the Appiani of Piombino, the Marchese of Monte Sta. Maria, the numerous Malaspine, who resided at their imperial fiefs in the Lunigiana, but naturally looked more to Florence and Genoa, to the Visconti and the Esti, than to the empire. Even Roman barons entered into connections of this kind.