Brigandage, though this was certainly a curse of the first magnitude to Central and Southern Italy, cannot be paralleled, either for the miseries it inflicted, or for the ferocity it stimulated, with the municipal warfare of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In those internecine struggles whole cities disappeared, and fertile districts were periodically abandoned to wolves. The bands of an Alfonso Piccolomini or a Sciarra Colonna plundered villages, exacted black mail, and held prisoners for ransom.[231] But their barbarities were insignificant, when compared with those commonly perpetrated by wandering companies of adventure before the days of Alberigo da Barbiano; nor did brigands cost Italy so much as the mercenary troops, which, after the Condottiere system had been developed, became a permanent drain upon the resources of the country. The raids of Tunisian and Algerian Corsairs were more seriously mischievous; since the whole sea-board from Nice to Reggio lay open to the ravages of such incarnate fiends as Barbarossa and Dragut, while the Adriatic was infested by Uscocchi, and the natives of the Regno not unfrequently turned pirates in emulation of their persecutors.[232] [Footnote 231: See Mutinelli, _Storia Arcana_, vol. ii. p. 167, for the pillage of Lucera by Pacchiarotto.] [Footnote 232: Sarpi's _History of the Uscocchi_ may be consulted for this singular episode in the Iliad of human savagery. See Mutinelli, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 182, on the case of the son and heir of the Duke of Termoli joining them; and _ibid._ p. 180 on the existence of pirates at Capri.] Yet even these injuries may be reckoned light, when we consider what Italy had suffered between 1494 and 1527 from French, Spanish, German and Swiss troops in combat on her soil. The pestilences of the Middle Ages notably the Black Death of 1348, of which Boccaccio has left an immortal description, exceeded in virulence those which depopulated Italian cities during the period of my history. But plagues continued to be frequent; and some of these are so memorable that they require to be particularly noticed. At Venice in 1575-77, a total of about 50,000 persons perished; and in 1630-31, 46,490 were carried off within a space of sixteen months in the city, while the number of those who died at large in the lagoons amounted to 94,235.[233] On these two occasions the Venetians commemorated their deliverance by the erection of the Redentore and S. Maria della Salute, churches which now form principal ornaments of the Giudecca and the Grand Canal. Milan was devastated at the same periods by plagues, of which we have detailed accounts in the dispatches of resident Venetian envoys.[234] The mortality in the second of these visitations was terrible. Before September 1629, fourteen thousand had succumbed; between May and August 1630, forty-five thousand victims had been added to the tale.[235]