Thus victorious he returned in triumph to Lucca, more powerful, more dreaded, and more formidable than before; none of his important enterprises ever failed and Italy had not beheld such a captain for centuries. Lord of Pisa, Lucca, Lunigiana, and much of the eastern Riviera of Genoa, and master of three hundred walled towns, he was either courted or dreaded by every Italian prince from the emperor downwards. But Florence was in terror at his very name; and Galeazzo Visconti the once powerful lord of half Lombardy, who had been released by the emperor in the preceding March at Castruccio’s intercession, now served under his standard as a private individual. Visconti soon after expired at Pescia from the effects of a fever engendered by the labours of the Pistoian siege, and it was fatal to more than him: even Castruccio’s hour drew near; for the same fever, the consequence of his personal fatigues, was rapidly consuming him also. He feared the emperor’s resentment for the usurpation of Pisa and would have made peace with Florence, but was too much mistrusted and therefore failed. The malady increased; he informed those about him that he was going to die and that his death would be the signal for great revolutions; then, taking the necessary precautions to insure his three sons the quiet succession of his three great cities, and charging them to conceal his death until they were secure, he expired on the 3rd of September, 1328, in the forty-seventh year of his age and the twelfth of his rule over Lucca. ESTIMATES OF CASTRUCCIO