The Florentines did not find sufficient strength in the Guelf party to oppose the menacing greatness of the king of Bohemia. Robert of Naples was become old; he wanted energy, and his soldiers courage. The republic of Bologna, formerly so rich and powerful, had lost its vigour under the government of the legate, Bertrand de Poiet; those of Perugia and Siena had within themselves few resources, and those few their jealousy of Florence prevented their liberally employing. There remained no free cities in Lombardy; and all those in the states of the church, which during the preceding century had shown so much spirit, had fallen under the yoke of some petty tyrant, who immediately declared for the Ghibelline party. The Florentines felt the necessity of silencing their hereditary enmities and their ancient repugnances, and of making an alliance with the Lombard Ghibellines against John of Bohemia, with the condition that in dividing his spoils they should all agree to prevent the aggrandisement of any single power, and preserve between themselves an exact equilibrium, in order that Italy after their conquests should incur no danger of being subjugated by one of them. The treaty of alliance against the king of Bohemia, and the partition of the states which he had just acquired in Italy, was signed in the month of September, 1332. Cremona was to be given to Visconti; Parma to Mastino della Scala, the nephew and successor of Can’ Grande; Reggio to Gonzaga; Modena to the marquis d’Este; and Lucca to the Florentines. John did not oppose to this league the resistance that was expected from his courage and talents. Of an inconstant character, becoming weary of everything, always pursuing something new, thinking only of shining in courts and tournaments, he soon regarded all these little Italian principalities, of which he had already lost some, as too citizen-like and unlordly: he sold every town which had given itself to him, to whatever noble desired to rule over it; and he departed for Paris on the 15th of October, 1333, leaving Italy in still greater confusion than before. The Lombard Ghibellines, confederates of the Florentines, succeeded, before the end of the summer of 1335, in taking possession of the cities abandoned by the king of Bohemia. Lucca, which alone fell to the share of Florence, was defended by a band of German soldiers, who made it the centre of their depredations, and barbarously tyrannised over the Lucchese. Mastino della Scala offered to treat for the Florentines with the captains who then commanded at Lucca, and he succeeded in obtaining the surrender of the town to him, on the 20th of December, 1335. As soon as he became master of it he began to flatter himself that it would afford him the means of subjugating the rest of Tuscany; and, instead of delivering it as he had engaged to the Florentines, he sought to renew against them a Ghibelline league jointly with the Pisans and all the independent nobles of the Apennines.