But all efforts were useless. The Salvucci and the Ardinghelli would have no dealings with each other, "and they kept all the town in gloom." Each house longed to be avenged on the other and opposed the other at every turn. At length the Ardinghelli, being poorer and weaker than the Salvucci, decided to anticipate their enemies and to urge the people to make a complete and perpetual surrender to the Commune of Florence. In spite of the protests of the Salvucci, this was decided in a general Parliament in July, 1353. The Salvucci had potent friends in Florence, whom they stirred up to get the submission rejected, on the grounds that it was not the will of the people of San Gimignano themselves, but the work of a faction. The Signoria declared that they "only desired the love and the goodwill of all the Commune, and not the lordship of that town in division of the people." Then two hundred and fifty of the chief men of San Gimignano appeared before the Priors and Gonfaloniere of Florence, assuring them that it was the will of all their people, whose only hope of salvation lay in being accepted by the Florentines. Hearing this, the Signoria formally proposed to the Council of the People of Florence that the surrender should be accepted; but such was still the influence of the Salvucci that it was barely carried. "That which every one should have desired, as a great and honourable acquisition for his native land," says Matteo Villani, "found so many opposed to it in the secret balloting, that it was only carried by one black bean. I am ashamed to have written it, so infamous was it of my fellow citizens. The motion being carried, the _terra_ of the noble castle of San Gimignano and its contado and district became part of the contado of the Commune of Florence."[185] [Illustration: _Lombardi, Siena_ IN THE TOWN OF THE FAIR TOWERS]