army sufficient to place the Ghibelline cause in its old position of supremacy; but, alas! instead of the promised army, only one hundred German troopers arrived. The mountain had brought forth a mouse, and things looked gloomy indeed for Siena. In this crisis, however, a leading Florentine exile, Farinata degli Uberti, whom Dante, a few years later, was to immortalize in the pages of the "Inferno," cheered the drooping spirits of the Sienese. He said, "We have the banner of the King; this will suffice to make him send us as many soldiers as we may require, and that without asking for them." The city was at the time closely invested by the Florentines. Uberti gave the unhappy Germans as much wine as they could drink, and, promising them double pay, persuaded them to charge the enemy's lines. This they did, and with incredible fury. The Florentines, taken by surprise, and not knowing what might follow this whirlwind of one hundred German devils, were upon the point of raising the siege. When, however, they perceived the insignificant number of their assailants, they summoned heart of grace, slew the hundred troopers to the very last man, and capturing the royal banner subjected it to every conceivable outrage. This was exactly what the Mephistophelean Uberti desired. Enraged at the dishonour done to his standard, Manfred despatched eight hundred German knights, under his cousin Giordano Lancia di Angalono, to the help of Siena, and with the levies from Pisa the whole of the Ghibelline forces amounted to 9,000 horse and 18,500 foot soldiers. To maintain this host was an enormous tax upon the city of Siena, and in order to employ the army, and if possible to induce the Florentines to give battle, the Sienese commanders laid siege to the neighbouring city of Montalcino. The Florentines were, however, not at all disposed to make easy the plans of their enemies, and obstinately remained within their walls. But the guile of Uberti was more than a match for them. With great secrecy he despatched two monks to the leaders of the people of Florence, to represent that they were the emissaries of the most powerful citizens of Siena, who, finding the tyranny of Provenzano Salvani* and Uberti insupportable, were determined to deliver themselves from it at any cost. The messengers added that when the *This is the Provenzano mentioned by Dante in the eleventh Canto of the "Purgatorio:" Florentines, under pretext of succouring Montalcino, should reach Siena, one of the gates of the city would be opened to them. Unhappily for Florence, her leaders believed the messengers and acted upon their insidious advice. The people of Florence rose in mass, and aid was demanded from the allied Guelphic cities. Bologna, Perugia, and Orvieto sent their contingents. A host of 33,000 warriors gathered around the Carroccio, or sacred car of Florence. The army marched to Monte Aperto, a few miles from Siena, in the full hope and expectation that the city would soon be theirs. Towards sunset on the 3rd September (1260) the Sienese, after publicly invoking the aid of the Virgin, and dedicating their city to her, marched out to meet their enemies, and upon the following day the struggle took place. It was a hard fought and long doubtful battle, and it was by treachery that it was at length decided. Bocca degli Abati, a Ghibelline, who fought in the ranks of the Florentines, struck off, with one blow of his sword, the hand of Jacopo di Pazzi, who bore the standard of the cavalry. Fell panic seized the Florentine riders when they saw their banner fallen, and that there was treachery within their ranks, the extent of which they could not gauge. Each man spurred his horse away from the fatal field, and soon the foot soldiers were involved in one common rout. Then began a butchery which made the Arbia stream run blood. lo strazio e il grande scempio Che fece l'Arbia colorata in rosso. 27 Meanwhile, in the city of Siena, the old men, women, and children, together with the bishop, priests, and monks of all orders, were assembled in the cathedral asking mercy of God. The Twenty-four Signori, who then ruled Siena, posted a watchman on the tower of the Palazzo Marescotti, now the palace of the Saracini, whence the field of battle was distinctly visible. The winding road over hill and dale would make the distance five or six miles; but, as a bird would fly, in a direct line, Monte Aperto is little more than three miles away. Thus, the watchman, a certain Cerreto Ceccolino, could distinctly perceive the movements of the contending armies. Terrible was the anxiety of the crowd of old men, women, and children at the base of the tower as they waited for the report of the combat. At length the watchman strikes his drum, and, in the breathless pause that follows, he cries with a loud voice so that all may hear: "They have reached Monte Selvoli, and are pushing up the hill to secure it as a coign of vantage, and now the Florentines are in motion and they also are trying to gain the hill." Again the drum sounds: "The armies are engaged; pray God for victory." Next the watchman cries, "Pray God for ours; they seem to me to be getting the worst of it." But soon the pain and suspense of the anxious crowd were relieved by the watchman crying, "Now I see that it is the enemy who fall back." And now in all the joy of victory the watchman beats a triumphant march, and informs the anxious ones below that the standards of Florence have all gone down, and that her soldiers are broken and routed, and how cruel a slaughter there is among them. Cruel slaughter, indeed! The Carroccio, or sacred car of Florence, drawn by white oxen, and with the great standard of the city displayed from its lofty flag-staffs, was taken at a place called "Fonte al pino," close to the Arbia. Among its gallant defenders was a Florentine named Tornaquinci, with his seven sons, all of whom were slain. Consternation now fell upon the army of Florence. Many threw down their arms and cried, "We surrender;" but the chronicler adds, grimly, "they were not understood." A few of the bravest from Florence, from Lucca, and from Orvieto flung themselves into the castle of Monte Aperto, and there held out until the leaders of the army of Siena, sated with slaughter, admitted them to quarter.* The chroniclers estimate that ten thousand of the Guelphic host fell on this fatal field, and that almost all the remainder were made prisoners. The misery caused in Florence by the battle is indescribable, and in a very few years a like misery was to fall upon Siena. Monte Aperto was the last decisive victory gained by the Ghibelline Nine years afterwards, in 1269, the Sienese army was routed at Colle, and exactly twenty years after that at Campaldino.† Nothing can be more melancholy than the story of the internecine fratricidal struggles between the cities of Italy, with their constant episodes of treachery and cold-blooded cruelty. cause. The history of the Republic of Siena during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries is a long tale of anarchy and revolution, and of incessant struggles between the different parties in the State. In 1277 a law excluded from the supreme magistracy not only the patricians but the people, and decreed that for the future the government should rest alone in the hands of good "merchants loyally affected to the Guelph cause." This government by the middle classes was called the "Administration of the Nine," and lasted for no less than seventy years. Though hated alike by the aristocracy and the people, this régime proved advantageous to the State. Under it the Palazzo Pubblico was built and the graceful Mangia . January 10, 1883.-Yesterday I had the advantage of driving, with a friend, over the battle-field for a second time. We called at the modern villa of Monte Aperto, where resides Signor Canale, who most courteously pointed out to us the site of the ancient castle of the same name, and showed us exactly where the Florentine host camped on the night before the battle, and where the Carroccio was taken at "Fonte al pino," around which stone pines still raise their lordly heads. Purgatorio" he + Dante himself fought at this battle, and in the fifth canto of the " addresses Buonconte di Montefeltro, mortally wounded on that field :- “. . . • Qual forza o qual ventura Che non si seppe mai tua sepoltura?" Tower rose, while the cathedral was enlarged and beautified and the city grew wealthy with trade. When the "Nine" fell before a combined assault of the aristocracy and the people, the republic seemed to be given over to anarchy: (In four months and a half there were no less than five revolutions.) Yet, strange to say, it was at this very time that architecture and sculpture and painting advanced with wondrous strides. The great Florentine poet told of his awful visions in the exquisitely beautiful language then spoken in Northern Italy, and crystallized into literary form the lovely Tuscan tongue; and against the black background of remorseless feuds, treacherous intrigues, and cruel wars, there stand out, white and spotless, some of the most perfect exemplars of sainthood into which humanity has ever flowered. The Republic of Siena made amends for the turbulence and violence and bitter party spirit it had shown throughout its history by the united and gallant resistance it offered to Cosimo dei Medici, when he determined to add the lordship of Siena to that of Florence in the middle of the sixteenth century. Florence was in 1530 besieged and conquered by the combined arms of the Emperor Charles V. and Pope Clement VII. Siena, yielding to the traditional hatred of many centuries, sent some pieces of artillery into the Imperial camp, and rejoiced greatly at the downfall of her ancient foe. That joy did not last long. Hardly was Florence his, when Charles determined to become possessed of Siena, and this, by fraud and force, he succeeded in a few years in accomplishing. The better to dominate the unruly city, the Spaniards built a powerful fortress. Proud of their long self-government and jealous of their independence, the Sienese felt this to be intolerable. They sent ambassadors to the Emperor to implore him not to affix upon their free city this badge of servitude. The Imperial reply was: "Sic volo, sic jubeo." They sent to Pope Julius III.; they had hope in him, for was not his mother, Christofana Saracini, a daughter of Siena? But Julius cared more for the shameful pleasures to which he was addicted than for the liberty of the country of his forefathers, and replied, "If one castle does not suffice his Imperial Majesty to keep within bounds these hare-brained Sienese, why, let him build two." Rejected on all hands, the Sienese took courage from despair. They secretly conspired, determined to dare everything, and on July 27, 1552, they rose in insurrection against their Spanish masters. For three days a fierce struggle raged throughout the city: every street, every square, every palace, almost every house, was a battle-field. The struggle ended in the triumph of the citizens; the Spaniards were beaten, and the flag of the Republic again waved from the Palazzo Pubblico. The Spaniards, who had retired to the newly-erected fortress, saw themselves compelled to capitulate, and no sooner did the citizens become possessed of it than they proceeded to raze it to the ground. Where this ill-omened castle stood, there is now the garden of the Lizza, a charming little public park, which commands very extensive views of the surrounding country. Thither every evening almost all Siena resorts to breathe fresh air and to see and be seen. To go back three hundred years: when Charles V. heard of the surrender of the Spanish garrison he was furious, and the year 1553 saw a Spanish army of vengeance carrying fire and sword into the Sienese territory. This army was checked by the unexpected and heroic resistance of the little town of Montalcino, which was closely invested for eighty days. But in the following year came another army, under the ferocious Marignano, and this time the Spaniards penetrated to the very walls of the city, and 25,000 Spaniards and soldiers of Cosimo bivouacked before the gates. All the citizens were called to arms, and the priests and monks were compelled to work on the fortifications. Three ladies, named Forteguerri, Piccolomini, and Fausti, organized three battalions of women. Three thousand maidens worked on the ramparts and in the trenches. The general-in-chief was Pietro Strozzi, a Florentine exile, and a bitter personal enemy of Cosimo. He determined to relieve Siena by a coup-de-main against Florence. Marignano marched to prevent him. The two armies met at Marciano, where the Sienese suffered the crushing defeat of Scannagallo, caused by the treachery of the commander of the French cavalry in the service of Siena, who had been bought by Marignano with the price of twelve tin flasks filled with pieces of gold. The Sienese lost all their artillery and fifty-five banners, while 12,000 men fell either killed or wounded. The siege now became more strict and more dreadful-little or no quarter was given. Fifteen hundred peasants, caught by Marignano while endeavouring to take supplies into the city, were hanged within sight of the despairing citizens, so that a Spanish historian, an eye-witness, adds: "The trees seemed to produce more dead bodies of men than leaves." Still the citizens. would not yield, and they even carried their patriotism to the height of inhumanity to their own flesh and blood, several times turning out of the gates hundreds of "useless mouths," consisting of the old, the sick, the infirm, and of women and children, who either perished by the Spanish sword, or became the prey of wild beasts, or died from cold and hunger. Within the city, to the ravages of the sword and of famine were added those of pestilence, and at length, on the 17th of April, 1555, Siena surrendered. Before the siege it numbered forty thousand inhabitants, at its close there remained but six thousand; but the thirty-four thousand then left to be accounted for did not all perish in the siege, for seven hundred families, preferring exile to slavery, wandered forth into voluntary banishment. |