After 1378 the schism that divided the church between rival papacies in Rome and Avignon weakened papal authority in central Italy and left Florence as the undisputed power between Rome and the Po valley. In 1384 Florence purchased control of Arezzo from its French occupiers for 40,000 florins. Over the next two years the Florentines acquired bits of papal territory and flexed their military muscle to the north toward Bologna and east toward Urbino, even warning Pope Urban VI not to meddle in the politics of the two chief cities of the papal states, Bologna and Perugia.1 Meanwhile, they were instigating a change of regime in Montepulciano (a town south of Siena and Arezzo under Sienese control) at just the moment in the late 1380s when Giangaleazzo Visconti, the ruler of Milan who had already extended his power into the eastern Po valley to Padua, turned his gaze south and began courting the smaller cities of Tuscany that were fearful of Florentine expansion. At the end of 1389 Siena entered into a ten-year alliance with Giangaleazzo, and in 1390 war began between Florence and Milan. Although officially the first of three separate wars, it was really the beginning of a twelve-year struggle that ended only with the Milanese ruler’s death in 1402 and consequent disintegration of the Visconti dominions. And even this set of wars was the prelude to a still longer conflict between the two powers that lasted until the 1440s.
The Milanese wars affected Florentine politics and public finances in ways that are apparent from the first years of the conflict. This was a more dangerous war for the Florentines than the struggle against the papacy, not only because their new antagonist was militarily stronger, but chiefly because he had the support of Tuscan cities that wanted above all to avoid being swallowed up by Florence. Support for the war came from elite leaders like Filippo Corsini, Rinaldo Gianfigliazzi and the Albizzi (although Maso himself seems not to have played a major role at this moment, as he would later). Opposition came from the guild community and non-elite merchants, and already by the summer of 1391 the regime was attempting to suppress dissent. After a defeat that provoked criticism of the government, a police official was instituted “with authority over any person and the power to hang or behead anyone as he sees fit, especially those who speak against the stato [regime, or government]. The archguelfs arranged this so that others would not speak against them.”199 200 Perhaps not coincidentally, the councils simultaneously suppressed two religious confraternities “in order to remove divisions among citizens that they say have been limited thus far to words and to prevent anything worse from erupting.”201 Fear of criticism and too much talk went hand in hand with attempts to manipulate public opinion with processions, public masses, bonfires, and dramatic announcements, all intended to sustain a sense of urgency and preserve support for the regime’s war policy. In September, the government organized public celebrations for a major victory by Florentine troops under Hawkwood. But there was also concern about damage to the economy. With some exaggeration, but revealing skepticism about the necessity of the war, the anonymous chronicler complained that “our hired soldiers” (Hawkwood’s troops) did more damage stealing whatever they wanted in the contado than the enemy ever did. But he also noted that, with the Milanese blocking shipments from Pisa, “there was much worry throughout the city, because if wool doesn’t get here, there’s no work in Florence and the city is practically under siege, and the poor will die of hunger, since the price of food soars, no one earns anything, and taxes are heavy for everyone.”202
Military expenses and fiscal needs in this and subsequent wars against Milan were indeed enormous. Between 1390 and 1392 the communal treasury paid out 2,158,000 florins in war-related expenses alone and collected 1,473,000 florins in forced loans.203 Although total military expenses for this war were possibly no higher than for the papal war, the sums collected in forced loans were much greater than the 580,000 florins assessed in the earlier conflict, when much of the cost was covered by confiscation of church property. Indirect taxes and levies on the contado were consumed by non-military expenditures, and thus even receipts of nearly a half million florins in forced loans each year were not sufficient. To cover the deficits, the commune had recourse to short-term, redeemable loans from wealthy citizens, sums of unprecedented magnitude that were repaid with substantially higher interest than the Monte paid on credits from forced loans. On one occasion in 1390 it contracted loans from eighty-two households for a total of 834,060 florins, the largest coming from Gucciozzo de’ Ricci and his sons (40,000 florins), and ser Ristoro da Figline (30,000), a wealthy notary from the contado and founder of the Serristori lineage (whose first prior, probably not coincidentally, was in 1392). Lenders included both wealthy popolo, like the speziale Lorenzo di Vanni
(8,000), and the cloth manufacturer Andrea di Maso (6,000), and members of the elite, led by Maso and Ugo Alessandri (20,000), Ardingo di Corso de’ Ricci (16,000), Giovanni Castellani (15,000), and Donato Acciaiuoli (14,000).204
This was the beginning of the commune’s dependence on its wealthiest citizens. In July 1395, during the second Visconti war, the government listed loans amounting to the astonishing sum of 1,169,819 florins from 501 lenders: an average of 2,335 florins per household, but with nearly half the total (574,600) coming from just fifty-two households that made loans of at least 5,000 florins and averaged 11,050. After the four Alberti brothers who outdistanced all others with 130,000 florins, came the Spinelli brothers from Castelfiorentino
(25.000) and a mix of non-elite and elite lenders, including, among the latter, Forese Salviati (14,000), Vanni Castellani (13,000), Alessandro Alessandri
(12.000) , Filippo di Lionardo Strozzi (10,000), and Francesco di Palla Strozzi (9,500), and several (in some cases by now former) magnates. The Medici did not yet stand out among communal creditors: only one in 1395, Antonio di Funghello (6,000), and two in 1390, Michele, and Alamanno di Salvestro (respectively, 6,000 and 8,000). But it was no doubt a sign of things to come that in 1401 the commune turned to Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, founder of the bank that created the family’s immense fortune, for ready cash in the amount of 200,000 florins (reimbursed, of course) promised to the emperor-elect Rupert of Bavaria for help in the third war against Milan. The availability in Medici hands of such resources would later propel them to power.
Some Florentines were already fearful of the political consequences of prolonged war and its expense. One was Franco Sacchetti (1335-1400), the leading Florentine writer in the vernacular in the generation after Boccaccio and author of a collection of stories, the Trecentonovelle, that comment critically on contemporary politics. Sacchetti came from an old elite family, but during the papal war his cousin Antonio di Forese was one of the eight officials who administered the confiscation and sale of ecclesiastical property.205 Franco himself served as envoy to one of Florence’s mercenary captains in that war, Ridolfo Varano da Camerino, who figures in several of his stories (e. g., 38, 40, and 182) and is portrayed as clever with words but reluctant to lead his troops into battle. In another story (181), he has John Hawkwood contemptuously upbraid two friars for their greeting of “God grant you peace,” accusing them of wishing away his livelihood: “Do you want God to let me die of hunger? Don’t you know that I live by war and that peace would be my undoing?” Sacchetti denounces Hawkwood, who “well knew how to make sure there was little peace in Italy in his time,” and mercenaries in general who do more damage to their employers than to each other and are the chief reason why “so many cities in Italy that were once free are now subject to lords. . . . Therefore let those few [cities] that live free, for they are few indeed, not succumb to the deceits of these professional soldiers. Let them remain at peace and suffer two and three provocations before deciding to go to war.” Sacchetti wrote these stinging words in the 1390s when Hawkwood had already become legendary among Florentines: his death in 1394 was commemorated with an elaborate state funeral, attended by the entire political leadership and religious establishment, and the almost unheard-of honor of burial in the cathedral in the choir at the foot of the main altar.206 But the polemic was not ad hominem. It was the entire professional cadre of career soldiers who “lived on war” that Sacchetti saw as dangerous and caused him to oppose any unnecessary war. In fact, in the summer of 1391, as the war was going badly, Sacchetti addressed a letter to the Standardbearer of Justice Donato Acciaiuoli, urging him to use all his influence to bring the conflict to a quick conclusion. Should he do so, Sacchetti says, he “would win the same glory bestowed on Brutus [the founder of the republic] who was called the second Romulus, because Romulus founded the city of Rome and Brutus preserved its liberty, [which] has no greater enemy than war with its expense. This is what has undone communes and popular governments, and our fatherland has twice experienced it. By God, may it escape the third time.”207 Sacchetti was perhaps alluding to the signorie of Charles of Calabria and Walter of Brienne, but in any event his fear that the real danger of war lay in fiscal demands that could undermine liberty was prophetic.
Forty years later, after the consequences feared by Sacchetti had become all too real, Alberti had his character Lionardo in The Books of the Family spell out the logic of Sacchetti’s worries, underscoring how indispensable fiscal contributions from the wealthy were for Florentine power and expansion: “Those who with arms and blood defend the liberty and dignity of the fatherland cannot always be supported by funds from the public treasury alone. Nor, however, can republics extend their authority and empire without enormous expense. . . . According to what our Benedetto degli Alberti used to say, a public treasury will be most abundantly filled not by numerous sums of those owing money to the state or a large number of tax-paying households; a well-stocked public treasury is one that can claim the affection of all those citizens of at least moderate means, and to which all rich persons will be faithful and generous.”208 Benedetto’s dictum about well-stocked public treasuries depending, especially during war, on the loyalty and generosity of the rich reflects what had begun to happen in Florence as early as the 1390s, when the Alberti themselves were the richest of the Florentine rich. Fiscal necessity was already beginning to narrow the inner circle of power: behind the broad office-holding class required by the politics of consensus, military expenses were concentrating power in the hands of those wealthy enough to underwrite them.
The first Milanese war ended in January 1392 but resolved nothing. Prospects for another war increased when Florence turned the tables on Milan by organizing Padua, Mantua, Ferrara, and Bologna into an anti-Visconti league. In October the Milanese responded by promoting a coup d’etat in Pisa that removed a ruler friendly to Florence. Although further hostilities were avoided until 1397, in the intervening years the Florentines sought French help while Giangaleazzo looked to the emperor. Maso degli Albizzi and Rinaldo Gianfigliazzi used their influence to turn opinion within the ruling group toward a hard-line policy against Milan and had the major voices of restraint, Filippo Bastari and Donato Acciaiuoli, sent into exile, respectively, in 1394 and 1396, in both cases with accusations of being too close to the Alberti. In March 1397 war resumed and, with Giangaleazzo’s troops devastating the Florentine contado and military expenses once again skyrocketing, it quickly became unpopular as the Council of the Popolo rejected one proposal after another for increased forced loans. In February 1398 the wealthy and largely apolitical merchant from Prato, Francesco Datini, wrote to his partners: “Truly, if we do not have peace, the merchants and guildsmen will be ruined by taxes. Note that we have to pay four or five forced loans each month. May it please God to give us peace quickly so that these levies will cease.”11 Datini claimed he was a citizen of Prato, but the officials of the gonfalone in which he resided in Florence declared that he was indeed a Florentine citizen and therefore subject to forced loans. Over a thirteen-year period he paid 19,500 florins, received approximately 5,750 in interest and returned principal, with net payments amounting to 13,750 florins.209 210
Despite another million florins spent in the second war, Maso degli Albizzi and the inner circle signed a peace agreement in May 1398 that once again left the struggle unresolved. Over the next two years Florentine control of Tuscany and Umbria collapsed as Pisa, Siena, Grosseto, Perugia, Cortona, Chiusi, Spoleto, and Assisi all submitted to Giangaleazzo. At the end of 1400, Lucca withdrew from the anti-Visconti league, leaving Bologna as the only major city in the region still allied with Florence. To make matters worse, in
November 1400 the regime announced that it had uncovered a conspiracy involving both exiles and internal opponents. Two Ricci were implicated as leaders of a plot to eliminate the regime’s inner circle and open the gates to the exiles and the Milanese, and others confessed that the plan had wide support among elite Florentines, including a Medici and the usual contingent of Alberti.211 In these already inauspicious circumstances the Florentines were again disappointed when the hopes and money invested in the emperor-elect Rupert resulted, in the fall of 1401, in his defeat by the Milanese, who then turned their attention to Bologna. On June 26, 1402, Florentine forces were routed at Casalecchio, near Bologna, which was taken on the 30th. Bereft of allies, the Florentines prepared for an invasion of their territory and a possible siege of the city. For the rest of the summer they waited, making mIlitary preparations and seeking an alliance with Venice, until the news arrived on September 12 that nine days earlier Giangaleazzo Visconti had died of plague. Although the threat of invasion dissipated, the state of war continued and the hardliners within the regime now made plans to carry the war into Lombardy. Only in the next year did it become clear that, without its leader, the Visconti empire was breaking up and that the war was in effect over.212
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