THE news of the terrible disaster at Montaperti was received in Florence with the utmost consternation, “and there arose so great a lamentation both of men and women that it reached to the heavens, inasmuch as there was not a house in the city that had not one killed or a prisoner”.1 The Guelfs did not wait to be driven out, but hastily fled with their families to Lucca, abandoning the city of Florence to its fate. “And for this desertion the Guelfs were greatly to be blamed, seeing that the city of Florence was strongly fortified with walls and with moats full of water, and might well have been defended and held. But the judgment of God must needs run its course without let in the punishment of wickedness; and to whom God intends ill, him He deprives of wisdom and forethought. And the Guelfs having departed on the Thursday, on the Sunday following, being the sixteenth day of September, the exiles from Florence who had taken part in the battle at Montaperti, together with Count Giordano and his German troops, and the other soldiers of the Tuscan Ghibellines, laden with the spoils of the Florentines and other Guelfs of Tuscany, entered into the city of Florence without hindrance of any kind; and immediately they appointed Guido Novello, of the Counts Guidi, Podestà of Florence for King Manfred, for the term of two years from the following January.”2 FARINATA DEGLI UBERTIFrom the painting by Andrea del Castagno, in the Museo Nazionale at Florence The whole of Tuscany, with the exception of Lucca, was now in the hands of the Ghibellines, who proceeded to hold a great council of their party at Empoli, about twenty miles from Florence, for the purpose of establishing a Ghibelline league.
