Читать книгу Under The Green Claws - Ivo Ragazzini - Страница 12

Learning of the fall of Faenza into Ghibelline hands, the Bolognese began to fear the Lambertazzi had planned the move so as to bring the Forlì troops closer to Bologna.

Therefore, the following year, they decided to send another army back to Romagna with the Bolognese carroccio³⁰ and the podestà at the head to free Faenza from the Forlì people.

When the Bolognese set out with the army, the Lambertazzi, regardless of the consequences of such a gesture, suddenly decided to attack the Bolognese mayor directly inside the city before he left with the army, while the Forlì Ghibellines advanced from Faenza as far as the walls of Bologna to give him their support.

This immediately, ignited a guerrilla war.

The gates of Bologna were closed to prevent the entry of the Forlivese, but when a fight broke out between the Lambertazzi and Geremei, the people abandoned all neutrality and sided with the Guelphs to expel the Ghibellines from Bologna and began attacking the Lambertazzi inside the city.

Somehow the people of Forlì managed to enter,³¹ and they began to help the Lambertazzi, therefore the Geremei and the populace had to retreat to their neighborhoods thanks to the Forlì reinforcements.

Thus between April and May 1274 a guerrilla war between the two factions began in Bologna that lasted, without respite, almost two months.

Guelphs and Ghibellines were grouped inside the walls and neighborhoods were divided, which challenged each other to the bitter end.

In those days anything could happen. There were clashes on both sides at all hours of the day and people were even murdered at night, and later found in ditches or floating in streams the next morning.

Bologna was in the balance and seemed to have fallen into the hands of the Ghibellines.

In the end, in order not to capitulate, the Bolognese Guelphs called upon a large reinforcement of Lombard Guelphs to support the city.

The Guelphs prevailed, while ten Lambertazzi leaders were captured and imprisoned during a coup by the mayor of Bologna, who had summoned them with an excuse to discuss their surrender.

The Lambertazzi realized there was no escape and had to agree to come to terms and leave Bologna.

Thus, on the morning of 2 June 1274, after months of guerrilla warfare, in the midst of an unreal silence, there was an exodus of twelve thousand armed Ghibellines with wives, children and supporters in tow, who left Bologna without anyone daring to stop them, leaving almost half the city empty in one sweep.

They headed along the Via Emilia in the direction of Faenza, previously occupied by the inhabitants of Forlì, which was ready to welcome them.