Читать книгу Under The Green Claws - Ivo Ragazzini - Страница 9

Faenza resisted for seven months, infuriating Frederick himself, since years before he had already conquered the town and it had come to terms with him.

Furthermore, during the siege Frederick II ran out of gold and money and had to resort to the help of the Forlì people to conquer Faenza, he also requested the Forlì people to issue special augustarians²² in leather, equivalent to imperial gold coins, which he then repaid in gold to the inhabitants of Forlì once the town had been taken and sacked.

So, after having conquered Faenza, Frederick II wanted to raze it to the ground and erase it from the earth, saying all who were against the Faenza who, defeated, were unable to appease his fury in any way and had begun to have it dismantled by teams of scouts.

The people of Faenza, not knowing what else to do, even turned to their nearby enemies from Forlì, begging them to intervene and intercede with the emperor to stop the devastation he was causing to the detriment of their city.

The people of Forlì accepted the requests for help from Faenza and went as a delegation to intercede with the emperor to halt the destruction of the city.

Frederick, not without objections and protests against the people of Faenza, whom he considered traitors,²³ finally agreed the city could be spared. However, he imposed that the city should become imperial definitively and should be governed under the banner of a mayor selected from among their Forlì neighbors, since they had helped him and proved to be Ghibellines in heart and soul. So he ordered that the people of Faenza stop doing "Guelph things" and merge with Forlì.

Thus the two cities became, until Frederick's death, two cities united in a small state governed by the same imperial laws and defended by the same arms.

Furthermore, because of their loyalty, Frederick granted the people of Forlì the right to use the black eagle on a gold field²⁴ on their municipal coat of arms and gave them the right to mint imperial coins because of their assistance and loyalty and, for this reason, the people of Forlì proudly left.

Many things changed, however, in 1249, when Frederick II died in Puglia and especially in the following years, when Carlo d'Anjou defeated Frederick II's son, Manfredi, in Benevento in 1266.

Thus the Guelphs, who had been expelled from Florence a few years earlier after their defeat at the battle of Montaperti, began to regain strength in Florence and Bologna. A battle began in those cities for dominance over the Ghibellines, which briefly extended to all of Romagna, with the support of the Church that claimed that land to be hers.

And so, while Carlo I d'Angiò was named pope the imperial vicar of Tuscany, the Tuscan Guelphs returned to Florence and the region, while the Tuscan Ghibellines had to leave and take refuge in Romagna, which remained one of the last of the Ghibelline sites still loyal to the imperial laws in Italy.