“Men of Siena,” cried Buonaguida from the steps of San Cristofano, “ye all know how we have recommended ourselves to the protection of King Manfred; let us now surrender ourselves, our goods and persons, our city and our contado with all our rights, to the Queen of Eternal Life, to our Lady and Mother, the Virgin Mary. Follow me now, all of you, with purity of faith and freedom of will, to make this offering.”
Bareheaded and barefooted, clad like a beggar with a halter round his neck, the Dictator solemnly carried the keys of the city to the Duomo, followed by the people, barefooted too, and crying continually, misericordia, misericordia. There all the clergy met them, and at the foot of the choir the Bishop and Dictator solemnly embraced, in pledge of the complete union of Church and State, while hereditary foes fell into each other’s arms. Then after silent prayer, prostrate before the altar, the Dictator in an impassioned harangue formally made over the city and contado of Siena to the Mother of Heaven, while the Bishop mounted the pulpit and solemnly exhorted the people to mutual forgiveness and to approach the sacraments. The next day there was a long procession through the streets, the keys were blessed and given over to the keeping of the Gonfalonieri (the elected heads of the three terzi). All night the churches had been thronged by crowds approaching the confessionals, by enemies seeking reconciliation with each other, and at daybreak the Twenty-four sent three heralds with the banners of each terzo to call the people to arms in the name of God and of the Virgin Mary.
It was Friday, September 3rd. The whole army consisted of a little more than 20,000 men. There were 800 Germans and other royal horsemen with the imperial banner, under Count Giordano and the Count of Arras; 400 more horsemen, partly Germans and partly noble Sienese, under the Count Aldobrandino degli Aldobrandeschi of Santa Fiora and Niccolò de’ Bigozzi, seneschal of the Commune. The Florentine and other Ghibelline exiles, under the Count Guido Novello and Farinata, were partly with Giordano, partly with Count Aldobrandino. There were 19,000 citizen infantry from the three terzi of the city and the contado, under the Podestà, Francesco Troghisio, and their three Gonfalonieri, with the Carroccio of the Republic over which floated a white standard “that gave right good comfort, for it seemed the mantle of the Virgin Mary.” A number of priests, some of them armed, accompanied the army; the rest with the Bishop, old men and women, spent the day fasting, going in procession from church to church throughout the city reciting litanies and the like. They marched out of the Porta Pispini and occupied the hill of Monteropoli beyond which, in the plain of the Cortine between the Biena and the Malena (little streams that join the Arbia), and on the opposite hill of Monteselvoli, lay the Guelf army – its leaders confidently expecting a revolution in Siena in their favour and the speedy surrender of one of the gates of the city. All during the night the Sienese harassed the Florentine camp, and on Saturday morning, September 4th, the battle began.
The Count of Arras, with some 400 horse and foot, advancing along the Biena, moved round Monteselvoli to fall upon the Florentine left flank; while the rest of the army left their hill, crossed the Arbia and approached the enemies’ position – the Florentines in the valley hastening up their own side of Monteselvoli to join the main body. The German heavy cavalry commenced the assault, dashing like dragons into the ranks of the men of Prato, Arezzo and Lucca, horse and men falling in heaps before their terrible lances. The Count Giordano led his tedeschi straight for the centre of the Guelfic army, where the “martinella” rang continuously over the Carroccio of Florence, round which the flower of the burgher army stood. The Count Aldobrandino with his cavalry and the eager Sienese followed up the German onslaught; but the resistance was long and stubborn. At last Bocca degli Abati, the traitor in the troop of Florentine nobles, hostis e cive factus as Leonardo Bruni puts it, struck Jacopo Pazzi with his sword on the arm that upheld one of the standards of the Republic; a portion of the cavalry went over to the enemy; the rest, seeing themselves betrayed, took to flight. Simultaneously the Count of Arras with the reserve, shouting “San Giorgio! San Giorgio!” burst furiously upon the Florentine flank. Then came, in Dante’s immortal phrase, “the havoc and the great slaughter that dyed the Arbia red.” The Sienese, writes the chronicler Niccolò di Giovanni Ventura, “seemed like unchained lions rushing upon their foes; little did it avail these to call on San Zanobi or Santa Liperata for aid, for they made a greater slaughter of them than do the butchers of their beasts on Good Friday.” The infantry were driven from their position down into the valley, only to be ruthlessly massacred. A band of Florentine burghers – the flower of the Primo Popolo – stood to the end in heroic desperation round the Carroccio and the standards, and fell in their places, resisting to the last, embracing and kissing the blood-stained wood of the car as they died. A number of the fugitives took refuge in the little castle of Montaperto and held out there till later in the day, when it was stormed and they were all put to the sword. It was not until evening had come that the Count Giordano and the Gonfalonieri of the Sienese bade that quarter should be given and prisoners accepted. The number of the slain Guelfs probably lies somewhere between 10,000, which is the Sienese estimate, and the 2500 given by Villani. The Carroccio had been taken; the popolo vecchio of Florence was “broken and annihilated,” in Villani’s terribly expressive phrase; every house in Florence had lost members, and the allied cities suffered only slightly less. Twelve thousand prisoners are said to have been taken.7
We should visit the battle-field to-day, for the walk or drive is one of the pleasantest in the neighbourhood of Siena. About four miles beyond the Porta Pispini we cross the Bozzone, and then, to the left, ascend the long, low hill of Monteropoli. This was the Sienese position before the battle. Opposite is Monteselvoli, and at our feet the Arbia, and between the two long hills the valley. The contadini take an uncanny pleasure in showing us the way, in pointing out and naming the various sites that witnessed the struggle. Away to the left, above the Malena – nearly an hour’s walk from the small railway station of Arbia – is the spot where the battle ended. A steep little hill, the lower part of which is a vineyard, is crowned with olive trees and cypresses, surrounding a pyramid of rough brown stone. The view that it commands is grand and sweeping; the black and barren hills to the south east; Santafiore hid in clouds to the south; and westwards the blood-stained valley of the battle-field, beyond which rises Siena itself with its towers, behind which the sun was already sinking when the Florentines made their last stand.
From the tower of the Marescotti (now of the Palazzo Saracini), Cerreto Ceccolini had watched the whole fight, beating his drum in signal to the people in the streets below, telling them of the course of the struggle, bidding them cry to God and the Madonna while the event hung in doubt, to shout in exultation when the day was won.
The victorious army rested that night on Monteropoli, with their prisoners and booty. They made their solemn entry into Siena the next day by the same gate through which they had passed out to the war, the German nobles and soldiers crowned with garlands of olive, singing songs in their own tongue as they made their way in triumphant procession to the Duomo. Three days of general supplication and thanksgiving followed; to the title Sena vetus was added by solemn decree Civitas Virginis, to the litany an Advocata Senensium. According to Malavolti, not more than 600 Sienese had fallen on the field of battle, but among them were many young men of the noblest families in the city. It is needless to re-tell in this place the familiar story of the triumphant entry of the Count Giordano with the Ghibelline exiles and his German mercenaries into the desolate Florence, and how that short-lived despotism was set up which the people themselves – those strenuous burghers and artisans of the Florentine Guilds – overthrew six years later. Montalcino, the original cause of the war, had surrendered to Siena a few days after the battle, and had been cruelly humiliated. According to the Sienese chroniclers, the people of Montalcino came through the Porta Romana in penitential robes, with halters round their necks, crying misericordia, and were forced to go to the field of battle to bury all the abandoned dead. A similar fate befell Montepulciano, which Manfred granted to the Commune of Siena on November 20th. In the following year Provenzano was made Podestà of Montepulciano, and with him went Don Ugo, the Camarlingo di Biccherna, to arrange for the building of a fortress there.
But this epoch of Ghibelline prepotency in Tuscany was brief. The victory of Charles of Anjou over Manfred at Benevento, in February 1266, was followed by the restoration