purchase Lucca, and
repent of it--Enterprises of the Florentines--Conspiracy of the Bardi
and the Frescobaldi--The conspiracy discovered and checked--Maffeo da
Marradi appeases the tumult--Lucca is purchased by the Florentines
and taken by the Pisans--The duke of Athens at Florence--The nobility
determine to make him prince of the city.

The emperor, being arrived at Rome, created an anti-pope, did many
things in opposition to the church, and attempted many others, but
without effect, so that at last he retired with disgrace, and went to
Pisa, where, either because they were not paid, or from disaffection,
about 800 German horse mutinied, and fortified themselves at Montechiaro
upon the Ceruglio; and when the emperor had left Pisa to go into
Lombardy, they took possession of Lucca and drove out Francesco
Castracani, whom he had left there. Designing to turn their conquest to
account, they offered it to the Florentines for 80,000 florins, which,
by the advice of Simone della Tosa, was refused. This resolution, if
they had remained in it, would have been of the greatest utility to
the Florentines; but as they shortly afterward changed their minds,
it became most pernicious; for although at the time they might have
obtained peaceful possession of her for a small sum and would not,
they afterward wished to have her and could not, even for a much larger
amount; which caused many and most hurtful changes to take place in
Florence. Lucca, being refused by the Florentines, was purchased by
Gherardino Spinoli, a Genoese, for 30,000 florins. And as men are often
less anxious to take what is in their power than desirous of that which
they cannot attain, as soon as the purchase of Gherardino became known,
and for how small a sum it had been bought, the people of Florence were
seized with an extreme desire to have it, blaming themselves and those
by whose advice they had been induced to reject the offer made to them.
And in order to obtain by force what they had refused to purchase, they
sent troops to plunder and overrun the country of the Lucchese.

About this time the emperor left Italy. The anti-pope, by means of the
Pisans, became a prisoner in France; and the Florentines from the death
of Castruccio, which occurred in 1328, remained in domestic peace till
1340, and gave their undivided attention to external affairs, while many
wars were carried on in Lombardy, occasioned by the coming of John king
of Bohemia, and in Tuscany,