ce sent his Germans to seize the city. But the Pisans
heard of it. They rang the great bells in the Campanile, and barricaded
the gates with the benches and stalls in the Duomo, on the Baptistery
they set their bowmen, and on the Campanile the slingers. Then they tore
up the streets, and waited to give death for death. The Germans,
however, were easily beaten and bought off, and Pisa again returned to
her internal quarrels.

Out of these sprang, in 1385, Pietro Gambacorti, as Captain of the
people. It was the beginning of the last twenty years of Pisa's life as
an independent city. She now stood between Visconti in the north and
Florence close at hand. Florence was her friend against Visconti for
her own sake: she meant to have Pisa herself. Gambacorti did his best.
With infinite tact he kept friends with both cities. Under him Pisa
seemed to regain something of her old confidence and prosperity. A man
of fine courage, simplicity, and passing honest, he was incapable of
suspecting a tried friend whom he had benefited. Yet it was by the hand
of such an one he fell.

Jacopo d'Appiano's father had been exiled with Gambacorti in 1348. Like
many another Pisan house which had risen from nothing, Appiano was at
feud with certain of his fellow-citizens, among them the Lanfranchi
family. For this cause he kept a guard about him. Now Gambacorti, who
remembered his father's exile, made Appiano permanent "Chancellor of the
Republic": and hoping to reconcile the Lanfranchi with the new
chancellor, he sent for Lanfranchi, but the bandits of Appiano murdered
him as he went thither, and then joined Appiano in his house. Gambacorti
ordered his chancellor to deliver them up, but he refused. Then the
Bergolini offered Gambacorti their assistance, but he refused it,
trusting to justice. Appiano, however, at the head of the Raspanti,
marched to the palace of Gambacorti. The city was in arms, and they had
to fight their way. Arrived before the palace, Gambacorti ordering his
men not to shoot his friend, agreed to confer with Appiano. So he went
out of his house, and as Appiano stretched out his hand, in token, as it
were, of friendship, his bandits fell upon him and slew him. A fight
followed, in which the Bergolini were beaten; then Appiano became
Captain of the People. In truth, it was only a device of Visconti for
seizing the city. Appiano admitted the Milanese, and what Agnello had
failed to do, he did, for he ruled as the creature of G