eflect upon this peaceful scene,
the fact must not be forgotten that more women were aiding men, directly
or indirectly, to break laws than to make them, for many of the most
bitter feuds and controversies of the time were waged about a woman.
Bianchina, the wife of Vergusio Landi, seduced by the great Galeazzo
Visconti, who had been her husband's friend and ally, became the cause
of a most ferocious war which was waged between the cities of Milan and
Piacenza; Virginia Galucci, abducted by Alberto Carbonesi, brought about
a long-standing hostility between these two families and caused much
blood to be spilled; many other instances might be cited which would
reveal the same state of affairs. A few of the most remarkable of these
feuds have been deemed worthy of more extended notice, and the first
among the number concerns the quarrel between the Buondelmonti and the
Amedei, in Florence, in the thirteenth century. Buondelmonte de'
Buondelmonti, a young nobleman from the upper Val d'Arno and a member of
the Guelph party, was to marry a daughter of the house of Amedei,
staunch Ghibelline supporters, and the wedding day was fast approaching;
one day the young Guelph was met upon the street by a lady of the Donati
family, also a Guelph, who reproached him for his intended union with
one of the hated party, and urged him to marry her own daughter, Ciulla,
who was far more desirable. The sight of the fair Donati was too much
for the quick passions of Buondelmonte; he fell in love with her at
once, and straightway repudiated his former plan of marriage. It may
well be imagined that the Amedei were enraged at this; the powerful
Uberti and all the other Ghibelline families in Florence, about
twenty-four in all, joined with them, and they swore to kill the fickle
young lover on sight. On Easter morning, they lay in wait for the
handsome but heedless young Buondelmonte at the north end of the Ponte
Vecchio; and when he appeared, boldly riding without an escort, all
clothed in white and upon a milk-white steed, they fell upon him and
struck him to the ground, and left him dying there, his Easter tunic
dripping with his blood. Their savage yell of triumph over this
assassination was not the end, but the beginning, for forty-two Guelph
families immediately took up the quarrel and swore to avenge the death
of their comrade, and for more than thirty years the strife continued.

The story of Imelda de' Lambertazzi is even more tragic in i