Under The Green Claws

12. The Guelph and Ghibelline battles in the Apennines

Indignant and fed up with all these wars, the Bolognese asked the pope for help to finish with the Romagna Ghibellines once and for all, as they seemed to be unbeatable on the plains and guerrillas in the city.

Thus, the Guelphs decided to mount a surprise attack and surround the land of Forlì from the mountains of Tuscany, that is to say on the southern border of the Forlì state, which was left unguarded in the Apennines.

The Bolognese, thanks to the Pope's Guelphs, gathered together troops from Florence, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Ravenna and with the help of some Forlì traitors, decided to conceive and organize a plan to attack the Ghibelline state from the Tuscan mountains and Apennines to surprise the Forlì people, who were almost all concentrated and located on the Romagna plain.

The Guelphs, under the command of Guido Selvatico, count of Romena, attacked the mountain possessions of Forlì from the mountains, quickly seizing Galeata, Pianetto, Civitella, Montevecchio and other sites in the mountains, while other Guelph troops advanced on the plains again towards the San Procolo bridge in the area of Faenza, to wage war and prevent Faenza from assisting the inhabitants of Forlì.

At the same time the Guelphs also besieged the castle of Piancaldoli in the Faenza Apennines, a territory that was controlled by the capable commander Maghinardo Pagani.37

Thanks to the counterattacks of the latter, who summoned the captain of the Lambertazzi to come to him from Faenza and to the Forlì senate, who sent the army to those sites, with a furious battle that lasted a few hours, the Guelphs were vanquished and put to flight from the castle and village of Civitella, which they had recently occupied.

Il Feltrano decided to pursue them through the mountains and the fugitives attempted to turn towards Tredozio, where there was a Guelph stronghold, but they were caught up with and surrounded by the strategy of Montefeltro, and were forced to stop and fight in a difficult place and were easily defeated and taken prisoner.

Given the failed attack in the mountains, the Bolognese also retreated from Ponte San Procolo and attempted to escape into Imola, chased by the Faentine Ghibelline troops from Faenza who had entered the city, where the Guelphs were surprised while they were digging moats around the walls to defend themselves.

A small battle ensued during which another hundred Guelphs died.

Following this conflict, Guglielmo Ordelaffi, Paganino Orgogliosi and his son Francesco were captured and imprisoned inside the fortress of Cesena, as traitors for having betrayed the Ghibellines and having taken part in the revolt against Guido da Montefeltro.

Subsequently they tried to escape from the stronghold of Cesena, but were captured and beheaded.

At the same time il Feltrano decided to end the fight with the Guelphs in Romagna and moved against the castle of Calboli38 in the Forlì Apennines where all the Guelphs, who had been en route and had remained in the mountains of Forlì, retreated.

The Guelphs of Forlì, Riniero and Guido De' Calboli, locked themselves up with other nobles and eight hundred guards, in the castle of Calboli, having given them twelve thousand lire to defend that location for at least ten months while awaiting help.

But because the steps were so narrow no help came from Bologna. At this point, il Feltrano decided to put siege to the castle of Calboli and after two months he destroyed it with seven enormous war machines that cast huge stones, razed its walls and its houses, which were reduced to nothing.39

After this series of victories, there were no rivals to the fame of the Ghibellines in Romagna.

Ravenna and Rimini had to surrender and become a confederation with the Ghibellines. They feared invasion and forged a peace pact with the Forlì people, evading alliances with the Bolognese, who were considered too weak to defend them.

It was a period that seemed to be totally successful for il Feltrano and the Forlì people, but nothing for the Bolognese.

This greatly worried the Bolognese and the Geremei, who feared the Lambertazzi would be forced to return to Bologna. So they began to increasingly protest to the pope requesting further military reinforcements.

This was also the period during which the legendary reputation was born of the cunning and the militarily undefeatable Feltrano, but the bulk of his work and fame, which would make the rounds of Europe, had yet to occur.

After all these repeated defeats, the Bolognese again asked Pope Nicholas III for help,40 who, as moderate as he was, sent them Bertoldo Orsini, his nephew, with the title of Count of Romagna, with the objective of mediating and placating the situation between the Bolognese and Romagna.

Orsini recognized that he would need to stop trying to resolve the matter with arms and to reconcile the Lambertazzi and Geremei in Bologna more than to try to defeat the Ghibellines of Forlì, and that there could be no other remedy than to bring the Lambertazzi back to Bologna, return their properties to them and to make peace between the Ghibellines and Guelphs of that land.

And so, very wisely, he did.

But the Geremei accepted this decision badly and believed that the pontiff, because of the belligerence of the Ghibellines, would fight them and not let them into the city.

But Bertoldo Orsini said that the church embraced both and organized the return and a banquet of peace for both factions where Feltrano41 also took part.

So, after the exile, the Lambertazzi returned to Bologna as brothers and peace seemed to have been made.

But that peace lasted only as long as Nicholas III was alive, when he died shortly thereafter, the new French pope, Martin IV, was not as meek as the former had been with the Ghibellines.

So, immediately after the death of Nicolas III, the Geremei and Lambertazzi again came to blows, and were driven out of Bologna and again took refuge in Faenza, which was still under the command of Guido da Montefeltro.

At the same time the Geremei turned to the newly elected French pope and asked him to organize a fearsome army to do away with the Ghibellines of Romagna once and for all.

Thus, with the support of the new pontiff, and the help of the King of France, Charles II d'Anjou, a real final crusade was organized, under the command of the French general Giovanni d'Appia, to be concluded once and for all against the last Ghibellines remaining in Italy.

At the time, after the victories over the heirs of Frederick II and the violent crusades against the Albigensian, the French army was considered unbeatable and terrible and what you will read from here on went down in history as the Dantean massacre of the "bloody heap" and I will tell you what happened and how everything turned out.

And I will also tell you, for the first time in centuries, why that land had remained irreducibly pro-imperial, and who had really founded it many centuries earlier at the time of ancient Rome.

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