Battle of Campaldino

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Part of the conflict between Guelphs and Ghibellines

Date	June 11, 1289
Location	Campaldino, Tuscany, present-day Italy
Result	Decisive Guelph victory

Belligerents

Florence
Pistoia
Lucca
Siena
Prato (small Guelph factions)

Arezzo(Ghibelline Army)

Commanders

Amerigo di Narbona
Guillaume da Durfort

Guglielmino degli Ubertini

Strength

10,000 infantry
1,160 cavalry

10,000 infantry
800 cavalry

Casualties and losses

300 killed

1,700 killed

Wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines

Legnano - Cortenuova - Brescia - Faenza - Viterbo - Parma - Fossalta - Cingoli - Montebruno - Cassano - Montaperti - Benevento - Tagliacozzo - Colle Val d'Elsa - Roccavione - Desio - Campaldino - Zappolino - Gamenario

The Battle of Campaldino was a battle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines on June 11, 1289. Mixed bands of pro-papal Guelf forces of Florence and allies, Pistoia, Lucca, Siena and Prato, all loosely commanded by the paid condottiero Amerigo di Narbona with his own professional following, met a Ghibelline force from Arezzo including the perhaps reluctant bishop, Guglielmino degli Ubertini, in the plain of Campaldino, which leads from Pratovecchio to Poppi, part of the Tuscan countryside along the upper Arno called the Casentino. One of the combatants on the Guelph side was Dante Alighieri, twenty-four years old at the time.

Later, in the mid-fourteenth century, Giovanni Villani recorded the long-remembered details— as Florentines remembered them— in his chronicle, though the casus belli he offers are merely conventional "outrages" on the part of Arezzo; the elaborately staged raid and fight led by aristocrats on both sides sounds like stylized gang warfare, though carried out, according to Villani, under the battle standard of the absent Charles, the Angevine King of Naples. The Florentines and their allies had 10,000 undisciplined armed rabble on foot, including light-armed infantry, and crossbowmen, and unmounted lancers, but 1,600 knights and 600 mounted burghrers of Florence,

“

the best armed and mounted which ever sallied out forth from Florence; and 400 mercenaries, together with the following of the Captain M[esser] Amerigo, in the pay of the Florentines; and of Lucca there were 500 horsemen; and of Prato 40 horsemen and foot soldiers; and of Pistoia, 60 horse and foot; and of Siena, 120 horse; and of Volterra, 40 horse; and of Bologna, their ambassadors with their company; and of Samminiato, and of Sangimignano, and of Colle, men mounted and on foot from each place; and Maghinardo of Susinana, a good and wise captain in war, with his Romagnoli.[1]

”

The forces were equal as far as the large groups of foot-soldiers were concerned; the mounted knights of the Aretine forces only came to 800, but those were "the flower of the Ghibellines of Tuscany, of the March, and of the Duchy, and of Romagna; and all were men experienced in arms and in war" (Villani), This Arentine force was quickly assembled and came out as word spread that the Guelfs were ravaging the places of Conte Guido Novello, who was podestà of Arezzo and, worse, threatening the fortified place called Bibbiena Civitella.

The scuttlebutt reported by Villani was that a plot had been intercepted at Arezzo, by which the Bishop agreed to give over to the Florentines Bibbiena Civitella, and all the villages of his see, in return for a life annuity of 5,000 golden florins a year, guaranteed by the bank of the Cerchi. The plot was uncovered by his nephew Guglielmo de' Pazzi, and they hustled the bishop onto his horse and brought him to the battlefield, where they left him dead among the slain of the battle and its aftermath: Guglielmino de' Pazzi in Valdarno and Buonconte, the son of Guido I da Montefeltro. Ploughing the Campaldino plain used to turn up human remains and bones as recently as eighty years ago [2].

According to Villani, Corso Donati, podestà of Pistoia. though under orders to stand ready in reserve by his personal heroics, shouting “If we lose, I will die in the battle with my fellow citizens; and if we conquer, let him that will, come to us at Pistoia to exact the penalty” charged the Aretine flank and helped break up the lines and win the day for the Guelfs.

The battle of Campaldino secured the Guelfs in Florence, though internecine fighting among the Whites and the Blacks among the Florentine Guelfs resulted in upsets for city order, and the exile of many, including Dante, a member of the Whites, the faction more opposed to papal power.