avor--The law is passed--Disturbances in Florence.

The papal chair was occupied by Gregory XI. He, like his predecessors,
residing at Avignon, governed Italy by legates, who, proud and
avaricious, oppressed many of the cities. One of these legates, then
at Bologna, taking advantage of a great scarcity of food at Florence,
endeavored to render himself master of Tuscany, and not only withheld
provisions from the Florentines, but in order to frustrate their hopes
of the future harvest, upon the approach of spring, attacked them with
a large army, trusting that being famished and unarmed, he should find
them an easy conquest. He might perhaps have been successful, had not
his forces been mercenary and faithless, and, therefore, induced
to abandon the enterprise for the sum of 130,000 florins, which the
Florentines paid them. People may go to war when they will, but cannot
always withdraw when they like. This contest, commenced by the ambition
of the legate, was sustained by the resentment of the Florentines,
who, entering into a league with Bernabo of Milan, and with the cities
hostile to the church, appointed eight citizens for the administration
of it, giving them authority to act without appeal, and to expend
whatever sums they might judge expedient, without rendering an account
of the outlay.

This war against the pontiff, although Uguccione was now dead,
reanimated those who had followed the party of the Ricci, who, in
opposition to the Albizzi, had always favored Bernabo and opposed the
church, and this, the rather, because the eight commissioners of war
were all enemies of the Guelphs. This occasioned Piero degli Albizzi,
Lapo da Castiglionchio, Carlo Strozzi, and others, to unite themselves
more closely in opposition to their adversaries. The eight carried on
the war, and the others admonished during three years, when the death
of the pontiff put an end to the hostilities, which had been carried on
which so much ability, and with such entire satisfaction to the people,
that at the end of each year the eight were continued in office, and
were called _Santi_, or holy, although they had set ecclesiastical
censures at defiance, plundered the churches of their property, and
compelled the priests to perform divine service. So much did citizens
at that time prefer the good of their country to their ghostly
consolations, and thus showed the church, that if as her friends they
had defended, they could as enemies depress he