lso. So Charles left Pisa more Ghibelline than
he found her.

It was at this time that Pisa really began to see perhaps her true
danger from Florence. Certainly she did everything to prick her into
war. But Florence was already victorious. Her answer was more disastrous
than any battle; she took her trade from the port of Pisa to the Sienese
port Talamone. Then Florence purchased Volterra, over the head of Pisa
as it were; and at last, careless whether it pleased the Pisans or no,
she permitted the Gambacorti to make raid upon Pisan territory, and
allowed Giovanni di Sano, who had lately been in her service, to seize a
fortress in the territory of Lucca. The peace was broken. On the brink
of ruin, ravaged by plague, Pisa turned to confront her hard, merciless
foe. For months Florence ravaged her territory, while she, too weak to
strike a blow in her own honour, could but hold her gates. Then the
plague left her, and she rose.

Bernabo Visconti was sending her help for 150,000 florins.[40] The
English were on the way; already over the mountains, Hawkwood and his
White Company were coming to save her; meantime she tried to strike for
herself. Pietro Farnese of the Florentines laid her low, taking one
hundred and fifty prisoners and her general. The English tarried, but a
new ally was already by her side. The Black Death which had brought down
her pride, now fell upon the enemy, both in camp and in their city of
the Lily: and then--the English were come. On the 1st of February 1364,
Hawkwood, with a thousand horse and two thousand foot, drove the
Florentines through the Val di Nievole; he harried them above Vinci and
chased them through Serravalle, crushed them at Castel di Montale, and
scattered them in the valley of Arno. They found their city at last, as
foxes find their holes, and went to earth. There Pisa halted. Before the
gates of Pisa the Florentines for years had struck money: so the Pisans
did before Florence. Nor was this all. Halting there three days, says
the chronicle,[41] "they caused three palii to be run well-nigh to the
gates of Florence. One was on horseback, another was on foot, and the
third was run by loose women (_le feminine mundane_); and they caused
newly-made priests to sing Mass there, and they coined money of divers
kinds of gold and of silver; and on one side thereof was Our Lady, with
Her Son in Her arms; on the other side was the Eagle, with the Lion
beneath its feet.... Thereafter for furt