was discovered, and the participators
in it taken and beheaded, among whom were Tommaso Lupacci and
Lambertuccio Frescobaldi. This defeat caused the Florentines great
anxiety, and despairing of preserving their liberty, they sent envoys to
King Ruberto of Naples, offering him the dominion of their city; and he,
knowing of what immense importance the maintenance of the Guelph cause
was to him, accepted it. He agreed with the Florentines to receive from
them a yearly tribute of two hundred thousand florins, and he send his
son Carlo to Florence with four thousand horsemen.

Shortly after this the Florentines were relieved in some degree of the
pressure of Castruccio's army, owing to his being compelled to leave
his positions before Florence and march on Pisa, in order to suppress a
conspiracy that had been raised against him by Benedetto Lanfranchi,
one of the first men in Pisa, who could not endure that his fatherland
should be under the dominion of the Lucchese. He had formed this
conspiracy, intending to seize the citadel, kill the partisans of
Castruccio, and drive out the garrison. As, however, in a conspiracy
paucity of numbers is essential to secrecy, so for its execution a few
are not sufficient, and in seeking more adherents to his conspiracy
Lanfranchi encountered a person who revealed the design to Castruccio.
This betrayal cannot be passed by without severe reproach to Bonifacio
Cerchi and Giovanni Guidi, two Florentine exiles who were suffering
their banishment in Pisa. Thereupon Castruccio seized Benedetto and put
him to death, and beheaded many other noble citizens, and drove their
families into exile. It now appeared to Castruccio that both Pisa and
Pistoia were thoroughly disaffected; he employed much thought and energy
upon securing his position there, and this gave the Florentines their
opportunity to reorganize their army, and to await the coming of Carlo,
the son of the King of Naples. When Carlo arrived they decided to lose
no more time, and assembled a great army of more than thirty thousand
infantry and ten thousand cavalry--having called to their aid every
Guelph there was in Italy. They consulted whether they should attack
Pistoia or Pisa first, and decided that it would be better to march on
the latter--a course, owing to the recent conspiracy, more likely to
succeed, and of more advantage to them, because they believed that the
surrender of Pistoia would follow the acquisition of Pisa.

In the