Battle of Campaldino

Fresco in San Gimignano from 1292

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

Belligerents

Guelphs:

Florence

Charles II of Naples
Tuscan Guelphs

Ghibellines:

Arezzo

Commanders and leaders

Amerigo di Narbona
Guillaume da Durfort †

†

Strength

10,000 infantry
1,600 cavalry

10,000 infantry
800 cavalry

Casualties and losses

300 killed

1,700 killed

The Battle of Campaldino was a battle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines on 11 June 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-14th 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 immediate cause of the battle were reports that the Guelphs were ravaging the places of Conte Guido Novello, who was podestà of Arezzo, and, worse, threatening the fortified place called Bibbiena Civitella. This led to an Arentine force being quickly assembled and marching out to counter the threat. It was reported by Villani 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 family. 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.

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