streets were full of “Pagans, Turks, Libyans, Parthians, and foul Chaldeans, with their incense, pearls, and jewels.”  Yet though so good a Guelph as Donizo, the biographer of the great Countess, can express his horror of these “Gentiles,” Genoa, too, must have been in much the same case; but then Genoa was Guelph, and Pisa Ghibelline.  Yet then, as to-day in that quiet far corner of the city, in a meadow sprinkled with daisies, the great white Duomo stood a silent witness to the splendour of the noblest republic in Tuscany.

But her day was too soon over.  In 1254, Florence and Lucca met and defeated her.  The Guelphs had won.  In Pisa we find the government reformed, elders appointed, a senate, a great council, and Podesta, a Captain of the People.  It seemed as though Pisa herself was about to become Guelph, or at any rate to fling out her nobles.  But in many a distant colony the nobles ruled, undisturbed by the disaster at home.  And then, almost before she had set her house in order, the splendid victory of Monteaperto threw the Guelphs into confusion, and the banners of Pisa once more flew wide and far.  But the fatal cause of the Empire was doomed; Manfred fell at Benevento, and Corradino was defeated at Tagliacozzo by Charles of Anjou, who, not content with victory, expelled the Pisan merchants from his ports.  There was left to her the sea.

Now Ugolino della Gherardesca, of the great family which had been especially enraged by the conduct of Visconti, married his sister to one of that family reigning at Gallura in Sardinia.  This man, the judge of Gallura, as he was called, had come to live in Pisa.  The Pisans looked with much suspicion on this alliance, and exiled first the Visconti and later Ugolino himself, with all the other Guelphs.  Ugolino went to Lucca, and with her help in 1276 overcame his native city and forced her to receive again the exiles.  Then the merchandise of Florence passed freely through her port, Lucca regained her fortresses, and Pisa herself fell into the possession of Ugolino.

Nevertheless, without a thought of fear, looking ever seaward, she awaited the Genoese attack, certain that it would come, since she was divided within her gates.  It was to be a fight to the death.  During the year 1282 the Genoese were driven back from the mouth of the Arno, the Pisans were driven from Genoa, and scattered and spoiled by a storm.  These were but skirmishes; the fight was yet to come.  In Genoa they built a hundred and fifty ships of war; the Pisans, too, were straining every nerve.  Then came a running fight off Sardinia, in which the Pisans had the worse of it, losing eight galleys and fifteen hundred men.  Yet they were not disheartened.  They made Alberto Morosini, a Venetian, their Podesta, and with him as Admirals were Count Ugolino della Gherardesca and Andreotto Saracini.  When the treasury was empty the nobles gave their fortunes for the public cause.  We hear of one family giving eleven ships