Not for long, however, could there be peace in Pisa.  The Raspanti still held one of the gates; and thinking to better themselves, they sent an embassy to Charles, who was in Lucca, asking his help.  He imprisoned the embassy, and at once sent his Germans to seize the city.  But the Pisans heard of it.  They rang the great bells in the Campanile, and barricaded the gates with the benches and stalls in the Duomo, on the Baptistery they set their bowmen, and on the Campanile the slingers.  Then they tore up the streets, and waited to give death for death.  The Germans, however, were easily beaten and bought off, and Pisa again returned to her internal quarrels.

Out of these sprang, in 1385, Pietro Gambacorti, as Captain of the people.  It was the beginning of the last twenty years of Pisa’s life as an independent city.  She now stood between Visconti in the north and Florence close at hand.  Florence was her friend against Visconti for her own sake:  she meant to have Pisa herself.  Gambacorti did his best.  With infinite tact he kept friends with both cities.  Under him Pisa seemed to regain something of her old confidence and prosperity.  A man of fine courage, simplicity, and passing honest, he was incapable of suspecting a tried friend whom he had benefited.  Yet it was by the hand of such an one he fell.

Jacopo d’Appiano’s father had been exiled with Gambacorti in 1348.  Like many another Pisan house which had risen from nothing, Appiano was at feud with certain of his fellow-citizens, among them the Lanfranchi family.  For this cause he kept a guard about him.  Now Gambacorti, who remembered his father’s exile, made Appiano permanent “Chancellor of the Republic”:  and hoping to reconcile the Lanfranchi with the new chancellor, he sent for Lanfranchi, but the bandits of Appiano murdered him as he went thither, and then joined Appiano in his house.  Gambacorti ordered his chancellor to deliver them up, but he refused.  Then the Bergolini offered Gambacorti their assistance, but he refused it, trusting to justice.  Appiano, however, at the head of the Raspanti, marched to the palace of Gambacorti.  The city was in arms, and they had to fight their way.  Arrived before the palace, Gambacorti ordering his men not to shoot his friend, agreed to confer with Appiano.  So he went out of his house, and as Appiano stretched out his hand, in token, as it were, of friendship, his bandits fell upon him and slew him.  A fight followed, in which the Bergolini were beaten; then Appiano became Captain of the People.  In truth, it was only a device of Visconti for seizing the city.  Appiano admitted the Milanese, and what Agnello had failed to do, he did, for he ruled as the creature of Gian Galeazzo.  But there is no honour among thieves.  Soon Visconti, hoping to win Pisa all for himself, plotted against Appiano.  The quarrel went on, Appiano fearing to make treaty with Florence lest he should fall, and fearing, too, to decide with Visconti lest he should be murdered, till he died, and his son became Captain, only to sell Pisa to Visconti for 200,000 florins, with Elba also, and many castles.[46] Then Gian Galeazzo died in 1404.