Now Florence knew that in the confusion which followed the death of the great Visconti, Pisa was weak and almost without defence, so without hesitation she sent an army to seize the city:  but Pisa, always at her best in danger, worked night and day, nor was any man idle in building fortifications.  In Genoa the Frenchman Boucicault, who had held that city, came to her assistance, for the last thing Genoa or Milan desired was to see Pisa and her port in the hands of Florence.  Boucicault imprisoned all the Florentines in Genoa, and seized Livorno, nor would he agree to release his prisoners till Florence had signed a four years’ peace.  But Pisa soon wearied of this.  In the grip of Genoa, fearing Visconti, unable to save herself, she revolted, and Boucicault sold her to Florence, for he had to defend himself in Genoa.  It was in August 1405 that Pisa was given up to Florence, but although for a moment Florence then held the city, she was to fight for it in earnest before she could hold it for good.  As yet she only possessed the citadel, and by a ruse the Pisans managed to win that from her:  then they sent to Florence to negotiate.  They offered to buy their freedom, but Florence was obdurate.  She was determined to possess herself of Pisa; her armies were ordered to advance.

Pisa was ready.  At that moment all feuds were forgotten; a united city opposed the Florentines:  there was but one way to take it—­by famine.  And it was thus at last, on 9th October 1406, Pisa fell.  Preferring to die rather than to surrender, it would have been into a city of the dead that the armies of Florence would have marched, but for the brutal treachery of Giovanni Gambacorti.  As it was, it was only a city of the dying that Florence occupied.  After every kind of heroic effort, Giovanni Gambacorti sold Pisa when she was too weak to fight, save against a declared enemy, for 50,000 florins, the citizenship of Florence and Borgo to rule.  He opened the gates, and Florence streamed in.  There was scarcely a crust left in the city which was at last become the vassal of Florence.

Here, truly, the chronicles of Pisa end—­in the horrid cruelty, scorn, and disdain so characteristic of the Florentine.  Certainly with the Medici a more humane government was adopted, so that in 1472 we read of Lorenzo Magnifico restoring the University to something of its old splendour, but nothing he could do was able to extinguish the undying hatred of Pisa for those who had stolen away her liberty.  In 1494 that carnival army of Charles VIII, winding through the valleys and over the mountains, seemed to offer them a hope of freedom.  They welcomed him with every sort of joy, and hurled the Marzocco and the Gonfalon of Florence into Arno, all to no purpose.  And truly without hope, from 1479 to 1505, they bore heroically three sieges and flung back three different armies of Florence.  Soderini and Macchiavelli urged on the war.  In 1509, Macchiavelli, that mysterious great man, besieged her on three sides, and at last, forced by hunger and famine, Pisa admitted him on the 8th June.  It was her last fight for liberty.  But she had won for herself the respect of her enemies.  A more humane and moderate policy was adopted in dealing with her.  Nevertheless, as in 1406, so now, her citizens fled away, so that there was scarcely left a Pisan in Pisa for the victor to rule.