THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEA~ KINGDOMS 1200-L~OOThe great banks, the Bardi, Peruzzi and Acciaiuoli, whose
size was not even rivalled by the Medici and Strozzi in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, were deeply involved with
the Angevins not merely in their rise to prosperity, but also
in their cataclysmic fall in the 1340s. The peak of Florentine
involvement in Naples was reached before 1330. Thereafter
a number of cracks appear in this neat fa<;:ade. Internal
squabbles reduced the effectiveness of the Florentine gov-
ernment in influencing papal and Angevin affairs. External
quarrels brought Florence into expensive wars, such as the
Lombard League of 1332 in which such improbable allies as
the Visconti joined Florence and King Robert in an attempt
to rebuff King john of Bohemia. The result was that by 1341
Florence had to ask its allies for help with its war expenses;
the commune turned, improbably enough, to King Robert of
Naples: 'We are spending an uncountable amount of money
nowadays on Lombard affairs, so that all our existing and
future revenues have already been taken up.' The Florentine
banks were either reluctant to help or incapable of helping.
The economic historian Armando Sapori suggested that the
Peruzzi at least were being drained of funds: in^1331 the
firm reorganised, with £60,000 capital, but by^1335 virtuallv
every penny had already gone.~~
The collapse of the Bardi and Peruzzi in 1343-45 marks
the end of an era of great commercial adventurousness, and
the beginning of a dramatic decline in the fortunes of the
Neapolitan crown. The bankers' support for Edward III's
invasion of Flanders was a financial disaster, while Floren tine
attempts to extricate the republic from its traditional Guelf
alliance against Ludwig of Bavaria excited serious alarm in
Naples, on political and financial grounds. It was not clear
where the Angevin rulers could henceforth turn in their
search for funds; for the Florentine banks which survived
the 1340s were smaller and more cautious than those which
had financed Robert of Anjou. Yet there were still wars to be
fought, in Sicily and against the Hungarians, and there was
still a magnificent court demanding its upkeep.
This negative picture of Angevin finance must not be ex-
aggerated. John H. Pryor has discussed Angevin attempts to
- A. Sapori, La oisi delle mrnjmg:niP mPrcantili dei Bardi e dei Pmtzzi (Flor-
ence, 1926); but cf. Hunt, SujJocComjmnif'.\, pp. 156-229.
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