ROBERT THE WISE OF NAPLES, 1309-43city to cover his expenses. Other Guelf communes nearby
also accepted him; after three years he died, after achieving
moderate successes for the Tuscan Guelfs, but leaving too
a sour taste in Florentine mouths.^1 H The Florentines were
not to accept another Angevin governor till 1342. However,
it was in the last years of John XXII's pontificate, until1334,
that irrefutable signs of a breach between the Avignon papacy
and the Angevin king emerged.
The arrival in Italy in^1330 of John, king of Bohemia,
opened the way to unexpected co-operation between Guelfs
and Ghibellines, and the Angevins too, against eccentric
papal policies. John was the son of Henry VII, but he did not
seek to become emperor, nor to displace Ludwig of Bavaria
whose Italian links were by now very attenuated; it was rather
that the Italian towns began to see in him a herald of peace
reminiscent of his father Henrv. Brescia stood in the front
line; and its former protector, Robert of Anjou, seems to have
made no effort to help defend the city against the Scaliger
lords who were trying to overwhelm it. Brescia, and then
Milan, saw in John of Bohemia the saviour they needed. The
papal legate in Italy was impressed, and made an alliance
with the king of Bohemia, but when the legate was defeated
in battle soon afterwards, the adventure came to a prema-
ture end.^19
Robert of ~ou decided that his place also lay with the
opponents of Bohemian intervention, which he apparently
identified with earlier imperial intervention. Giovanni Villani,
the Florentine chronicler, observed that the motive of King
Robert in supporting Ghibellines, of all people, lay in his
resentment at the papal-Bohemian alliance and his fear of
Ludwig of Bavaria and John of Bohemia. It was with French
armies behind him that King John re-entered Italy in 1333,
only to be defeated three months later at Ferrara, by the Lom-
bard League of Guelfs, Ghibellines and Angevins. By^1334
Robert of Anjou and Ludwig of Bavaria were showing signs
of rapprochement. The Guelf alliance had disintegrated,
- F. Schevill, Medieval and Renaissance Florence, val. 1, Medieval Florence
(New York, 1961), [earlier published as History of Florence, New York,
1936], pp. 203-4, 207-8. - G. Tabacco, La casa di Francia nell'azione politica di Giovanni XXII (Rome,
1953); Leonard, Angioini, pp. 328-35.