Battle of Zappolino
Battle of Zappolino | |
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Part of Zappolino, Metropolitan City of Bologna, present-day Italy 44°30′N 11°05′E / 44.500°N 11.083°E | |
Result | Modenese victory |
(Ghibelline)
(Guelph)
5,000 infantry
30,000 infantry
The Battle of Zappolino, the only battle of the
Setting
Their boundaries had been set by
In the months before the battle, border clashes intensified. In July, the Bolognese entered the Modenese territory and laid waste the fields in the section "between the canals" by fire and sword. In August, a Bolognese rabble led by their
Battle
As the Bolognese chronicler Matteo Griffoni tells it,
The battle took place 15 November 1325 around sunset.
The battle was over by nightfall. Within a couple of hours, the Bolognese were routed. The Modenese advanced to the very walls of Bologna and destroyed the castles of Crespellano, Zola, Samoggia, Anzola, Castelfranco, Piumazzo and the chiusa del Reno near Casalecchio, which diverted the river towards the city. They did not attempt a siege of the city but scornfully organized a palio outside the very gates of the city ad æternam memoriam præmissorum et æternam Bononiensium scandalum, "to the eternal memory of those sent out on the expedition and the eternal shame of Bologna",[7] and then returned to Modena brandishing a bucket taken from a well outside Porta San Felice; twenty-six captured notables of Bologna were incarcerated for the next eleven weeks in Modena.[8]
Aftermath
The battle is also famous for the wooden bucket that the Modenese took as spoils from the Bolognesi. Though it is not mentioned by Griffoni, the unusual booty was venerated in Modena in remembrance of the victory. The history of the bucket was told in Alessandro Tassoni's satirical poem La secchia rapita (1614–15, published in Paris, 1622). It was still seen in the basement of the Torre della Ghirlandina in 1911.[11]
References
- ^ Vittorio Lenzi, La battaglia di Zappolino e La secchia rapita 1995.
- ^ Called "creatura di Ludovico il Bávaro" by Salvatore Muzzi, Compendio della storia di Bologna, 1875: ch. xxiv:104.
- ^ Messer Passerino Signor di Modena ribelle di Santa Chiesa, fosse lecito a ciascuna persona di poter danneggiarlo nell'avere e nella persona, dando a chiunque certa perdonanza, come se andassero oltra mare a ricuperare il Sepulcro (Scriptores Rerum Italicum vol. XVIII, column 338, quoted in Angelo Namias, Storia di Modena e dei paesi circostanti 1894, book v, c. XIX:220)
- ^ Matteo Griffoni, "Conflictus Zapolini", in Memoriale historicum de rebus bononiensium, s. anno 1325.
- ^ a b Matteo Griffoni, "Conflictus Zapolini", in Memoriale historicum de rebus bononiensium, s.v. 1325.
- ^ Matteo Griffani dates it the following day, apparently following the convention that began the new day at sunset on the eve.
- ^ Cronica modense, quoted by William Heywood, Palio and ponte: an account of the sports of central Italy from the age of Dante to the XXth Century 1904:21.
- ^ A thousand and more Bolognese dead and the captive notables are recorded by Matteo Griffoni.
- ^ Abulafia "The Italian south", New Cambridge Medieval History, 19:493.
- ^ Abulafia, eo. loc..
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911, s.v. "Modena", column 2.