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Updated: July 2, 2025
On the wall opposite the dais, between two ranges of narrow Venetian windows, looking into the court-yard, hangs the historic portrait of Castruccio Castracani degli Antimelli, the Napoleon of the middle ages, whose rapid conquests raised Lucca to a sovereign state. A gleam of ruddy light strikes through a crevice in a red curtain opposite; it falls full upon the chair of state.
He was a young man; but he was already versed in those arts for which the statesmen of Italy had, ever since the thirteenth century, been celebrated, those arts by which Castruccio Castracani and Francis Sforza rose to greatness, and which Machiavel reduced to a system. No sovereign in modern Europe has, with so small a principality, exercised so great an influence during so long a period.
Had Fergus Mac-Ivor lived Sixty Years sooner than he did, he would in all probability have wanted the polished manner and knowledge of the world which he now possessed; and had he lived Sixty Years later, his ambition and love of rule would have lacked the fuel which his situation now afforded. He was indeed, within his little circle, as perfect a politician as Castruccio Castracani himself.
It was now that the Ghibellines of Lucca with Castruccio Castracani joined Uguccione. They met the army of Florence at Montecatini. Machiavelli states that Uguccione fell ill, and had no part in the battle, which was won by Castruccio. Villari, however, gives the glory to Uguccione.
In S. Francesco, that desecrated great mausoleum that lies at the end of the Via di S. Francesco not far from the garden tower of Paolo Guinigi, I came upon the humble grave of Castruccio Castracani.
This chapel, hidden away in the Casa dei Trovatelli at the top of Via S. Maria in Pisa, became a glorious monument of the victory of Pisa over Florence. But the freedom of Pisa was gone for ever; others, lords and tyrants, arose, Castruccio Castracani and the rest, yet she was still at bay.
Here I wish only to remind the reader who wanders among the ruins of his great castle, that Castracani took Sarzana by force and held it against any; and perhaps to recall the words of Machiavelli, where he tells us that the capture of Sarzana was a feat of daring done to impress the Lucchesi with the splendour of their liberated tyrant.
And truly it is into a city of marble that you come, when, following the dusty road full of the ruts of the bullock-wagons, past Avenza, that little city with a great castle of Castruccio Castracani, after climbing into the gorge where the bullocks, a dozen of them it may be, yoked to a single dray, take all the way, you enter the cold streets of Carrara, that are always full of the sound of falling water.
Luna Nova the Romans called the place, for it was built to replace the older city close to the sea, the ruins of which you may still find beside the road on the way southward, but of Roman days there is nothing left in the new city. It was a fortress of Castruccio Castracani, the birthplace of a great Pope.
Had Fergus Mac-Ivor lived Sixty Years sooner than he did, he would, in all probability, have wanted the polished manner and knowledge of the world which he now possessed; and had he lived Sixty Years later, his ambition and love of rule would have lacked the fuel which his situation now afforded. He was indeed, within his little circle, as perfect a politician as Castruccio Castracani himself.
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