Lucca

That freedom first had to be won back. When Castruccio Castracani, the lord who had led Lucca to victory over Florence at Altopascio, died in 1328, the city was sold, pawned and handed from master to master for four decades, among them John of Bohemia, the Della Scala of Verona and the Pisans. In 1370 Emperor Charles IV set it free, and the restored republic made its name across Europe again through its bankers and its silk. Its one later lord, Paolo Guinigi, was arrested by his own citizens when Florence laid siege to the city in 1429–30, and the Florentines were finally beaten on the Serchio by a relief army under Niccolò Piccinino while the Lucchesi sallied out against their rear. Behind the broad walls it built in the 16th century, the republic kept the word Libertas on its banner until the French conquest of 1799.