The battle at La Lastra

The exiled Whites were unsuccessful in their plans for war against Florence which they had organized at a meeting (attended also by Dante) held in June 1302 in San Godenzo al Mugello. Following the failure also of a peace mission – the solution favoured by Dante, who was opposed to risky military action – undertaken in the spring of 1304 by Cardinal Niccolò da Prato, legate of the newly elected Pope Benedict XI, the Whites gathered together on 20 July at La Lastra, a few kilometres from Florence, and decided in favour of another military attack against the Blacks. Compared with the overly optimistic attitudes of his side, Dante was very cautious, convinced as he was of the need to await more favourable political circumstances and create a more solid system of alliances. Along with a small minority, he sided against the military option, to the extent that suspicions were cast upon him by the more obdurate exiles opposed to diplomatic negotiations. As Dante had predicted, the poorly planned battle at La Lastra had a disastrous outcome (four hundred Whites, Ghibellines and confederates from other cities fell in battle) and was a traumatic event for all who had supported it. Its failure led to a serious rift within the White faction. Disagreeing with their methods, Dante had distanced himself from the Whites even before the battle had taken place. His position can be inferred from a passage in Cacciaguida's prophetic speech addressed to him poet in canto XVII of Paradiso. Here, referring to the events at La Lastra, Dante presents his own faction, through the words of his ancestor, as a compagnia malvagia e scempia (“wicked and senseless company”), and expresses his own distance clearly: Di sua bestialitate il suo processo / farà la prova; sí ch’a te fia bello / averti fatta parte per te stesso (lines 67-69: Of their brutish deeds the doing will be the proof, and so your honour will be maintained by being a party unto yourself”).