If you study the history of humankind even a little closely, one thing becomes plain: no other creature can match the boundless talent humans have for spilling blood for no reason at all, or for the most trivial of reasons. Historians usually try to dress these follies up in grand words: ideological conflict, national pride, imperial expansion, and so on. But now and then history drops its solemn mask and shows us how two cities were once ready to cut each other's throats over a single old wooden water bucket. Admittedly, the famous and much-discussed war I am speaking of was not caused by a bucket alone. The truth is always a little more complicated than the story, and a good deal less thrilling. Even so, what happened in fourteenth-century Italy is in no way inferior to a first-rate satirical drama.
The incident took place in 1325, when Italy was not the calm, pizza-eating, tourist-welcoming single nation it is today. It was split into small city-states, which were far keener to fight like cats and dogs than to show neighbourly goodwill. Behind the fighting lay an enormous clash of egos between the two greatest political and religious powers of Europe: a struggle for power and supremacy between the supporters of the Pope and those of the Holy Roman Emperor. The Pope's supporters were called Guelphs, and the Emperor's supporters were called Ghibellines. The people of these two factions were so busy fighting each other that they probably no longer understood why they were fighting at all. In truth, it was a public game of flexing power, in which ordinary people were sacrificed while the rulers played cards.
Among these city-states were two famous ones, Bologna and Modena. Bologna was the blind supporter of the Pope, a mighty and proud Guelph city. Its next-door neighbour Modena, on the other hand, was a staunch Ghibelline city on the Emperor's side. As all good neighbours do, they hated each other from the bottom of their hearts. Their enmity did not begin one fine morning with a stolen bucket. The quarrel had been smouldering like a slow fire long before.
They clashed constantly over border lands, small castles, and control of trade. But it is human nature to forget a great political problem and inscribe some small, humiliating matter in the pages of history forever. Thanks to territorial disputes and continual raids, by 1325 things had reached such a pitch that if either side had so much as tossed a twig, a huge war was certain. And the bucket played no part in it.
It was November 1325. Winter had set in, but the heat of war had not cooled. Bologna decided that the time had come to show Modena its proper place. Straining every nerve, it raised an enormous army. Medieval chroniclers, who were experts at inflating numbers and often gave their imaginations no leash, claim that Bologna's army numbered about 32,000 soldiers. Modena, by contrast, had only a little over 7,000. These exaggerated figures may seem doubtful to modern historians, but one thing is entirely true: Bologna's forces were far greater than Modena's. It looked like a fight between a colossal giant and an ordinary man. On 15 November, at sunset, the two sides came face to face at a place called Zappolino.
The battle was a prime example of sheer bloodshed and chaos. The Bolognese were so confident of their vast army's numerical superiority that they had put arrogance ahead of preparation. But victory on a battlefield is not won merely by massing a crowd, and the soldiers of Modena proved it. Though smaller, they were highly organised, brave, and strategically superior. When the fighting began after sunset, a great event of history had taken place within just a few hours: the arrogant army of Bologna was brought crashing to the ground. Medieval tales always inflate death tolls, but there is no doubt that thousands of soldiers lost their lives and that the scale of the carnage was vast. To save their skins, the surviving soldiers of Bologna abandoned the battlefield and fled in terror toward their city.
Here begins the real irony, and the legend. The victorious Modenese did not stop at the battlefield of Zappolino. They chased the scattering enemy all the way to the very gates of Bologna. Drunk with victory, the Modenese soldiers stood outside and jeered at the people of Bologna. There is a special pleasure in humiliating an enemy in front of his own home. Just then, after hours of fighting and running, some of the Modenese soldiers were seized by a raging thirst. Searching for water, they came to an ordinary well beside the Via San Felice, outside the city. A plain wooden bucket was tied to the well for drawing water. The soldiers drew water in it and quenched their thirst, and then a peculiar idea occurred to them.
They thought: "We have beaten their huge army and scared them back into their houses. Why go home empty-handed now? Let's take this bucket of theirs along! They will be helpless without water, and it will be their ultimate humiliation." And that was that. Carrying the wooden bucket with them, they returned to Modena wearing the grins of victors.
This was the beginning of the extraordinary journey of an utterly worthless, ordinary object. The popular story, that the bucket was the cause of the war, gets history exactly backwards. "The war happened because a bucket was stolen" is not true. What is true is that "after the war ended, the bucket was taken as a satirical memento of victory." But, as you know, humans love a thrilling tale more than the truth. As the real causes of the war, the land disputes and political calculations, faded from people's memories, only the bucket remained at the centre of the folklore.
For the people of Bologna, the theft of the bucket was the greatest humiliation. It hurt them more than the deaths of thousands of soldiers that their neighbours had come and unhooked a bucket from their well and carried it off, and they could do nothing about it. For the people of Modena, by contrast, it was an immense source of pride. They hung the bucket in their city as a precious war trophy. A foreign tourist who sees that the memento of a great military victory is not a weapon of gold or silver but a cheap wooden bucket would surely be astonished. But the message of the Modenese was perfectly clear: "We defeated the enemy so ruthlessly that we can carry off whatever we like from their house, and all they can do is watch in silence."
In time, the incident carved out a permanent place for itself in Italian literature. In the seventeenth century, some three hundred years after the event, there lived in Modena a poet named Alessandro Tassoni. Perhaps a satirist lay hidden inside Alessandro Tassoni, one who laughed at this senseless human enmity. He composed a poem on the incident called La secchia rapita, made up of twelve cantos. It was later translated into English as The Stolen Bucket. It was a mock-heroic epic, a comic poem in the grand manner of heroic verse. Just as Homer's Iliad describes the great war of Troy as having been fought over Helen, Alessandro Tassoni exaggerated in exactly the same way to show how kings, princes, generals and thousands of soldiers gave their lives over one ordinary bucket.
La secchia rapita became so popular that ordinary people accepted the poem's story as real history. The true history of the war, fought between the two powerful factions of Guelphs and Ghibellines to extend their political dominance, was completely forgotten. People forgot that the Battle of Zappolino was only a fight over land, castles, and regional pride. Everyone remembered just one thing: the soldiers first stole the bucket, and then the war began. Legend is like a living monster which, once it raises its head, easily swallows the harmless frog of truth. And that is exactly what happened here. The comic, foolish picture that comes to mind at the words "a war fought over a bucket" was far more attractive than the dry pages of historical fact. Humans always prefer to believe whatever is entertaining to hear.
Even today, if you go to Modena in Italy, the people there will tell you the story of that historic bucket with great pride. It is shining proof of how human pride can survive century after century. The original bucket is still preserved. You may wonder what value an ordinary wooden bucket could possibly have that anyone would keep it. But for the Modenese it is no less than a priceless jewel. For safety, the original bucket is kept with great care in the Camerino dei Confirmati of Modena's Palazzo Comunale. For public viewing, and to draw tourists, an exact replica hangs in the Ghirlandina Tower. Standing there and looking at that bucket, you feel a strange emotion stir.
In the history of humankind, empires without number have risen and fallen, and there is no counting the great wars fought over gold, silver, and power. But the people of Modena took a cheap, battered wooden water bucket as the memento of a victory and kept it for hundreds of years as a symbol of their pride. That proves there is no limit to the madness within us.
The truth is that the Battle of Zappolino was never fought for that bucket. It was fought for human arrogance, the lust for power, and the folly of trying to prove one's own superiority. The bucket was merely an innocent bystander, dragged away by force after the war.
And yet, if we were to remove this irony from history, history would become a dry list of dates and body counts. The theft of the bucket gave the story a delicious dash of spice. As a result, even seven hundred years later, you and I sit here discussing the folly of those fourteenth-century Italians and smiling quietly to ourselves. That little wooden bucket of history quietly reminds us all of one thing: however grand the words with which humans go to war, in the end it is one ordinary bucket that remains the sole symbol of all their pride and arrogance. What greater historical irony could there be?
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