Edward III did not repay the Bardi and Peruzzi, and both Florentine banks failed in the 1340s

The Bardi and Peruzzi companies of Florence lent to kings across Europe. The Bardi lent at least £72,631 to the English Crown between 1290 and 1326. When Edward III went to war with France in 1337, both lent heavily; the Peruzzi advanced more than £18,000 in the first six months of 1337. The historian Ephraim Russell put their combined loans to the Crown from 1290 to 1345 at no less than £433,000. Repayment came slowly, often as promises or assignments of revenue. The Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani wrote that the king owed the Bardi 180,000 marks and the Peruzzi 135,000 marks, together 1,365,000 florins, "the worth of a kingdom". He added that the king of Naples owed each company 100,000 florins. The Peruzzi company collapsed in 1343. Villani dates the Bardi failure to January 1345 in the Florentine calendar, which is January 1346 in the modern one. In November 1345 the Bardi's creditors were offered about 30 percent; the Peruzzi paid about 20. Russell concluded that Edward's default was not the only cause; Florence's 1343 revolt, its wars, losses in France and Naples' repudiation also counted. Edwin Hunt, in his 1994 study of the Peruzzi, argued that Villani overstated the English debt and that the companies were already weak^†. Both families survived. Contessina de' Bardi married Cosimo de' Medici, and Ubaldino Peruzzi was gonfaloniere of Florence in 1849.