However, in the late Middle Ages that saw this situation as a town Terno pù important proved to be a profoundly destabilizing element, given the willingness of different lordships to gain dominance over it: many battles between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and later between the armies of Milan and Venice, put a strain on the people who lived centuries of poverty, so that the island was called "the triangle of hunger." In this sense the description is very clear in a document of time: