This large commerce in face of the obstacles that barred its way seems extraordinary. A city like Florence, for instance, especially in the earlier days, was greatly hampered by the conditions about her. Outside her walls, within the radius of a dozen or twenty miles, were castles manned by arrogant nobles, who made traffic unsafe. They would not conform to the new economic condition of society except upon compulsion. Rival cities refused to let Florentine wares pass through their territories without payment of ruinous tolls. Wars were waged to moderate these exactions. Or, again, war was necessary to enforce the rights of Florentine citizens in other cities. Moreover, each city had its own system of weights and measures, its own coinage; each imposed customs on all wares entering its gates, in earlier days so much a cart-load, afterwards a percentage of the value. On all highways, at all bridges and fords, there were tolls to be paid. From city to city a merchant had to change his money, until in later times certain coins, like the Florentine florin, passed current everywhere; and sometimes, on entering the gates, he was obliged to adopt a distinguishing badge, as, for instance, according to the usage at Bologna, putting a piece of red wax on his thumb-nail. These were the fetters placed on trade in time of peace; but peace itself was transitory and uncertain. Apart from the wars with the Emperor, the cities periodically fought the feudal nobility, or one another. Venice made war on Ravenna, Pisa on Lucca, Vicenza on Treviso, Fano on Pesaro, Verona on Padua, Modena on Bologna, and the greater cities, like Milan and Florence, on any or all of their respective neighbours. When a city had no absorbing war abroad, factions fought at home. Burghers and nobles barricaded the streets, manned the towers, rang the bells, shot and hacked one another with spasmodic fury. The burghers generally won. They then banished hundreds of their adversaries, and made laws against them. In some cities a register was kept to record the names of the nobles whose democracy was suspected; in others, as in Lucca, nobles were excluded from all share in the government, and were not allowed to testify against burghers. In Pisa, if there was disquiet in the streets, the nobles were obliged to stay indoors.
These factions called themselves Guelfs and Ghibellines. At first Guelfs were the burghers of the communes and partisans of the Papacy, and Ghibellines partisans of the Empire and the feudal system; but subsequently the terms merely served to distinguish political parties, whose platforms, as we should say, shifted with questions of the hour. Even when these two factions were at peace, they distinguished themselves by different badges and fashions. The merlons of the Guelf battlements were square, those of the Ghibelline swallow-tailed. Good party men wore caps of diverse pattern, did their hair differently, cut their bread and folded their napkins in different ways. It was enough that one side should bow, take an oath, harness a horse, in one mode, for the other side to start a contrary fashion.
The growth of population, of property, of commerce, however, shows that history may easily dwell too much upon fighting and war. In these petty wars and street frays, the numbers engaged were few, and but little blood was shed. Most of the fighting was a consequence of economic difficulties. It was the mediæval equivalent of strikes, lock-outs, boycotts, undersellings, rivalries, riots, and other phenomena of modern industry.
The maritime cities were in a very different position from the inland cities, and had a different history. They enjoyed great advantages for trade. No feudal barons could bar the sea, and pirates and infidels were not serious impediments. Greater commercial prosperity, however, begot more bitter commercial jealousy. Genoa hated Pisa; no Genoese sailor could endure the cut of a Pisan sail. Both cities had a large trade in the Levant, and being so near each other became deadly rivals. They fought spasmodically for years, from the Gulf of Genoa to the Black Sea, and at last came to the death grapple. The time was unfortunate for Ghibelline Pisa, as a Guelf league had been attacking her on land. The decisive battle was fought off the island of Meloria, a few miles from the mouth of the Arno. The Genoese, who outnumbered the Pisans, won a great victory, destroyed or captured many galleys, and took ten thousand prisoners (1284). Pisa never recovered from this blow. Florence and Lucca took immediate advantage of it to unite with Genoa, and force Pisa to submit to a Guelf government; and from this time on greedy Florence, like a hawk, kept her eyes fixed on poor Pisa, impatient for the time when she should seize her prey.
Genoa remained a republic, active, eager, impetuous, torn by factions and subject to many vicissitudes, but lack of space compels us to leave her and pass on to where "Venice sits in state, throned on her hundred isles." She, queen of the sea, had even a more lavish portion of individuality than her sister cities, individual as they all were, and hardly belonged to Italy, so completely did she hold herself aloof from the two great interests of mediæval Italy, the Empire and the Papacy. No cries of Pope's men and king's men, of Guelf and Ghibelline, disturbed the Grand Canal or the Piazza of St. Mark's; no feudal incumbrances hampered her mercantile spirit, nor did papal anathemas cause a single Venetian ship to shift her course. Venice had long remained loyal to Constantinople, and even after all political dependence had ceased, was, in character and aspect, more a Constantinople of the West than an Italian city, a grown-up daughter, more beautiful than her beautiful mother, who, living her own triumphant and unfilial life, still retained many of her mother's traits. Untroubled by sentiment, even in the Crusades, Venice always kept steadily in view her fixed purpose of increasing her commerce and of securing foreign markets; and this purpose shaped her political actions, and also, indirectly, the form of her government.
Originally the citizens, assembled in public meeting, elected the Doge, and exercised a right to vote on important political matters; but the great families soon acquired control, and little by little turned the government into an oligarchy. The first great step was taken in Barbarossa's time, just when the Lombard cities were struggling to free themselves from Imperial dominion. A Great Council of four hundred and eighty members was established, to which were given the powers of legislation, appointment, electing the Doge, and filling vacancies in itself. The franchises of the people were all taken away and the oligarchy left supreme. This oligarchy of merchant princes, in whom patriotism, pride of place, and love of gain harmoniously accorded, was an exceedingly competent body of men. The greatness of Venice was their greatness, and they pursued it devotedly. Beginning early in life these patricians were trained for their duties by service in the navy and in the merchant marine, or by employment in the government of the various cities, islands, and territories included in the long stretch of coastwise empire. Knowing that Venice lived by commerce they made every effort by war, diplomacy, and private enterprise, to extend that commerce. After the conquest and division of the Eastern Empire (1204) they became more eager than ever for a monopoly of trade with the Levant, and inevitably came into deadly rivalry with Genoa, also passionately eager to hold the gorgeous East in fee.
The wars with Genoa, destructive though they were for the time being, were of service to the aristocracy, for they made the Venetians appreciate the value of a compact governing body; and the aristocracy took advantage of that appreciation to tighten its hold on the government.
Throughout the thirteenth century the Great Council, though it consisted entirely, or almost entirely, of patricians and elected its own members, had been open to all classes. Any citizen, however unlikely to be elected, was eligible. At the close of the century the patricians secured the enactment of a series of measures, which in substance divided the citizens into two classes, those whose ancestors had sat in the Great Council, and those whose ancestors had not, and decreed that only members of the first class should be eligible. This legislation is known as the closing of the Great Council. As all those who were eligible naturally wished to become members, the Council gradually increased until it finally numbered over fifteen hundred. The patricians also further curtailed the powers of the Doge, divided the various functions of government among the main subdivisions of the Council,—the Senate, the Council of Forty, the Doge's cabinet, and the Council of Ten,—and gave to the State the definite form of government which it maintained to its end.
From Venice we must pass by Milan and the cities of the Po, to where in the extreme Northwest the Counts of Savoy, perched on the Alps, maintained a precarious sovereignty over both slopes, with no resources except the muscles of their mountaineers and the possession of Alpine passes. Little did the proud maritime cities, Genoa and Venice, the great inland cities, Milan and Florence, and Rome least of all, suspect that these poor counts would one day consolidate all the territory from the foot of the mountains to the Riviera in a compact little kingdom (Piedmont), and from that as a pedestal, step to still higher honours. The House of Savoy runs aristocratically back into legend; but about the year 1000, a certain Humbert of the White Hand, emerging from historic obscurity, obtained the city of Turin and part of Piedmont, as a marriage portion for his son, and thereby secured to his house a footing in Italy (1045). In the course of another century or so these Savoyards in a succession of Humberts and Amedeos, brave, shrewd, and usually successful men, extended their dominions by war, by marriage, and by bargains. They made the most of their position as door-keepers to Italy, and exacted various privileges from needy Emperors, as the price of passing the Alps. They fought rival counts, waged innumerable petty wars, and rightly or wrongly acquired territories which are now parts of France, Switzerland, and Italy. The succession of counts reads like any other mediæval genealogy; and their exploits, raids, and sieges viewed from this cold distance have a somewhat monotonous similarity; but survival proves the worth and valour of the stock, and when after long centuries the people of Italy had need of princes, the House of Savoy was the only noble house that had retained power and respect. It is a brilliant example of the truth of the saying that those who have been faithful over a few things shall be masters over many.
Such were the political divisions of Italy in this transition period which intervenes between the departing Middle Ages and the incoming Modern World.