This campaign might, of course, be called merely a part of Venice’s commercial policy, defence not aggression; but later, in 1423, the Florentines persuaded the Republic to join with them in a war against the Visconti, declaring that they were weary of struggling alone against such tyrants, and that if Venice did not help them they would be compelled to make Filippo Maria ‘King of North Italy.’ The result of the war that followed was a treaty securing Venice a temporary increase of power on the mainland, and may be taken as the first decisive step in her deliberate scheme of building up a land-empire in Italy.
Machiavelli, a student of politics in the sixteenth century, who wrote a handbook of advice for rulers called The Prince, as well as the history of Florence, his native city, declares that the decline of the Venetians ‘dated from the time when they became ambitious of conquests by land and of adopting the manners and customs of the other states of Italy’. This may be true; but it is doubtful whether the great Republic could have remained in glorious isolation with the Visconti knocking at her gates.
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Florence
From Venice we must turn to Florence, which, by the fifteenth century, emerged from petty rivalries as the first city in Tuscany. Like Milan, Florence fell a prey to Guelfs and Ghibellines; but these feuds, instead of becoming a family rivalry between would-be despots, developed into a bitter class-war.
On the fall of Frederick II the Guelfs, who in Florence at this date may be taken as representing the populo grasso, or rich merchants, as opposed to the grandi, or nobles, succeeded in driving the majority of their enemies out of the city. They then remodelled the constitution in their own favour.
The chief power in the city was now the ‘Signory’, composed of the ‘Gonfalonier of Justice’ and a number of ‘Priors’, representatives of the arti, or guilds of lawyers, physicians, clothiers, &c.: to name but a few. No aristocrat might stand for any public office unless he became a member of one of the guilds, and in order to ensure that he did not merely write down his name on their registers it was later enacted that every candidate for office must show proof that he really worked at the trade of the guild to which he claimed to belong.
Other and sterner measures of proscription followed with successive generations. The noble who injured a citizen of lesser rank, whether on purpose or by accident, was liable to have his house levelled with the dust: the towers, from which in old days his ancestors had poured boiling oil or stones upon their rivals, were reduced by law to a height that could be easily scaled; in the case of a riot no aristocrat, however innocent his intentions, might have access to the streets. The grande was, in fact, both in regard to politics and justice, placed at such an obvious disadvantage that to ennoble an ambitious enemy was a favourite Florentine method of rendering him harmless.
The Guelf triumph of the thirteenth century did not, in spite of its completeness, bring peace to Florence. New parties sprang up; and the government in its efforts to keep clear of class or family influence introduced so many complicated checks that great injury was done to individual action, and all hope of a steady policy removed. Members of the ‘Signory’, for instance, served only for two months at a time: the twelve ‘Buonomini’, or ‘Good men’, elected to give them advice only for six. What was most in contrast to the ideal of ‘the right man for the right job’ was the practice of first making a list of all citizens considered suitable to hold office, then putting the names in a bag, and afterwards picking them out haphazard as vacancies occurred. Even this precaution against favouritism—and, one is inclined to add, also against efficiency—was checked by another law, the summoning of a parlamento in cases of emergency. This parlamento was an informal gathering of the people collected by the ringing of a bell in the big square, where it was then asked to decide whether a special committee should be appointed with free power to alter the existing constitution. Politicians argued that here in the last resort was a direct appeal to the people, but in reality by placing armed men at the entrances to the square a docile crowd could be manœuvred at the mercy of any mob-orator set up by those behind the scenes.
Power remained in Florence in the hands of the prosperous burghers and merchants, and these in time developed their own feuds under the names of ‘Whites’ and ‘Blacks’, adopted by the partisans in a family quarrel.