Gradually, also, tradesmen were obliged to recognise that they had become personally useless in the field. Accordingly, whenever the republics were threatened with attack, they no longer ventured to give battle without hiring some captain with a band of foreign horse. Italian valour rapidly lost its prestige, and "Companies of Adventure"—soon to be the cause of our direst calamities—began to be formed. Later on, it is true that when Alberico da Barbiano, Attendolo Sforza, Braccio da Montone, and others adopted the same career, they rivalled and even surpassed the foreign adventurers, who had now often to yield the palm to Italian courage. Soon, in fact, many came from afar to learn the new art of war under these Italian captains whose skill first reduced it to a science. Nevertheless, few citizens of free states were able to devote their whole life to war. It was the nobles, the exiles, the unemployed—knowing no other trade—and the subjects of petty tyrants who joined the "Companies of Adventure." And whether small bands or large, Italian or foreign, they invariably hastened the ruin of all our communes, and more especially of Florence. The continual wars in which this State was now engaged no longer served to foster the military spirit and energy of its people. Always compelled to rely on the help of foreign mercenaries, it soon lost all confidence in its own resources, the which therefore rapidly declined. A campaign simply implied some financial operation, or the levying of fresh taxes to furnish sufficient capital for the hire of one of the captains of adventure, who always closed with the highest bid. The money found, it was often enough to send it to the State's surest and most powerful ally, who undertook to complete the affair by engaging the captain best able to hire the largest number of men. So the chief thing was to know how to gain friends and excite enemies against the foe, and in this the Florentines always showed masterly skill. But these devices were no proof of military capacity. The most important personages despatched by them to the seat of war were commissioners charged to superintend the general proceedings, the administration of the army, and the political object of the campaign, and although we sometimes find these commissioners suddenly transformed into captains, taking command of the forces and deciding the fate of a battle with singular daring, their functions were always civil and diplomatic rather than military.
It is easy to foresee the final results of this method with regard to the future of the Republic, and the morals of its inhabitants. The stout burghers at the head of the government were engaged in the continual practice of cunning and craft. It was requisite to show adroitness in the council chamber; to thwart the nobles; to remain constantly on the alert to prevent the populace from growing unruly, while persuading it to furnish funds to carry on wars which were indispensable to secure the safety and prosperity of the foreign trade. Hence, still greater subtlety was needed in diplomatic negotiations to avoid being isolated, and to continually maintain the equilibrium of Italian States in the way most advantageous for the Republic. Even actual warfare being now reduced, as we have seen, to a financial operation, had come to be a fresh proof of ingenuity. There were no longer any of those vast sacrifices of citizens' blood and citizens' lives which serve towards the continued regeneration of a people, no longer any deeds of open and generous violence. And at times when the rich burghers were not absorbed in politics, they and all the rest of the citizens were devoted heart and soul to commerce, employing their leisure moments in the study of Tacitus, Virgil, or Homer, kept ready to hand under their counters. But, invariably, it was only the intelligence that was kept always in training, while the nobler faculties remained strangled and atrophied by the constant use of cunning and trickery. This was destined to lead, sooner or later, to the inevitable decay of the Republic's moral and political life, and to the decline of the highest mental culture. If the manner in which wars were planned and conducted caused fatal results, no less fatal were the ulterior consequences of victorious campaigns. For the hired troops once paid off, changed from friends into foes, and instantly sought to sell their services to some other employer. Failing to find one, and therefore receiving no pay, they dispersed in armed bands, ravaging town and country, by a species of military brigandage. Generally, it was found requisite to come to terms with them, and bribe them to keep the peace.
But the most important point to be noted at this juncture is that the conquest of fresh territory, although become an absolute necessity to the Republic, now began to be a serious danger and the source of future calamities. During the Middle Ages the Italian Commune had been a fertile cause of progress; but as its possessions outside the walls began to increase, it proved wholly powerless to convert the free city into what we call a State without working radical changes in its constitution. In fact, even in Florence, the most democratic of our communes, citizens were only to be found within the circuit of the walls. Laws were framed to ameliorate the condition of the territory outside and to abolish serfdom there, but no one contemplated endowing inhabitants of the contado with political rights. The title of citizens always remained, as it were, a privilege only granted to a minority, even of dwellers within the walls, and was never extended to the people at large. Whenever a new city was conquered and subjected to the Republic, it was governed more or less harshly; allowed to retain more or fewer local privileges; sometimes even permitted to retain a republican form of government, subject to the authority of a Podestà, captain, or commissary, and paying the taxes imposed by them; but its inhabitants never enjoyed the freedom of the City, nor were their representatives by any chance admitted to the councils or political offices of Florence. Accordingly, as the State became enlarged by fresh conquests, the cluster of citizens monopolising the government, and already very limited in number, sank to a still smaller minority compared with the ever-increasing population subject to their rule. Similarly to all other republicans of the Middle Ages, the Florentines were altogether unable to conceive the idea of a State governed with a view to the general welfare. On the contrary, the prosperity and grandeur of Florence formed the one object and aim to which every other consideration had to be subservient. Nor had the lower classes and populace, who were always clamouring for increased freedom, any different or wider views on the subject. Their ideas, indeed, being restricted in a narrower circle, were even more prejudiced, as their passions were blinder. Consequently it was considered at that time a greater calamity to be subjugated by a fellow republic than by a monarchy; inasmuch as princes brought their tyranny to bear equally on all alike, and thus, at any rate as regarded politics, the chief majority of the conquered suffered less injury. When Florence, however, by achieving the long-desired conquest of Pisa, at last became mistress of the sea, and witnessed the rapid increase of her commerce, she discovered that the annexation of a great and powerful republic, full of life and strength and possessed of so large a trade, brought her none of the advantages which might have ensued from a union of a freer kind with an equal distribution of political rights. The chief citizens of Pisa and all the wealthier families left the country, preferring to live in Lombardy, France, or even in Sicily under the Aragonese, where at least they enjoyed civil equality, rather than remain in their own city subject to the harsh and tyrannous rule of Florentine shopkeepers. The commerce and industry of Pisa, her navy, her merchant-fleet, all vanished when freedom fell; while her Studio, or university, one of the old glories of Italy, and afterwards reconstituted by the Medici, was done away with, and the city soon reduced to a state of squalid desolation. All conquered cities suffered this fate; those once of the richest and most powerful in the days of their freedom being treated with still greater harshness than the rest.[366] This makes it easy to understand why, when Florence was in danger, all conquered cities in which life was not altogether extinguished invariably seized the opportunity to try to regain their independence, and always preferred a native or foreign tyrant to cowering beneath the yoke of a republic that refused to learn from experience the wisdom of changing its policy. Nor could it have effected such change without radically altering its whole constitution and manner of existence.
Thus, in accumulating riches and power, Florence was only multiplying the causes of her approaching and unavoidable decline. The Commune seemed increasingly incapable of giving birth to the modern State, and accordingly, when its chief support, commerce, began to decay, the strength of the burghers was sapped, and the oppressed multitude, now a formidable majority, speedily looked to monarchical rule for their relief. Thus the Medici were enabled to attain supremacy in the name of freedom, and with the support of people and populace. Thus, likewise, by violence, or fraud, or by both combined, the communes of Italy were all reduced to principalities; and wherever, from exceptional causes, the republican order still lingered on for a while, it was only as a shadow of its former self, and no longer rendering any of the advantages for which it had been originally designed. Populations which had failed to establish equality by means of free institutions, were now forced to learn the lesson of equality beneath the undiscriminating oppression of a despotic prince. Signories formed the necessary link of transition between the mediæval commune and the modern state. For these Signories traced a way towards the just administration and method pursued by the vast kingdoms then in course of formation on the continent of Europe, and which also remained absolute and despotic monarchies until the French revolution effected in town, country, and throughout every class that work of social emancipation which the Italian communes had so admirably initiated, but had never learnt to extend beyond the circuit of their walls.
Florence maintained a prolonged resistance, but finally shared the fate of her fellow republics.
