er merchants and became a military encampment, or expelled
her soldiers and became a commercial emporium. Such a course of events
would be absolutely impossible. The truth is, that the main part of
the faction fighting and banishing was done on both sides by the
magnates themselves. The industrial community went on its way,
sometimes under grievous exactions, sometimes under a friendly
Government, always subject to the insolence and violence of the
magnates, though in varying degree, but always there, and always
pursuing its business occupations. It came about thus. We have seen
that in the twelfth century the nobles within Florence were on the
whole fairly conscious of having common cause with the merchants, but
that the very success of her external undertakings brought into the
city a more turbulent and hostile order of nobility. On the other
side, rich and powerful merchants pushed their way up into recognition
as magnates, while retaining their pecuniary interest in commerce.
Thus in the thirteenth century the body of magnates itself became
divided, not only into clans, but into factions. It always seemed
worth while for some of them to strengthen their alliances with the
territorial magnates, the open foes of the city, in order to
strengthen their hold on the city itself; and it always seemed worth
while for others to identify themselves more or less sincerely with
the demands of the people in order to have their support in wrenching
from their fellow magnates a larger share of the common spoil. It was
here that the absence of any uniting principle or constructive purpose
amongst the magnates told with fatal effect. Indeed their house was so
divided against itself that the people would probably have had little
difficulty in getting rid of them altogether, had they not been
conscious of requiring a body of fighting men for service in their
constant wars. The knights were at a certain disadvantage in a street
fight in Florence, but the merchant statesmen knew well enough that
they could not do without them on a battle-field.

We can now understand the Guelf and Ghibelline struggles of the
thirteenth century. The Buondelmonte incident of 1215, which both
Dante and Villani regard as the cause of these conflicts, was of
course only their occasion. The conclusive victory of one party could
only mean the reappearance within its ranks of the old factions under
new names. For if the faction opposed to the people won a tempo