ts worst form as a party leader of the
Ghibellines, so Charles of Anjou became a typical tyrant in the Guelf
interest. He was recognized as chief of the Guelf party by the
Florentines, and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was conferred upon him
as the price of his dictatorship. The republics almost simultaneously
entered upon a new phase. Democratized by the extension of the
franchise, corrupted, to use Machiavelli's phrase, in their old
organization of the Popolo and Commune, they fell into the hands of
tyrants, who employed the prestige of their party, the indifference of
the Vigliacchi, and the peace-loving instincts of the middle class for
the consolidation of their selfish autocracy.[1] Placing himself above
the law, manipulating the machinery of the State for his own ends,
substituting the will of a single ruler for the clash of hostile
passions in the factions, the tyrant imposed a forcible tranquillity
upon the city he had grasped. The Captaincy of the people was conferred
upon him.[2] The Councils were suffocated and reduced to silence. The
aristocracy was persecuted for the profit of the plebs. Under his rule
commerce flourished; the towns were adorned with splendid edifices;
foreign wars were carried on for the aggrandizement of the State without
regard to factious rancors. Thus the tyrant marked the first emergence
of personality supreme within the State, resuming its old forces in an
autocratic will, superseding and at the same time consciously
controlling the mute, collective, blindly working impulses of previous
revolutions. His advent was welcomed as a blessing by the recently
developed people of the cities he reduced to peace. But the great
families and leaders of the parties regarded him with loathing, as a
reptile spawned by the corruption and disease of the decaying body
politic. In their fury they addressed themselves to the two chiefs of
Christendom. Boniface VIII., answering to this appeal, called in a
second Frenchman, Charles of Valois, with the titles of Marquis of
Ancona, Count of Romagna, Captain of Tuscany, who was bidden to reduce
Italy to order on Guelf principles. Dante in his mountain solitudes
invoked the Emperor, and Italy beheld the powerless march of Henry VII.
Neither Pope nor Emperor was strong enough to control the currents of
the factions which were surely whirling Italy into the abyss of
despotism. Boniface died of grief after Sciarra Colonna, the terrible
Ghibelline's outrage at