s gave away what did not
belong to them, bidding against each other for any support they
might obtain from the masters of the towns.

In order to explain the continual prosperity of the princes amid the
clash of forces brought to bear against them from so many sides, we must
remember that they were the partisans of social order in distracted
burghs, the heroes of the middle classes and the multitude, the quellers
of faction, the administrators of impartial laws, and the aggrandizers
of the city at the expense of its neighbors. Ser Gorello, singing the
praises of the Bishop Guido dei Tarlati di Pietra Mala, who ruled Arezzo
in the first half of the fourteenth century, makes the Commune say:[1]
'He was the lord so valiant and magnificent, so full of grace and
daring, so agreeable to both Guelfs and Ghibellines. He, for his virtue,
was chosen by common consent to be the master of my people. Peace and
justice were the beginning, middle, and end of his lordship, which
removed all discord from the State. By the greatness of his valor I grew
in territory round about. Every neighbor reverenced me, some through
love and some through dread; for it was dear to them to rest beneath his
mantle.' These verses set forth the qualities which united the mass of
the populations to their new lords. The Despot delivered the industrial
classes from the tyranny and anarchy of faction, substituting a reign of
personal terrorism that weighed more heavily upon the nobles than upon
the artisans or peasants. Ruling more by perfidy, corruption, and fraud
than by the sword, he turned the leaders of parties into courtiers,
brought proscribed exiles back into the city as officials, flattered
local vanity by continuing the municipal machinery in its functions of
parade, and stopped the mouths of unruly demagogues by making it their
pecuniary interest to preach his benefits abroad. So long as the
burghers remained peaceable beneath his sway and refrained from
attacking him in person, he was mild. But at the same moment the
gallows, the torture-chamber, the iron cage suspended from the giddy
height of palace-roof or church tower, and the dreadful dungeons, where
a prisoner could neither stand nor lie at ease, were ever ready for the
man who dared dispute his authority. That authority depended solely on
his personal qualities of will, courage, physical endurance. He held it
by intelligence, being as it were an artificial product of political
neces