sities, an equilibrium of forces, substituted without legal title
for the Church and Empire, and accumulating in his despotic
individuality the privileges previously acquired by centuries of
consuls, Podestas, and Captains of the people. The chief danger he had
to fear was conspiracy; and in providing himself against this peril he
expended all the resources suggested by refined ingenuity and heightened
terror. Yet, when the Despot was attacked and murdered, it followed of
necessity that the successful conspirator became in turn a tyrant.
'Cities,' wrote Machiavelli,[2] 'that are once corrupt and accustomed to
the rule of princes, can never acquire freedom, even though the prince
with all his kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to extinguish
another; and the city has no rest except by the creation of a new lord,
unless it chance that one burgher by his goodness and great qualities
may during his lifetime preserve its temporary independence.' Palace
intrigues, therefore, took the place of Piazza revolutions, and
dynasties were swept away to make room for new tyrants without material
change in the condition of the populace.

[1] _Mur. Scr. R. It._ xv. 826. Compare what G. Merula wrote about
Azzo Visconti: 'He conciliated the people to him by equal justice
without distinction of Guelf or Ghibelline.'

[2] _Discorsi_. i. 17.

It was the universal policy of the Despots to disarm their subjects.
Prompted by considerations of personal safety, and demanded by the
necessity of extirpating the factions, this measure was highly popular.
It relieved the burghers of that most burdensome of all public duties,
military service. A tax on silver and salt was substituted in the
Milanese province for the conscription, while the Florentine oligarchs,
actuated probably by the same motives, laid a tax upon the country. The
effect of this change was to make financial and economical questions
all-important, and to introduce a new element into the balance of
Italian powers. The principalities were transformed into great banks,
where the lords of cities sat in their bureau, counted their money, and
calculated the cost of wars or the value of towns they sought to acquire
by bargain. At first they used their mercenary troops like pawns, buying
up a certain number for some special project, and dismissing them when
it had been accomplished. But in course of time the mercenaries awoke to
the sense of their own power, and placed t