of adventure to run his
course unchecked.

There remains the _sixth_ and last class of despots to be mentioned.
This again is large and of the first importance. Citizens of eminence,
like the Medici at Florence, the Bentivogli at Bologna, the Baglioni of
Perugia, the Vitelli of Citta di Castello, the Gambacorti of Pisa, like
Pandolfo Petrucci in Siena (1502), Romeo Pepoli, the usurer of Bologna
(1323), the plebeian, Alticlinio, and Agolanti of Padua (1313), Giovanni
Vignate, the millionaire of Lodi (1402), acquired more than their due
weight in the conduct of affairs, and gradually tended to tyranny. In
most of these cases great wealth was the original source of despotic
ascendency. It was not uncommon to buy cities together with their
Signory. Thus the Rossi bought Parma for 35,000 florins in 1333; the
Appiani sold Pisa; Astorre Manfredi sold Faenza and Imola in 1377. In
1444 Galeazzo Malatesta sold Pesaro to Alessandro Sforza, and
Fossombrone to Urbino; in 1461 Cervia was sold to Venice by the same
family. Franceschetto Cibo purchased the County of Anguillara. Towns at
last came to have their market value. It was known that Bologna was
worth 200,000 florins, Parma 60,000, Arezzo 40,000 Lucca 30,000, and so
forth. But personal qualities and nobility of blood might also produce
despots of the sixth class. Thus the Bentivogli claimed descent from a
bastard of King Enzo, son of Frederick II., who was for a long time an
honorable prisoner in Bologna. The Baglioni, after a protracted struggle
with the rival family of Oddi, owed their supremacy to ability and vigor
in the last years of the fifteenth century. But the neighborhood of the
Papal power, and their own internal dissensions, rendered the hold of
this family upon Perugia precarious. As in the case of the Medici and
the Bentivogli, many generations might elapse before such burgher
families assumed dynastic authority. But to this end they were always
advancing.

The history of the bourgeois despots proves that Italy in the fifteenth
century was undergoing a natural process of determination toward
tyranny. Sismondi may attempt to demonstrate that Italy was 'not
answerable for the crimes with which she was sullied by her tyrants.'
But the facts show that she was answerable for choosing despots instead
of remaining free, or rather that she instinctively obeyed a law of
social evolution by which princes had to be substituted for
municipalities at the end of those fi