Chapter 17 - Page 2

the people of Rome, their minds were very much
improved; for all the offices of state being attainable as well by the
people as the nobility, the peculiar excellencies of the latter
exercised a most beneficial influence upon the former; and as the city
increased in virtue she attained a more exalted greatness.

But in Florence, the people being conquerors, the nobility were
deprived of all participation in the government; and in order to
regain a portion of it, it became necessary for them not only to seem
like the people, but to be like them in behavior, mind, and mode of
living. Hence arose those changes in armorial bearings, and in the
titles of families, which the nobility adopted, in order that they
might seem to be of the people; military virtue and generosity of
feeling became extinguished in them; the people not possessing these
qualities, they could not appreciate them, and Florence became by
degrees more and more depressed and humiliated. The virtue of the
Roman nobility degenerating into pride, the citizens soon found that
the business of the state could not be carried on without a prince.
Florence had now come to such a point, that with a comprehensive mind
at the head of affairs she would easily have been made to take any
form that he might have been disposed to give her; as may be partly
observed by a perusal of the preceding book.

Having given an account of the origin of Florence, the commencement of
her liberty, with the causes of her divisions, and shown how the
factions of the nobility and the people ceased with the tyranny of the
duke of Athens, and the ruin of the former, we have now to speak of
the animosities between the citizens and the plebeians and the various
circumstances which they produced.

The nobility being overcome, and the war with the archbishop of Milan
concluded, there did not appear any cause of dissension in Florence.
But the evil fortune of the city, and the defective nature of her
laws, gave rise to enmities between the family of the Albizzi and that
of the Ricci, which divided her citizens as completely as those of the
Buondelmonti and the Uberti, or the Donati and the Cerchi had formerly
done. The pontiffs, who at this time resided in France, and the
emperors, who abode in Germany, in order to maintain their influence
in Italy, sent among us multitudes of soldiers of many countries, as
English, Dutch, and Bretons. As these, upon the conclusion of a war,
were thrown out of pay, though still in the country, they, under the
standard of some soldier of fortune, plundered such people as were
least prepared to defend themselves. In the year 1353 one of these
companies came into Tuscany under the command of Monsignor Reale, of
Provence, and his approach