and loss of order consequent upon this terrible disaster; nor had thirty years sufficed to restore their relative position to grades and ranks confounded by an overwhelming calamity.  We may therefore reckon the great plague of 1348 among the causes which produced the anarchy of 1378.  Rising in a mass to claim their privileges, the artisans ejected the Signory from the Public Palace, and for awhile Florence was at the mercy of the mob.  It is worthy of notice that the Medici, whose name is scarcely known before this epoch, now came for one moment to the front.  Salvestro de’ Medici was Gonfalonier of Justice at the time when the tumult first broke out.  He followed the faction of the handicraftsmen, and became the hero of the day.  I cannot discover that he did more than extend a sort of passive protection to their cause.  Yet there is no doubt that the attachment of the working classes to the House of Medici dates from this period.  The rebellion of 1378 is known in Florentine history as the Tumult of the Ciompi.  The name Ciompi strictly means the Wool-Carders.  One set of operatives in the city, and that the largest, gave its title to the whole body of the labourers.  For some months these craftsmen governed the republic, appointing their own Signory and passing laws in their own interest; but, as is usual, the proletariate found itself incapable of sustained government.  The ambition and discontent of the Ciompi foamed themselves away, and industrious working men began to see that trade was languishing and credit on the wane.  By their own act at last they restored the government to the Priors of the Greater Arti.  Still the movement had not been without grave consequences.  It completed the levelling of classes, which had been steadily advancing from the first in Florence.  After the Ciompi riot there was no longer not only any distinction between noble and burgher, but the distinction between greater and lesser guilds was practically swept away.  The classes, parties, and degrees in the republic were so broken up, ground down, and mingled, that thenceforth the true source of power in the State was wealth combined with personal ability.  In other words, the proper political conditions had been formed for unscrupulous adventurers.  Florence had become a democracy without social organisation, which might fall a prey to oligarchs or despots.  What remained of deeply rooted feuds or factions—­animosities against the Grandi, hatred for the Ghibellines, jealousy of labour and capital—­offered so many points of leverage for stirring the passions of the people and for covering personal ambition with a cloak of public zeal.  The time was come for the Albizzi to attempt an oligarchy, and for the Medici to begin the enslavement of the State.

V