was elected; Florence suffered the hardships of her memorable siege.  At the end of her trials, menaced alike by Pope and Emperor, who shook hands over her prostrate corpse, betrayed by her general, the infamous Malatesta Baglioni, and sold by her own selfish citizens, she had to submit to the hereditary sovereignty of the Medici.  It was in vain that Lorenzino of that house pretended to play Brutus and murdered his cousin the Duke Alessandro in 1536.  Cosimo succeeded in the same year, and won the title of Grand Duke, which he transmitted to a line of semi-Austrian princes.

    [1] ‘Nunquam in eodem statu permanserunt,’ says Marco Foscari (as
    quoted above, p. 42 of his report).  The flux of Florence struck a
    Venetian profoundly.

[2] The Gonfalonier Capponi put up a tablet on the Public Palace, in 1528, to this effect:  ’Jesus Christus Rex Florentini Populi S.F. decreto electus.’  This inscription is differently given.  See Varchi, vol. i. p. 266; Segni, p. 46.  Nothing is more significant of the difference between Venice and Florence than the political idealism implied in this religious consecration of the republic by statute.  In my essay on ‘Florence and the Medici’ (Sketches and Studies in Italy) I have attempted to condense the internal history of the Republic and to analyze the state-craft of the Medici.

Throughout all these vicissitudes every form and phase of republican government was advocated, discussed, and put in practice by the Florentines.  All the arts of factions, all the machinations of exiles, all the skill of demagogues, all the selfishness of party-leaders, all the learning of scholars, all the cupidity of subordinate officials, all the daring of conspirators, all the ingenuity of theorists, and all the malice of traitors, were brought successively or simultaneously into play by the burghers, who looked upon their State as something they might mold at will.  One thing at least is clear amid so much apparent confusion, that Florence was living a vehemently active and self-conscious life, acknowledging no principle of stability in her constitution, but always stretching forward after that ideal Reggimento which was never realized.[1]

[1] In his ‘Proemio’ to the ’Trattato del Reggimento di Firenze, Guicciardini thus describes the desideratum:  ’introdurre in Firenze un governo onesto, bene ordinato, e che veramente si potesse chiamare libero, il che dalla sua prima origine insino a oggi non e mai stato cittadino alcuno che abbia saputo o potuto fare.’

It is worth while to consider more in detail the different magistracies by which the government of Florence was conducted between the years of 1250 and 1531, and the gradual changes in the constitution which prepared the way for the Medicean tyranny.[1] It is only thus an accurate conception of the difference between the republican systems of Venice and of Florence can be