[1] Perugia, for example, farmed out the tax upon her country population for 12,000 florins, upon her baking-houses for 7,266, upon her wine for 4,000, upon her lake for 5,200, upon contracts for 1,500.  Two bankers accepted the Perugian loan at this price in 1388.

The emergence of the Condottieri at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the anarchy they encouraged for their own aggrandizement, and the financial distress which ensued upon the substitution of mercenary for civic warfare, completed the democratization of the Italian cities, and marked a new period in the history of despotism.  From the date of Francesco Sforza’s entry into Milan as conqueror in 1450, the princes became milder in their exercise of power and less ambitious.  Having begun by disarming their subjects, they now proceeded to lay down arms themselves, employing small forces for the protection of their person and the State, engaging more cautiously in foreign strife, and substituting diplomacy, wherever it was possible, for warfare.  Gold still ruled in politics, but it was spent in bribery.  To the ambitious military schemes of Gian Galeazzo Visconti succeeded the commercial cynicism of Cosimo de’ Medici, who enslaved Florence by astute demoralization.[1] The spirit of the age was materialistic and positive.  The Despots held their state by treachery, craft, and corruption.  The element of force being virtually eliminated, intelligence at last gained undivided sway; and the ideal statecraft of Machiavelli was realized with more or less completeness in all parts of the peninsula.  At this moment and by these means Italy obtained a brief but golden period of peace beneath the confederation of her great powers.  Nicholas V. had restored the Papal court to Rome in 1447; where he assumed the manners of despotism and counted as one among the Italian Signori.  Lombardy remained tranquil under the rule of Francesco Sforza, and Tuscany under that of the Casa Medici.  The kingdom of Naples, conquered by Alfonso of Aragon in 1442, was equally ruled in the spirit of enlightened despotism, while Venice, who had so long formed a state apart, by her recent acquisition of a domain on terra firma, entered the community of Italian politics.  Thus the country had finally resolved itself into five grand constituent elements—­the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of S. Mark, Florence, Rome, and the kingdom of Naples—­all of them, though widely differing in previous history and constitutional peculiarities, now animated by a common spirit.[2] Politically they tended to despotism; for though Venice continued to be a republic, the government of the Venetian oligarchy was but despotism put into commission.  Intellectually, the same enthusiasm for classical studies, the same artistic energy, and the same impulse to revive Italian literature brought the several centers of the nation into keener sympathy than they had felt before.  A network of diplomacy embraced the cities;