of authority delegated to their captains by the people were overstepped, the sway of the princes became confessedly illegal.  Illegality carried with it all the consequences of an evil conscience, all the insecurities of usurped dominion all the danger from without and from within to which an arbitrary governor is exposed.  In the fourth class we find the principle of force still more openly at work.  To it may be assigned those Condottieri who made a prey of cities at their pleasure.  The illustrious Uguccione della Faggiuola, who neglected to follow up his victory over the Guelfs at Monte Catini, in order that he might cement his power in Lucca and Pisa, is an early instance of this kind of tyrant.  His successor, Castruccio Castracane, the hero of Machiavelli’s romance, is another.  But it was not until the first half of the fifteenth century that professional Condottieri became powerful enough to found such kingdoms as that, for example, of Francesco Sforza at Milan.[3] The fifth class includes the nephews or sons of Popes.  The Riario principality of Forli, the Della Rovere of Urbino, the Borgia of Romagna, the Farnese of Parma, form a distinct species of despotisms; but all these are of a comparatively late origin.  Until the Papacies of Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. the Popes had not bethought them of providing in this way for their relatives.  Also, it may be remarked, there was an essential weakness in these tyrannies.  Since they had to be carved out of the States of the Church, the Pope who had established his son, say in Romagna, died before he could see him well confirmed in a province which the next Pope sought to wrest from his hands, in order to bestow it on his own favorite.  The fabric of the Church could not long have stood this disgraceful wrangling between Papal families for the dynastic possession of Church property.  Luckily for the continuance of the Papacy, the tide of counter-reformation which set in after the sack of Rome and the great Northern Schism, put a stop to nepotism in its most barefaced form.

    [1] This classification must of necessity be imperfect, since many
    of the tyrannies belong in part to two or more of the kinds which I
    have mentioned.

    [2] See Guicc. Ist. end of Book 4.

[3] John Hawkwood (died 1393), the English adventurer, held Cotignola and Bagnacavallo from Gregory XI.  In the second half of the fifteenth century the efforts of the Condottieri to erect tyrannies were most frequent.  Braccio da Montone established himself in Perugia in 1416, and aspired, not without good grounds for hope, to acquiring the kingdom of Italy.  Francesco Sforza, before gaining Milan, had begun to form a despotism at Ancona.  Sforza’s rival, Giacomo Piccinino, would probably have succeeded in his own attempt, had not Ferdinand of Aragon treacherously murdered him at Naples in 1465.  In the disorganization caused by Charles VIII., Vidovero of Brescia in 1495 established