erce internal conflicts and
exhausting wars of jealousy which closed the Middle Ages. Machiavelli,
with all his love of liberty, is forced to admit that in his day the
most powerful provinces of Italy had become incapable of freedom. 'No
accident, however weighty and violent, could ever restore Milan or
Naples to liberty, owing to their utter corruption. This is clear from
the fact that after the death of Filippo Visconti, when Milan tried to
regain freedom, she was unable to preserve it.'[1] Whether Machiavelli
is right in referring this incapacity for self-government to the
corruption of morals and religion may be questioned. But it is certain
that throughout the states of Italy, with the one exception of Venice,
causes were at work inimical to republics and favorable to despotisms.

[1] _Discorsi_, i. 17. The Florentine philosopher remarks in the
same passage, 'Cities, once corrupt, and accustomed to the rule of a
prince, can never acquire their freedom even though the prince with
all his kith and kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to
extinguish another; and the city has no rest except by the creation
of a new lord, unless one burgher by his goodness and his great
qualities may chance to preserve its independence during his
lifetime.'

It will be observed in this classification of Italian tyrants that the
tenure of their power was almost uniformly forcible. They generally
acquired it through the people in the first instance, and maintained it
by the exercise of violence. Rank had nothing to do with their claims.
The bastards of Popes, who like Sixtus IV. had no pedigree, merchants
like the Medici, the son of a peasant like Francesco Sforza, a rich
usurer like Pepoli, had almost equal chances with nobles of the ancient
houses of Este, Visconti, or Malatesta. The chief point in favor of the
latter was the familiarity which through long years of authority had
accustomed the people to their rule. When exiled, they had a better
chance of return to power than parvenus, whose party-cry and ensigns
were comparatively fresh and stirred no sentiment of loyalty--if indeed
the word loyalty can be applied to that preference for the established
and the customary which made the mob, distracted by the wrangling of
doctrinaires and intriguers, welcome back a Bentivoglio or a Malatesta.
Despotism in Italy as in ancient Greece was democratic. It recruited its
ranks from all classes and erected its