The city, from time immemorial the meeting-ground for the
best elements in Italian society, had become in the early Middle Ages the one
bulwark between the Italian middle-classes and a particularly lawless form of feudalism;
and it had served this purpose well. The number of these cities, their
population and resources, the luxury of the citizens, the splendour of the
palaces and public buildings, were the admiration of all Europe at a time when
the Flemish burghers still lived in wooden houses and the Flemish cities were
still rudely protected by palisades and earthen ramparts. Nature had done much
for Italy. Thanks to the central situation of the peninsula, the trade between
Northern Europe and the Mediterranean converged upon her seaports and the
Alpine passes which stand above the valley of the Po. The untiring industry of
Italian capital and labour made Lombardy and Tuscany the homes of textile manufactures,
of scientific cultivation, of banking and finance.
In every port of the Levant,
the Aegean and the Black Sea, the shipmen and merchants of Venice, Benoa, and
Pisa hunted for trade like sleuth-hounds, and fought like wolves to secure a
preference or a monopoly. By land and sea the rule of life was competition for
territory and trade. War was a normal and often a welcome incident in the quest
for wealth; few Italians were free from the belief that conquests are a short
cut to prosperity, that trade follows the flag, and that the gain of one
community must be another's loss. Within the city walls, class strove with
class and family with family. Riot, massacre, and proscription were the normal
instruments of party warfare; minorities conspired from fear of proscription,
and majorities proscribed in order to forestall conspiracy. Boundless, indeed,
was the vitality of republics which, under such conditions, not only throve,
but also held at bay the ablest sovereigns and the most formidable troops of
Europe.
