period in which the communal system declined and was replaced by seigneurial or despotic rule. And this is perfectly accurate; by the end of the century only Florence, Siena, and Venice had any success in maintaining republican status. But perhaps also this trend is of less significance than was once thought. Nineteenth-century historians painted a picture of the end-of-century crisis as one of freedom versus tyranny, while others have favoured the opposite interpretation, of the victory of efficiency over factionalism, of despotism as the 'pragmatic criticism of republicanism'. More recently historians have been pointing to the similarities between the two systems; the way in which the surviving communes became more and more oligarchical and the new despots depended on consensus to survive. What may be more important than the style of governments is the reduction in their number and the growth of the territorial state. The result of the fourteenth-century conflicts was the survival of the fittest. This is what eventually made Italian politics more manageable, and even brought the peninsula some years of peace.

Consolidation and Expansion

By the early fifteenth century, indeed, there were five major powers in Italy. Milan had seen steady territorial growth; Giangaleazzo Visconti's career was a flash in the pan. Visconti dukes ruled for the first half of the century. Naples was still sunk in problems which would only be resolved with the Aragonese acquisition of the kingdom. In Florence the reaction to a period of broad-based government (and the revolt of the ciompi) had led to an oligarchical government which in 1434 yielded to control by the Medici family, who 'ruled' entirely unofficially, so that Florence could parade its outwardly republican constitution while tacitly acknowledging the importance of its first citizen--a remarkably convenient and effective arrangement. Venice was in a sense the newcomer. It became seriously involved in mainland politics for the first time towards the end of the fourteenth century for several reasons: the need to ensure grain supplies in a period of Ottoman

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