in perpetual rivalry. The most significant of these were the Visconti of Milan, who dominated northern Italian politics from the mid-fourteenth century. With the career of Giangaleazzo Visconti at the end of the century Milan's significance became greater still. Military and diplomatic prowess gave this energetic ruler control, within a very short period, of not only virtually all of northern Italy but also of much of Tuscany and some of the towns in the papal states. The isolated Florentines had to address themselves to the very real threat that Italy might finally have found its unifier. In practice, of course, the Milanese hegemony was founded almost entirely on the personal virtù of its ruler, and at his death it disintegrated overnight.

All this took place against a backdrop of numerous lesser wars and squabbles, intertwined and interdependent. The situation was made endemic by the way in which the wars were fought. By the fourteenth century most towns had abandoned militia troops in favour of mercenary forces, and the system had developed to the extent that mercenary bands under their leaders or condottieri were available for hire as a unit, saving the towns the trouble of having to recruit. The system received an unwelcome boost with the lull in the Hundred Years War which brought many discharged foreigners into the peninsula in search of further employment. French, German, and English condottieri dominated the wars of the late fourteenth century, to the point where Giangaleazzo Visconti could present his expansionism as a bid to save Italy from foreigners. Like all such armies they perpetuated the cause of war; as campaigns ended towns found that it was in their interests to retain the soldiers in peacetime to prevent them from turning on their former employers--a veritable protection racket. Things were no better when the foreigners were replaced by Italians; the condottieri, a majority of whom originated from the papal states, now sought to acquire their own territory and lordships, and their aspirations prolonged many conflicts, and the general state of turbulence, well into the fifteenth century. As they were also ruinously expensive they managed incidentally to exacerbate the internal affairs of individual city-states as well.

The fourteenth century has traditionally been seen as the

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