Borgia, he was the most distinguished example of the type of intellectual, murderous Italian, which exercised so powerful an attraction over the wild fancy of the Elizabethan dramatists. Gian Galeazzo's death left his dukedom in a chaotic condition. A widow, a regent committee, and three boys were left to see the state, built up with so much care and astuteness, fall away piecemeal into the hands of the petty despots, who had been dispossessed during the process of integration. Venice took Verona, Padua, and other cities near by; the Papacy got back Bologna, Florence managed to secure Pisa. Thus the dukedom was carved up. The eldest son died soon, leaving behind him a memory of the pleasure he took in watching mastiffs tear his prisoners to pieces; but the second son, Filippo Maria (1412-47), inherited his father's craft and much of his ability. By means of two famous _condottieri_, Carmagnola, best remembered as the victim of Venetian anger, and Francesco Sforza, of whom we have heard in the Neapolitan service, he gradually restored the dukedom very nearly to its boundaries under his father. Filippo Maria was the last of his race, and we will leave him, engaged in speculation as to the best political use of his marriageable daughter Bianca Maria. We must pass over the Counts of Savoy, now become dukes (1416), the marquesses of Monferrat and Saluzzo, and the lords of other petty territories, and turn our attention to Florence. Florence was always in a state of struggle, always engaged in exiling, deposing, or in some way suppressing aristocrats. Forced, in days of peril, to receive foreign lords as military leaders, she had managed to expel the last of them, one Walter of Brienne, a clever knave, who bore the odd title of Duke of Athens, which he had inherited from his grandfather, one of the gentlemen adventurers who had gone to the East. His father had been expelled from Athens, and the son was happily driven out of Florence. The burghers followed up their victory (1343) with new laws against the aristocrats, and held the government for a generation. Then first appears the name of Medici. One Salvestro dei Medici, as _Gonfaloniere_ of Justice, the supreme officer in Florence under the existing constitution, proposed further laws in favour of the people. The lower classes, with whetted appetites, wanted more. The mechanics and artisans of the lower guilds, and more particularly the wool carders and combers (the _Ciompi_) of the great wool guilds, rose in riot, overturned the government, and put a wool-carder, Michele di Lando, at the head of the city (1378). Florence was democratic, but not so democratic as to submit to the rule of a wool-carder. The rich burghers would not stomach a plebeian any more than they would a king. A reaction set in, and the government passed into the very competent hands of an oligarchy of distinguished citizens. This oligarchy governed well. Its leaders, Maso