Thus was established the democratic constitution of the state in which Dante was afterwards to play his part. There was the central administration of the six Priors, one for each _sesto_ of the city, with the council of a hundred “good men of the people without whose deliberation no great thing or expenditure could be done” (Villani, vii. 16). The executive was composed of the Captain of the People and the Podestà, both Italian nobles from other states, holding office for six months, each with his two councils, a special and a general council, the general council of the Podestà being the general council of the Commune. The great Guilds had their own council (_Consiglio delle Capitudini delle Arti_), and their consuls or rectors, while specially associated with the two councils of the Captain, were sometimes admitted to those of the Podestà; the nobles were excluded from all these councils, excepting the special council of the Podestà and the general council of the Commune. But, while the central government of the Republic was thus entirely popular, the magnates still retained control over the captains of the Guelf Society, with their two councils, and exerted considerable influence upon the Podestà, always one of their own order and an alien, in whose councils they still sat. The Podestà, however, was now little more than a chief justice; “the Priors, with the Captain of the People, had to determine the great and weighty matters of the commonwealth, and to summon and conduct councils and make regulations” (Villani). BATTLE OF CAMPALDINO.--A period of prosperity and victory followed for Florence. The crushing defeat inflicted upon Pisa by Genoa at the great naval battle of Meloria in 1284 was much to her advantage; as was also, perhaps, the decline of the Angevin power after the victory of Peter of Aragon’s fleet (_Purg._ xx. 79). Charles II., the “cripple of Jerusalem,” who succeeded his father as king of Naples, was a less formidable suzerain. On June 11th, 1289, the Tuscan Ghibellines were utterly defeated by the Florentines and their allies at the battle of Campaldino. According to Leonardo Bruni--and there seems no adequate reason for rejecting his testimony--Dante was present, “fighting valiantly on horseback in the front rank,” apparently among the 150 who volunteered or were chosen as _feditori_, amongst whom was Vieri de’ Cerchi, who was later to acquire a more dubious reputation in politics. Bruni states that in a letter Dante draws a plan of the fight; and he quotes what seems to be a fragment of another letter, written later, where Dante speaks of “the battle of Campaldino, in which the Ghibelline party was almost utterly destroyed and undone; where I found myself no novice in arms, and where I had much fear, and in the end very great gladness, by reason of the varying chances of that battle.”