Forms, indeed, were duly observed, but these forms did not prevent the adoption of laws which fatally attacked the constitution from within. For the consideration of bills relating to foreign affairs, to peace and war, two other consultative bodies were established after 1411, when greater care seemed to be necessary, on account of the heavy burdens caused by the dissensions of the great Schism. The one was the Council of Two Hundred, to which only those could be elected who had occupied the highest offices of State, and to which legislative proposals were sent before they came to the Council of a Hundred and Thirty-one—in which sat the members of the Signory and of the colleges, the ‘Capitani di parte Guelfa’, the ‘War Ten,’ the six councils of the craftsmen, the consuls of the guilds, and forty-eight other citizens. The bills had to be accepted in these two assemblies before they reached the first-mentioned councils. From such a mass of incongruous materials was the machine of State compiled. The chief judicial functionary, and until Luca Pitti’s reform the first dignitary, was the Podestà, assisted as he was by the Capitano del Popolo—whose rights and privileges were often changed—and by the executor of legal ordinances. All three were strangers: the first two noble personages learned in the law, the third a man of the people, of Guelfish family, holding office for one year. The Podestà’s court included several adjuncts who took turn with the chief. The armed guard of the latter were under the chief bailiff or Bargello. Attached to these were the Magistracy of Eight (Otto di Guardia), who were nominated by the Signory, and installed in office for four months. They had to try criminal and police cases, and were conservators of the law—a sort of appeal court for the revision of the decisions of the Podestà’s court. Much of their time, however, was spent in detecting the artifices and evasions of the tax-payers. The uncertain line of demarcation between the jurisdiction of the several co-existing law courts has always been one of the most serious evils of the constitution of Florence. For the separate branches of the constitution different functionaries were appointed. Foreign affairs and war were in the hands of the ‘Peace and War Ten,’ who were appointed in 1423 during the campaign against Milan. There had indeed been, half a century earlier, a similar magistracy, nicknamed by popular wit, the ‘Eight Saints,’ because they conducted warlike operations against Pope Gregory XI. It was as secretary of the ten that Niccolò Machiavelli manifested that activity which, together with the literary talents which he afterwards developed, made the ‘Segretario fiorentino’ so celebrated. The influence exercised by this committee upon military operations was often most unfortunate, and in the peaceful times of 1480, we see it replaced by the ‘Otto di Pratica.’