Ere long external causes placed the party in danger. The antagonism between Florence and Milan could not be removed by mere treaties of peace. Gian Galeazzo’s only remaining son, Filippo Maria, was treading in his father’s steps. He had not only recovered the dominion which, at his father’s death, fell to pieces, but had added Genoa to it. He now stretched out his hand to the Romagna, where he came into collision with the interests of Florence, for the small gentry of that province, hitherto in connection with the republic, were in danger of being subjected to the will of a powerful and ambitious neighbour. Out of this arose the war of 1423, which was far from being successful. As in earlier times, the Florentine forces in 1424 were unable to cope with the Milanese, whom they encountered, first in the Romagna and afterwards in their own territory. The fault lay not so much in the men and their officers as in the absurd system of directing the movement of troops by a committee of civilians, called the Board of War, seated at home. Rinaldo degli Albizzi succeeded in calming the agitation of the people after the severe defeat of Zagonara on July 24th, but the damage done to his party only increased the ascendancy of Giovanni di Bicci. At the beginning of the war he had advised that the Duke of Milan should not be followed into the Romagna, but should be waited for on this side of the Apennines, but his advice was overruled. In the beginning of 1426 Florence succeeded in forming an alliance with Venice, which, though a rival in mercantile interests, was as sensitive about the encroachments of Milan in the north as was the sister republic about his encroachments in the centre of the peninsula. The lords of Ferrara, Mantua, and others joined the alliance. The disasters of the war and increase of expenditure gave rise to much dissatisfaction, more loudly expressed among the higher than by the lower classes, the fear of whom led the administration to press their fiscal measures most heavily on the richer citizens. Rinaldo degli Albizzi thought to effect a change by weakening the democratic element in the Council. At a meeting of the heads of his party in the Church of Sto. Stefano, near the old bridge, he proposed that the number of lesser guilds should be reduced one half, and the votes of the smaller citizens diminished correspondingly. Changes in the relative numbers of the guilds had always been the means employed by either party for securing political preponderance; for the relative position of the parties was not strong enough to make manœuvres of this kind superfluous. Besides the twenty-one guilds, there was a number of smaller corporations representing branches of the different trades. No less than twenty-five such societies were the offspring of the largest of the guilds, that of the woolstaplers. They had their delegates too, but were dependent on the greater guilds, who represented them in the State.