their own privileges and style, as well as property; as to capital jurisdiction, it could only be granted by the kings, and wherever it was exercised, they had a share in it. The wardens of the companies at first appear in the council to take care that their rights were not infringed upon; but they soon took their seats as members, and ended by getting the ascendency. This is clearly seen in the Italian cities, e. g. in the case of the seven old guilds at Florence. During the feuds of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the clans or houses had still the upperhand; but soon afterwards, about the time of Rudolf of Habsburg, the guilds are every where the ruling power,--in Italy in the thirteenth century, and in Germany about the middle of the fourteenth; at Zurich as well as at Augsburgh, at Strasburg, Ulm, Heilbronn, and the Suabian imperial cities. The transition is made by the houses (_Geschlechter_) sharing the government with the guilds: wherever this is conceded, the union is effected peacefully; but where it is refused, it is only after a sanguinary struggle, which generally ends in the destruction of the houses. But sometimes also the reverse takes place, as at Nuremberg, where the guilds were crushed. This union of the clans and of the community, or the guilds, is called in Greece πολιτεία; in Italian _popolo_, the meaning of which is somewhat different from that of the Roman _populus_.[71] The partition was so fully carried out, that at Florence, for example at the _palazzo vecchio_, and on books also, the coat of arms of the city, a fleur de luce, and that of the commonalty (_il commune_), a cross, gules, field argent, are seen side by side. The expression _il commune_ easily gives rise to misconceptions; it does not mean the union, but the commonalty, as Savigny has pointed out to me. At Bologna there is a _palatium civium_, and a _palatium communis_. The _Capitano del popolo_ and the _Capitano di parte_ at Florence are also difficult to be understood. In the struggle of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, the _Capitano di parte_, that is, of the party of the Guelphs, having driven the Ghibellines out of the city, was placed at the head of affairs, and the others had their rights of citizenship suspended. The single _Capitano_ of the houses was nevertheless called _di parte_. But among the ancients it was not the guilds within the walls which formed the commonalty; but the population of the country round the city, which consisted of quite different elements, comprehending people of the highest as well as of the lowest ranks. The notion, therefore, is altogether a wrong one, that the _Plebes_ was made up of the poorer classes only. It was occasioned already by the language employed in Plato and Aristotle, as they had only the word δῆμος to designate city-corporation, commonalty, the union of both,--in short, all that did not belong to the ruling class, and moreover the common people.