The ascendency which the dramatic events of 1433 and 1434 gave to Cosimo de’ Medici was not only retained [Sidenote: Character of Medicean Rule.] during his life, but became for a time a hereditary possession. Yet it is impossible to point to any great apparent change in the constitution. The old magistracies and councils continued to exist and to fulfil their former functions. Cosimo was extremely careful to avoid any outward signs of despotism. He continued to live in his former residence; and nothing in his dress or his manner of life distinguished him from his fellow-citizens. Like his defeated rival, he surrounded himself with a sort of body-guard of allied families, whose interests he skilfully identified with his own. To all appearance this was as much an oligarchy as the government which it had displaced. The difference is to be found in two points. On the one hand Cosimo was enabled, partly by his wealth, and partly by his extensive foreign connections, to exercise a far stronger control over his adherents and over the state than either Maso or Rinaldo degli Albizzi had ever been able to wield. And, on the other hand, the influential families who rose to power under Cosimo did not represent the domination of a class as the rule of the Albizzi had done. The Medici never forgot that they owed their original rise to their championship of democratic equality; and they were careful to avoid any unnecessary collision with the prejudices of the mob. Even a disguised despotism must aim at the obliteration of classes, and this can be clearly traced in the policy of Cosimo. He transferred several families from the lesser to the greater guilds, and thus obscured a distinction which had been at one time of supereminent importance. And he even procured the repeal of the disqualifications against the old nobility on which the foundations of the historic municipality had been built.