The central fact of disunion in Italian life, complicated as we have seen it to be by extraneous factors, analyses down to the eternal conflict of interests of the rich and the poor, the very rich and the less rich, or, as Italian humour figured it, the "fat" and the "lean." For Machiavelli this is the salient trouble in the Florentine retrospect, since it survived the feuds of Guelph and Ghibelline; though he sets down to the Papacy the foreign invasions and the disunion of the cities. The faction-feuds, of course, tell of the psychological conditions of the feud of rich and poor, and were to some extent an early form of the feud,[611] the imperialist Ghibellines being originally the more aristocratic faction; while the papalist Guelphs, by the admission of Machiavelli, were the more friendly to the popular liberties, that being the natural course for the Papacy to take. The imperial cause, on the other hand, was badly compromised by the tyranny of the terrible Ezzelino III, the representative of Frederick II in the Trevisan March, who ruled half-a-dozen cities in a fashion never exceeded for cruelty in the later ages of Italian tyranny.[612] Whatever democratic feeling there was must needs be on the other side. After Florence had recast its constitution at the death of Frederick II, establishing twelve _anziani_ or magistrates, replaced every two months, and two foreign judges--one the upper-class _podestà_ and the other the captain of the people[613]--to prevent grounds of quarrel, matters were in fair train, and the city approved its unity by the sinister steps of forcing Pistoia, Arezzo, and Siena to join its confederation, capturing Volterra, and destroying several villages, whose inhabitants were deported to Florence. But new plots on behalf of Manfred led to the expulsion of the Ghibellines, who in turn, getting the upper hand with no sense of permanence, reasoned that to make their party safe they must destroy the city; a purpose changed, as the familiar story goes, only by the protest of the Florentine Ghibelline chief, Farinata degli Uberti. They then tried, in obvious bad faith, the expedient of conciliating the people, whom they had always hitherto oppressed, by giving them a quasi-democratic constitution, in which the skilled workers were recognised as bodies, to which all citizens had to belong.[614] But this scheme being accompanied by fresh taxation, the Ghibellines were driven out by force; and once more the Guelphs, now backed by Charles of Anjou (1266), organised a government of twelve magistrates, adding a council of twenty-four upper-class citizens, called the _credenza_, and yet another body of 180 popular deputies, thirty for each of the six quarters of the city, making up with the others a Council General. To this, however, was strangely added yet another council of 120, charged with executive functions. The purpose was to identify the Guelph cause with that of the people--that is, the