lower _bourgeoisie_ and skilled artisans; and the property of the exiled Ghibellines was confiscated and divided among the public treasury, the heads of the ruling party, and the Guelphs in general. At this stage the effort of Gregory X, at his election, to effect a restoration of the Ghibellines and a general reconciliation, naturally failed. Yet when his successor, Nicolas III, persisted in the anti-French policy, he was able through his northern legate to persuade the city, suffering from the lawlessness of the Guelph as of old from that of the Ghibelline nobles, to recall the latter and set up a new constitution of fourteen governors, seven of each party, all nominated by the Pope--a system which lasted ten years. Then came another French interregnum; whereafter, on the fall of the French rule in Sicily in 1282, there was set up yet another constitution of compromise. For the council of fourteen was set up one of three _priori delle arti_, heads of the crafts--a number immediately raised to six, so as to give one prior to each ward of the city, with a change in the title to _signoria_. These were to be elected every two months. The system, aristocratic in respect of its small governing body, yet by its elective method lent itself peculiarly to the new _bourgeois_ tendencies; and thenceforward, says Machiavelli, we find the parties of Guelph and Ghibelline in Florence supplanted by the simpler enmity of rich and poor. Soon many of the nobles, albeit Guelph, were driven out of the city, or declared disqualified for priorship on the score of their past disorders; and outside they set up new feuds. While Florence thus held out, other cities sought safety in one-man-power, choosing some noble as "captain of the people" and setting him above the magistrates. Thus Pagano della Torre, a Guelph, became war-lord of Milan, and his brothers succeeded him, till the office came to be looked on as hereditary, and other cities inclined to choose the same head. And so astutely egotistic was the action of all the forces concerned, that when the Guelph house of Della Torre thus became unmanageably powerful, the Papacy did not scruple to appoint to the archbishopric of Milan an exiled Ghibelline, Visconti. "Henceforward," says Sismondi, "the rivalry between the families of Della Torre and Visconti made that between the people and the nobles almost forgotten." The Visconti finally defeated the other faction, made Milan Ghibelline, and became its virtual rulers.