Still the process of disintegration and reintegration proceeded. The tyrants of the smaller cities usually established themselves by the aid of professional mercenaries, German and other, whom, when their funds failed, they turned loose to shift for themselves, having in the meantime disarmed the citizens. These companies, swelled by others disbanded after the English wars in France, ravaged and plundered Italy from Montferrat to Naples, and were everywhere bought off save by Florence. Only the Pope and the greater tyrants could keep them regularly in pay; and by their means the Viscontis became lords of sixteen cities of Lombardy, while the Papacy began to build up a military power. Naples, on the other hand, continuously degenerated; while Genoa and Venice exhausted each other in deadly strife for the commercial monopoly of the East; and Pisa leaned to the Viscontis, who ultimately obtained its headship. Rome, popeless, and domineered over by warring nobles, had its brief vision of a republic under the dreamer Cola di Rienzi, who at last fell by the hand of the masses whom he had for a brief space hypnotised. Neither he nor they were meet for the destiny they fain would have fulfilled; and had people and leader alike been worthier, they would ultimately have failed to master the forces joined against them. Rienzi's brief, and on some sides remarkably vigorous, administration in 1346-47 was not wholly unworthy of his ideal of "the good estate"; he seems, indeed, to have ruled the Roman territory with an efficiency that recalled the ancient State; and his early successes against the nobles tell of unexpected weakness on their side and energy on that of the people. His dream of an Italian federation, too, remains to prove that he was no mere mob-leader. But had he been as stable in purpose and policy as he was heady and capricious, and had the Roman populace been as steadfast as it was turbulent, the forces of division represented by the nobles and the Papacy would ultimately have overthrown any republican polity. What Florence could not compass, Rome could not maintain. Two centuries before, Arnold of Brescia had fallen, after fifteen years of popularity, as soon as pope and emperor joined hands against him; and the papalism of Rienzi was as fatal to him as anti-papalism had been to Arnold. Had Rienzi had his way, the Pope would have at once returned to Rome; and where the Papacy was, no republic could endure, however strong and sober were its head. And Rienzi was not sober. After his overthrow in 1347 and his seven years of wandering exile, he was restored solely by the choice and as the agent of the Pope at Avignon; and his death in a tumult after four months of renewed office was the end of his cause.