These unsuccessful events had, as usual, excited hatred against the rulers of the Florentine Republic. The latter, in order to cover themselves and distract the enemies’ attention and fury elsewhere, elected as governor and protector of the city and its states, Walter, duke of Athens and count of Brienne, of French extraction but brought up in Greece and Apulia. Since he had fulfilled the duties of the duke of Calabria in Florence, this man had acquired great reputation for wisdom and justice; and after the expiration of the period of Malatesta’s government was elected general and protector, with the most extensive power of administering justice within and without Florence. The duke was a man of vast ambition, and possessed sufficient talent to profit by the circumstances in which the city was placed, divided as it was into three orders of persons, the nobility, the rich middle class, and the common people. The government was entirely in the hands of the second; the other two orders, therefore, were necessarily discontented; and adding their old wrongs to the misfortunes which had happened to the republic from the improvident administration of those who governed, their complaints became more frequent and daring; but those most irritated, and probably with the most reason, were the nobility. The people, not content with having deprived them of every share in the government, would not even administer justice to them; they caused the laws to be put in force against them in the severest manner, which laws were silent for the most part in favour of the class that governed; and thus, even in the latter order, persons were not wanting to whom the government became odious, since the most important offices were concentrated in the hands of a few.