All this, however, was carried on in the face of continual and new dangers, threatening the very life of the Republic, and sometimes only to be averted by super-human efforts. Memory instinctively carries us back to the Florence of old with its council and its Consuls, yearly taking the field united and agreed, for the purpose of abasing the nobles and clearing the highways for the march of its trade; and then, having reduced the hostile barons one by one, compelling them to live within the walls, subject to the equal pressure of republican laws;--to the times when the State could only overcome its more powerful neighbours by emancipating the slaves of the soil and granting political privileges to traders hitherto unpossessed of any such rights. On recalling those times, we easily recognise that they contained the germs of future greatness for the Commune that by dint of continual warfare succeeded in augmenting its resources in every direction. Later, however, things were radically changed, owing to many causes, and above all in consequence of the new method of warfare to which we have already alluded and which must now be more fully described. Down to the fourteenth century republican armies were composed of foot soldiers, lightly equipped with sword, shield, and helmet, and some slight defensive armour for leg or breast. The horse were few in number and never decided the fate of a battle. All barbarian armies had been composed much on the same plan, excepting those of the Huns and Moors, who were almost always mounted, and of the Byzantines, whose cavalry had frequently defeated the Goths. Frederic Barbarossa's Italian campaigns had been chiefly carried on by infantry and withstood by the infantry of our communes, who could then turn all able-bodied citizens into soldiers at a moment's notice. But in the campaigns of Frederic II., Manfred and Charles of Anjou, a new method of war had been imported into Italy from Germany and France. The Florentines had learnt this to their cost at the battle of Montaperti, when their numerous army was routed by the charge of a few German horse. From that moment the issue of all Italian battles began to be decided by heavy cavalry or by men-at-arms. The mounted soldier was clad in steel from head to foot, although not yet, as at the close of the fifteenth century, encased, together with his steed, in such ponderous armour, that, once fallen, neither could rise from the ground without help. Armed with a very long lance, the horseman could overthrow the foot soldier before the latter could approach him with his short sword. Besides, this weapon never served to pierce the armour either of man or horse; and the arrows of the bowmen were equally useless. Accordingly, a few hundred men-at-arms pushed forward like a movable and impregnable fortress into the midst of a host of infantry sufficed to rout it in a very short time. This state of things lasted until the invention of