ally, who undertook to complete the affair by engaging the captain best able to hire the largest number of men. So the chief thing was to know how to gain friends and excite enemies against the foe, and in this the Florentines always showed masterly skill. But these devices were no proof of military capacity. The most important personages despatched by them to the seat of war were commissioners charged to superintend the general proceedings, the administration of the army, and the political object of the campaign, and although we sometimes find these commissioners suddenly transformed into captains, taking command of the forces and deciding the fate of a battle with singular daring, their functions were always civil and diplomatic rather than military. It is easy to foresee the final results of this method with regard to the future of the Republic, and the morals of its inhabitants. The stout burghers at the head of the government were engaged in the continual practice of cunning and craft. It was requisite to show adroitness in the council chamber; to thwart the nobles; to remain constantly on the alert to prevent the populace from growing unruly, while persuading it to furnish funds to carry on wars which were indispensable to secure the safety and prosperity of the foreign trade. Hence, still greater subtlety was needed in diplomatic negotiations to avoid being isolated, and to continually maintain the equilibrium of Italian States in the way most advantageous for the Republic. Even actual warfare being now reduced, as we have seen, to a financial operation, had come to be a fresh proof of ingenuity. There were no longer any of those vast sacrifices of citizens' blood and citizens' lives which serve towards the continued regeneration of a people, no longer any deeds of open and generous violence. And at times when the rich burghers were not absorbed in politics, they and all the rest of the citizens were devoted heart and soul to commerce, employing their leisure moments in the study of Tacitus, Virgil, or Homer, kept ready to hand under their counters. But, invariably, it was only the intelligence that was kept always in training, while the nobler faculties remained strangled and atrophied by the constant use of cunning and trickery. This was destined to lead, sooner or later, to the inevitable decay of the Republic's moral and political life, and to the decline of the highest mental culture. If the manner in which wars were planned and conducted caused fatal results, no less fatal were the ulterior consequences of victorious campaigns. For the hired troops once paid off, changed from friends into foes, and instantly sought to sell their services to some other employer. Failing to find one, and therefore receiving no pay, they dispersed in armed bands, ravaging town and country, by a species of military brigandage. Generally, it was found requisite to come to terms with them, and bribe them to keep the peace.