kind with an equal distribution of political rights. The chief citizens of Pisa and all the wealthier families left the country, preferring to live in Lombardy, France, or even in Sicily under the Aragonese, where at least they enjoyed civil equality, rather than remain in their own city subject to the harsh and tyrannous rule of Florentine shopkeepers. The commerce and industry of Pisa, her navy, her merchant-fleet, all vanished when freedom fell; while her _Studio_, or university, one of the old glories of Italy, and afterwards reconstituted by the Medici, was done away with, and the city soon reduced to a state of squalid desolation. All conquered cities suffered this fate; those once of the richest and most powerful in the days of their freedom being treated with still greater harshness than the rest.[366] This makes it easy to understand why, when Florence was in danger, all conquered cities in which life was not altogether extinguished invariably seized the opportunity to try to regain their independence, and always preferred a native or foreign tyrant to cowering beneath the yoke of a republic that refused to learn from experience the wisdom of changing its policy. Nor could it have effected such change without radically altering its whole constitution and manner of existence. Thus, in accumulating riches and power, Florence was only multiplying the causes of her approaching and unavoidable decline. The Commune seemed increasingly incapable of giving birth to the modern State, and accordingly, when its chief support, commerce, began to decay, the strength of the burghers was sapped, and the oppressed multitude, now a formidable majority, speedily looked to monarchical rule for their relief. Thus the Medici were enabled to attain supremacy in the name of freedom, and with the support of people and populace. Thus, likewise, by violence, or fraud, or by both combined, the communes of Italy were all reduced to principalities; and wherever, from exceptional causes, the republican order still lingered on for a while, it was only as a shadow of its former self, and no longer rendering any of the advantages for which it had been originally designed. Populations which had failed to establish equality by means of free institutions, were now forced to learn the lesson of equality beneath the undiscriminating oppression of a despotic prince. Signories formed the necessary link of transition between the mediæval commune and the modern state. For these Signories traced a way towards the just administration and method pursued by the vast kingdoms then in course of formation on the continent of Europe, and which also remained absolute and despotic monarchies until the French revolution effected in town, country, and throughout every class that work of social emancipation which the Italian communes had so admirably initiated, but had never learnt to extend beyond the circuit of their walls.