were murdered. Whole families were extirpated. Yet these convulsions
bore no fruit of liberty. The only exit from the situation was in
despotism--the despotism of a jealous oligarchy as at Florence, or the
despotism of new tyrants in Lombardy and the Romagna.[3]

[1] Not to mention the republics of Lombardy and Romagna, which took
the final stamp of despotism at the beginning of the fourteenth
century, it is noticeable that Pisa submitted to Uguccione da
Faggiuola, Lucca to Castruccio Castracane, and Florence to the Duke
of Athens. The revolution of Pisa in 1316 delivered it from
Uguccione; the premature death of Castruccio in 1328 destroyed the
Tuscan duchy he was building up upon the basement of Ghibellinism;
while the rebellion of 1343 averted tyranny from Florence for
another century.

[2] Machiavelli's _Vita di Castruccio Castracane_, though it is
rather a historical romance than a trustworthy biography,
illustrates the gradual advances made by a bold and ambitious leader
from the Captaincy of the people, conferred upon him for one year,
to the tyranny of his city.

[3] The Divine comedy is, under one of its aspects, the Epic of
Italian tyranny, so many of its episodes are chosen from the history
of the civil wars:

Chè le terre d' Italia tutte piene
Son di tiranni; ed un Marcel diventa
Ogni villan che parteggiando viene.

Those lines occur in the apostrophe to Italy (_Purg._ vi.) where