Florence, like Venice, and
other Italian republics, jobbed her wars. The work was done by the
Hawkwoods, the Sforzas, the Bracciones, and other chiefs of the
celebrated free companies, black bands, lance societies, who
understood no other profession, but who were as accomplished in the
arts of their own guild as were any of the five major and seven minor
crafts into which the Florentine burgesses were divided.
This proved a bad thing for the liberties of Florence in the end. The
chieftains of these military clubs, usually from the lowest ranks,
with no capacity but for bloodshed, and no revenue but rapine, often
ended their career by obtaining the seigniory of some petty republic,
a small town, or a handful of hamlets, whose liberty they crushed with
their own iron, and with the gold obtained, in exchange for their
blood, from the city bankers. In the course of time such seigniories
often rolled together, and assumed a menacing shape to all who valued
municipal liberty. Sforza--whose peasant father threw his axe into a
tree, resolving, if it fell, to join, as a common soldier, the roving
band which had just invited him; if it adhered to the wood, to remain
at home a laboring hind--becomes Duke of Milan, and is encouraged in
his usurpation by Cosmo Vecchio, who still gives himself the airs of
first-citizen of Florence.
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