A tax on silver and salt was substituted in the Milanese province for the conscription, while the Florentine oligarchs, actuated probably by the same motives, laid a tax upon the country.

The effect of this change was to make financial and economical questions all-important, and to introduce a new element into the balance of Italian powers.

The principalities were transformed into great banks, where the lords of cities sat in their bureau, counted their money, and calculated the cost of wars or the value of towns they sought to acquire by bargain.

At first they used their mercenary troops like pawns, buying up a certain number for some special project, and dismissing them when it had been accomplished.

But in course of time the mercenaries awoke to the sense of their own power, and placed themselves beneath captains who secured them a certainty of pay with continuity of profitable service.
Thus the Condottieri came into existence, and Italy beheld the spectacle of moving despotisms, armed and mounted, seeking to effect establishment upon the weakest, worst-defended points of the peninsula.