A series of obscure revolutions in the smaller despotic centers pointed to a vehement plebeian reaction against a state of things that had become unbearable.

The lower classes of the burghers rose against the 'popolani grassi,' and a new class of princes emerged at the close of the crisis.
Thus the plebs forced the Bentivogli on Bologna and the Medici on Florence, and Baglioni on Perugia and the Petrucci on Siena.
[1] Perugia, for example, farmed out the tax upon her country population for 12,000 florins, upon her baking-houses for 7,266, upon her wine for 4,000, upon her lake for 5,200, upon contracts for 1,500.

Two bankers accepted the Perugian loan at this price in 1388.
The emergence of the Condottieri at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the anarchy they encouraged for their own aggrandizement, and the financial distress which ensued upon the substitution of mercenary for civic warfare, completed the democratization of the Italian cities, and marked a new period in the history of despotism.

From the date of Francesco Sforza's entry into Milan as conqueror in 1450, the princes became milder in their exercise of power and less ambitious.

Having begun by disarming their subjects, they now proceeded to lay down arms themselves, employing small forces for the protection of their person and the State, engaging more cautiously in foreign strife, and substituting diplomacy, wherever it was possible, for warfare.