A great internal change took place and was accomplished during this period.

The free burghs which flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, gave place to tyrannies, illegal for the most part in their origin, and maintained by force.

In the absence of dynastic right, violence and craft were instruments by means of which the despots founded and preserved their power.

Yet the sentiments of the Italians at large were not unfavorable to the growth of principalities.

On the contrary, the forces which move society, the inner instinct of the nation, and the laws of progress and development, tended year by year more surely to the consolidation of despotisms.