As in the case of the Medici and the Bentivogli, many generations might elapse before such burgher families assumed dynastic authority.

But to this end they were always advancing.
The history of the bourgeois despots proves that Italy in the fifteenth century was undergoing a natural process of determination toward tyranny.

Sismondi may attempt to demonstrate that Italy was 'not answerable for the crimes with which she was sullied by her tyrants.' But the facts show that she was answerable for choosing despots instead of remaining free, or rather that she instinctively obeyed a law of social evolution by which princes had to be substituted for municipalities at the end of those fierce internal conflicts and exhausting wars of jealousy which closed the Middle Ages.

Machiavelli, with all his love of liberty, is forced to admit that in his day the most powerful provinces of Italy had become incapable of freedom.

'No accident, however weighty and violent, could ever restore Milan or Naples to liberty, owing to their utter corruption.