While Venice pursued one consistent course of gradual growth, and seemed immovable, Florence remained in perpetual flux, and altered as the strength of factions or of party-leaders varied.[1] When the strife of Guelfs and Ghibellines, Neri, and Bianchi, had exhausted her in the fourteenth century, she submitted for a while to the indirect ascendency of the kings of Naples, who were recognized as Chiefs of the Guelf Party.

Thence she passed for a few months into the hands of a despot in the person of the Duke of Athens (1342-43).

After the confirmation of her republican liberty, followed a contest between the proletariat and the middle classes (Ciompi 1378).

During the fifteenth century she was kept continually disturbed by the rivalry of her great merchant families.

The rule of the Albizzi, who fought the Visconti and extended the Florentine territory by numerous conquests, was virtually the despotism of a close oligarchy.
This phase of her career was terminated by the rise of the Medici, who guided her affairs with a show of constitutional equity for four generations.