But those international quarrels which kept the nation in unrest through a long period of municipal wars, ending in the horrors of successive invasions, were now succeeded by an almost universal discord between families and persons.

Each province, each city, each village became the theater of private feuds and assassinations.

Each household was the scene of homicide and empoisonment.

Italy presented the spectacle of a nation armed against itself, not to decide the issue of antagonistic political principles by civil strife, but to gratify lawless passions--cupidity, revenge, resentment--by deeds of personal high-handedness.

Among the common people of the country and the towns, crimes of brutality and bloodshed were of daily occurrence; every man bore weapons for self-defence, and for attack upon his neighbor.