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Updated: May 17, 2025
It was not a rising of the poor against the rich, for the leaders were the richest merchants in the town, neither was it a rising of Guelphs against Ghibelines, though the bishop had lost much of his prestige owing to his loyalty to the emperor. It was essentially a fight of the new "bourgeoisie" against feudalism, of a commercial and industrial culture against a purely agricultural civilization.
In the Via dei Bardi stood, probably still stands, the house inhabited by the chief of the great and noble family from whom it takes its name we write of the period of the fiercest struggles between the Guelfs and Ghibelines; and the Bardi were powerful partisans of the latter party. In that house dwelt a young girl of uncommon beauty, and yet more uncommon character.
These riotous fellows drink, gamble and live with lewd women, to the great scandal of honest people. In short, if we be not divided from them, or their power be not so diminished, that they must stand in dread of Zurich and Bern, then surely a schism will be created among the cantons, as terrible as that between the Guelfs and Ghibelines in Italy.
If it be remembered that, at the same time, France had become a prey to the horrors which followed the imprisonment of King John; that England witnessed the commencement of the troubled reign of Richard II.; that Italy was delivered up to the contentions of the rival factions of the Guelfs and Ghibelines, and beheld two occupants at the same time upon the papal throne; that two emperors disputed the right to the imperial crown of Germany; and that Timurlane ravaged Asia from the territories of the Usheks to the borders of India, it will not be disputed that the history of the world records the annals of no more unhappy epoch in its affairs.
I could not rest under the imputation that I visited Florence and did not traverse its weary miles of picture galleries. We tried indolently to recollect something about the Guelphs and Ghibelines and the other historical cut-throats whose quarrels and assassinations make up so large a share of Florentine history, but the subject was not attractive.
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