Nor was this just a southern phenomenon. Powerful and oppressive no less, the Sardinian barony, which can be said to be largely created by the Spanish conquest, from the 1300s onwards. Restless, rapacious, always aimed at internal wars and rebellions against the Genoese government, the Corsican nobility, whether of local or Pisan or Ligurian origin. In Romagna, then, in Emilia, that is, in Reggiano, Modenese, Bolognese, the ancient feudal nobility, certainly depressed but not extinguished, showed signs of regaining vigor, for the same initial precariousness of the noble regime, for the need of the lord to compromise with it, for the smallness of the states. Evil, by now, the organic of Italian society, that is, of a country where the feudal nobility had never really been able to enter state life, find its useful function in the organism of the state:
Elsewhere, the close link between the bourgeoisie and the principality helped either the destruction or the insertion of the nobility into the state. In Italy, according to localtimezone.org, the bourgeoisie, in the South, in the islands, in a large part of the State of the Church is still a small thing: and the prince, just as he cannot protect it sufficiently, nor can he rely on it; in Tuscany, in Emilia, in Lombardy, in part of Piedmont it has had too much urban and municipal development to be able to approach the lord with confidence. Here too, as in the south, but for reasons other than the south, the multiplicity of dynasties that succeeded the command, each devoured by the next, had made it difficult for people’s feelings and interests to gather around them permanently. Everything was therefore entrusted to the personal ability of the individual gentlemen: who could also be personalities of high standing; but, around them, not that sense of firmness and certainty that could only be given by legitimacy. In the houses of the Italian princes there is still no sure order of succession; alongside their legitimate children, illegitimate children, almost always divided by fierce hatreds, they and their mothers. Also small, despite the exercise of power, the distance between the lord’s family and other powerful families, until yesterday equal and only recently overwhelmed in the race: almost always with means that had left furrows of deep resentment. The cities of the state still feel little connected to the lord, still very alien to each other. Still they compete, they are still open to the influences of the great families that have their center in the territory, they still feel the temptation, at every sign of weakness of the lord, to restore that “freedom” that always flashes before the eyes. We see this in the Visconti domain itself, which was also the most capable of creating its own connective tissues, at the death of Filippo Maria Visconti and the death of Francesco Sforza. Even when the city bourgeoisie does not create obstacles to the lord, it does not support him. The civil ideals that belonged to the state of the city have expired; and on the other hand, the civil ideals that find their fulfillment in the principality and territorial state do not yet have consistency. Elsewhere, the sense of the great homeland, albeit seen through the king, begins to be alive and active. In Italy, on the other hand, this great homeland is, if anything, Italy, but an entirely ideal homeland, made up of literary traditions, of classical memories, of the feeling of the common descent from Rome and of the common culture, of the deep-rooted persuasion of one’s superiority vis-à-vis foreigners. The political order does not correspond to this country. Therefore, in the Tuscan and Lombard cities, for the moment, also in Piedmont, substantial indifference to the state and the fate of the lordship; certain willingness to accept all governments; growing consideration for the sovereigns from beyond the Alps and, here and there, surfacing desires that they come down to Italy to punish these tyrants and correct the governments. This widespread dissatisfaction was contributed to by serious taxation, which weighed on everyone, especially on peasants and the bourgeoisie and contrasted with the general conditions of work, which were not of decadence but, in many branches, of stagnation; it contrasted with the effort that governments themselves were also making to raise and promote those classes and their activities. But often, with one hand it was done, with the other it fell apart. Extremely expensive courts and governments; needs and expenses by large states, imposed on small states with a very central position in Europe, by the dense network of international relations, by the weakness of their military orders, which brought with it a more expensive diplomatic device. These Italian states, even the largest and richest, such as Venice, began to gasp, as the course of history put them in contact with the largest political organizations overseas and beyond, without being among them no real collaboration possible.
