It was considered no disgrace for some powerful chieftain to collect together a band of these hardy aliens,--to subsist amidst the mountains on booty and pillage,--to make war upon tyrant or republic, as interest suggested, and to sell, at enormous stipends, the immunities of peace.

Sometimes they hired themselves to one state to protect it against the other; and the next year beheld them in the field against their former employers.

These bands of Northern stipendiaries assumed, therefore, a civil, as well as a military, importance; they were as indispensable to the safety of one state as they were destructive to the security of all.

But five years before the present date, the Florentine Republic had hired the services of a celebrated leader of these foreign soldiers,--Gualtier, duke of Athens.

By acclamation, the people themselves had elected that warrior to the state of prince, or tyrant, of their state; before the year was completed, they revolted against his cruelties, or rather against his exactions,--for, despite all the boasts of their historians, they felt an attack on their purses more deeply than an assault on their liberties,--they had chased him from their city, and once more proclaimed themselves a Republic.