JOHN NAJEMY -- Ph.D. -- Professor at Cornell University

In 1390, eight years after the demise of the popular government, the newly entrenched ruling oligarchy (often called the Albizzi oligarchy from the name of one of its leading families) took Florence into what turned out to be the beginning of a long series of wars against Visconti Milan. Opposition to the first phase of the wars in the 1390s came from the popolo and the middle classes. Although government spokesmen and chancellors did their best to present the conflict with Milan as a fight for Florence's survival as an independent state and for the fate of republicanism in Italy (against Milanese "despotism"), there were expressions of opposition from the popolo and some dissident members of the elite class (although never an organized movement).

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