Florence

The age of the great banking houses ended abruptly. The Bardi and Peruzzi went bankrupt in 1340, victims of a Europe-wide recession, the Black Death followed in 1348, and in 1378 the wool workers rose in the Ciompi revolt and won a share of power that the wealthier classes took back by force in 1382. Out of these upheavals rose the Medici. Giovanni di Bicci founded the family bank in 1397, and his son Cosimo, driven into exile by the ruling oligarchy in 1433, was called back within a year and from then on governed the republic from behind its offices.

The republic kept its councils but lost its freedom by degrees. When Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494 the Medici were driven out, and the friar Savonarola ruled until the Florentines turned on him and burned him in the Piazza della Signoria in 1498. The Medici came back with papal troops in 1512, were expelled again in 1527, and were restored by Charles V after an eleven-month siege, with Alessandro de' Medici as the first hereditary duke. His successor Cosimo I conquered Siena, and in 1569 Pope Pius V named him Grand Duke of Tuscany, ending the history of the republic.