Genoa

Those same families made the republic's politics as stormy as its trade was rich. In 1339 the Genoese elected Simone Boccanegra their first doge for life, but no faction could hold the city for long, and again and again it handed itself to a foreign master: the kings of France, the Visconti and Sforza of Milan each ruled it in turn. The long duel with Venice ended in the War of Chioggia, lost in 1381, after which Genoa never again ruled the sea, and in 1407 the debts of that war were consolidated in the Bank of San Giorgio, whose creditors came to hold much of the republic's revenue.

In 1528 Andrea Doria broke with France and gave Genoa a lasting constitution, a closed aristocracy of 28 noble clans electing a doge every two years. Allied to Spain, the city found a second fortune in finance, as Genoese bankers financed the Spanish crown from their counting houses in Seville and drew its American silver home. The decline was slow: plague killed perhaps half the inhabitants in 1656 and 1657, a French fleet bombarded the city in 1684, Corsica was ceded to France in 1768, and in 1797 Napoleon ended the republic.