Governments, thieves, scientists, treasurer hunters, historians and despots of all kinds would crave his skill.
The profits of his inroad were reaped by despots, who used the Ghibelline prestige for the consolidation of their own power.
Gian Galeazzo, partly by force and partly by intrigue, discredited these minor despots, pushed his dominion to the very verge of Venice, and, having subjected Lombardy to his sway, proceeded to attack Tuscany.
They gradually entered into the spirit of their age, assumed the style of despots and made use of the humanistic movement, then at its height, to place themselves in a new relation to Italy.
Having become despots, the popes sought to establish their relatives in principalities.
When they might have won national independence, after their warfare with the Swabian emperors, they let the golden opportunity slip. Pampered with commercial prosperity, eaten to the core with inter-urban rivalries, they submitted to despots, renounced the use of arms, and offered themselves in the hour of need, defenceless and disunited to the shock of puissant nations.
Henceforth it was impossible to publish or to utter a word which might offend the despots of church or state; and the Italians had to amuse their leisure with the polite triflings of academics.
In 1847 Lord Minto visited the tionary Italian courts to try to induce the recalcitrant despots agitation, to mend their ways, so as to avoid revolution and war, 1847.
Liberals were by no means inclined to despair of accomplishing this task...
The Piedmontese troops distinguished themselves in the field, gaining the sympathies of the French and English; and at the subsequent congress of Paris (1856), where Cavour himself was Sardinian representative, the Italian question was discussed, and the intolerable oppression of the Italian peoples by Austria and the despots ventilated.
His government, however, was not characterized by cruelty like those of his brother despots, and Guerrazzi and the other Liberals of 1849, although tried and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, were merely exiled.
Alexander now contemplated sending Cesare to Romagna to subdue the turbulent local despots, and with the help of the French king carve a principality for himself out of those territories owing nominal allegiance to the pope.
The period with which we are now dealing is the epoch of the despots, the signori, and in pursuit of expansion on the mainland Venice was brought into collision first with the Scaligeri of Verona, then with the Carraresi of Padua, and finally with the Visconti of Milan.
The local despots of Romagna were dispossessed and an administration was set up, which, if tyrannical and cruel, was at least orderly and strong, and aroused the admiration of Machiavelli.
A new danger now arose in the shape of a conspiracy against him on the part of the deposed despots, the Orsini and some of his own condottieri.
A fresh danger threatened the republic in 1367 when Charles IV., who had allied himself with Pope Urban V., Queen Joanna of Naples, and various north Italian despots to humble the Visconti, demanded that the Florentines should join the league.
He retired to Marnes near Ville d'Avray to escape the Terror, but was sought out and summarily condemned to death "for having flattered the despots of Vienna and London."
Following the course of events common to most cities of north-eastern Italy, the history of Padua falls under eight heads: (1) the Lombard rule, (2) the Frankish rule, (3) the period of the bishops, (4) the emergence of the commune, (5) the period of the despots, (6) the period of Venetian supremacy, (7) the period of Austrian supremacy, and finally (8) the period of united Italy.
Cesare Borgia contemplated the subjugation of Bologna in 1500, when he was crushing the various despots of Romagna, but Bentivoglio was saved for the moment by French intervention.
Leopold of Tuscany was a well-meaning, not unkindly man, and fonder of his subjects than were the other Italian despots; but he was weak, and too closely bound by family ties and Habsburg traditions ever to become a real Liberal.
In 1214-1259 it passed to the Greek despots of Epirus, and in 1267 became a possession of the Neapolitan house of Anjou.
Frederick himself, of course, was Italian rather than German, akin to the despots of the Renaissance in his many-sided culture, his tolerant scepticism and his policy of cruelty well applied.
Ferdinand strongly resented foreign interference, and even rejected the Austrian proposal for a league of the Italian despots for mutual defence against external attacks and internal disorder.
In this work of accumulation Guarino and Filelfo, Aurispa and Poggio, took the chief part, aided by the wealth of Italian patricians, merchant-princes and despots, who were inspired by the sacred thirst for learning.
Furthermore, they undertook the charge of private education, opening schools which displaced the medieval system of instruction, and taking engagements as tutors in the families of despots, noblemen and wealthy merchants.
It was not in their external conditions, suffering as they were from invasions, enthralled by despots, to use the Reformation as a lever for political revolution.
Kajar Dynasty.Aga Mahommed was undoubtedly one of the most cruel and vindictive despots that ever disgraced a throne.
During the year 1843 the air was full of conspiracies, and various ill-starred attempts at rising: against the Italian despots were made.
Petrarch remained an incurable rhetori cian; and, while he stigmatized the despots in his ode to Italy and in his epistles to the emperor he accepted their hospitality.
Herodotus, in the spirit of 5th-century Greeks, which conventionally regarded the tyrants as selfish despots, says he ruled harshly, but he is generally represented as mild, beneficent and so popular as to be able to dispense with a bodyguard, the usual attribute of a tyrannis.
In the autumn of 1851 the queen was much annoyed at hearing that he had received a deputation at the foreign office, which had waited on him to express sympathy with the Hungarian refugees, and to denounce the conduct of the despots and tyrants of Russia and Austria, and that he had, in his reply, expressed his gratification at the demonstration.
Victor Emmanuel was obliged to recall the royal commissioners, but together with Cavour he secretly encouraged the provisional governments to resist the return of the despots, and the constituent assemblies of Tuscany, Romagna and the duchies voted for annexation to Sardinia.
The new sovereign was one of the most sincere, and the most successful, of the enlightened despots of the 18th century.
In the few months between the fall of Khartum and his death the mandi, relieved from the incessant strain of toil, copied in his private life all the vices of Oriental despots while maintaining in public the austerity he demanded of his followers.
In this position they enjoyed a considerable amount of autonomy, but were for the most part subject to local despots, most of whom were creatures of the Persian king.
It was at the instigation of one of these despots, Histiaeus (q.v.) of Miletus, that in about 500 B.C. the principal cities broke out into insurrection against Persia.
In the 11th century it passed to the Norman kings of Sicily; after the Fourth Crusade it belonged at various times to the despots of Epirus, the emperors of Constantinople, and the Orsini, counts of Cephalonia.
In the latter half of the century large colonies of Tosks were planted in the Morea by the despots of Mistra, and in Attica and Boeotia by Duke Nerio of Athens.
In this way the Italians lost their military vigour, and wars were waged by despots from their cabinets, who pulled the strings of puppet captains in their pay.