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.
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.
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.