A History of Verona Page: 259 of 493

                                
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT                      237
together, a Scaligeri king might not have been outside the
range of practical politics, but as it was, their empire fell to
pieces even more rapidly than it had arisen, and Verona
failed to become one of the great Italian powers of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The methods by which Cangrande, and his nephews after
him, administered their territories are an excellent example of
the internal machinery of an Italian despotism. To begin with,
it must never be forgotten that the sole link between the various
members of the state was the purely personal one of the ruler.
In a certain sense Verona may be called the mother-city; she
formed the original nucleus of the state, her name headed the
list of towns which followed the ruler's title in documents, the
Scaligeri made her their principal residence, her citizens were
often exempted from extraordinary taxation. But she exercised
no sort of supremacy over the cities outside her own district, and
though she was usually the first to elect the new ruler, he was
not legally lord of any other of his chief towns till he had been
elected by its council.  The Scaligeri empire was in fact
a confederacy of equal units, and every member retained
its own constitution, its councils and officials, its statutes and
customs, as far as was compatible with the change from republic
to autocracy, or from one dynasty to another, as the case might
be. Every city that had formerly been a separate state continued
to exercise jurisdiction over its own district and the
towns therein, though the policy of Mastino II. was, when
possible, to break up the larger units, and hence Conegliano
and Ceneda were removed from the jurisdiction of Treviso, and
placed in direct dependence on the central government. These
"immediate" cities, as they may be called, kept paid representatives
at court in peace, or at the head-quarters of the army
in war, to look after their interests. Twice it even seemed as
though a central council might have been formed of their representatives.
In July, 1331, Mastino II. summoned all his
chief cities to send envoys to Verona to consult with him as to
the welfare of the Communes,1 and three years later, when the
heavy taxation aroused general discontent, he again ordered
l Ad omnia oportuna pro ipso Comuni, M. T., No. II74.