Ciompi Revolt: Florentine wool workers seize the city

July 1378

Day laborers excluded from the wool guild rose against the Florentine oligarchy, forced through a popular constitution, and installed the wool comber Michele di Lando as gonfaloniere. Their proletarian republic lasted six weeks before patrician backlash crushed it and exiled its leaders. It remains a marker for late medieval class conflict and the limits of urban democracy.