ABSTRACT
The stability and security of urban life were constantly being challenged by forces which emerged or seemed to emerge from outside the normal nexus of human relations in the city — natural disasters, fire, disease, warfare or the assumed machinations of the community's secret enemies. But the breakdown of harmonious relations among the city's inhabitants could not always be attributed to such external forces. Despite all efforts by the urban elite to maintain order and ensure a minimum level of material and social satisfaction among the inhabitants, it was inevitable that conflicts would occasionally break out among different groups within the community. Many of these conflicts were relatively benign: some, in fact, were little more than particularly animated manifestations of the normal give-and-take that characterized everyday politics in the early modern city. But sometimes the intensity of conflict would escalate, triggering violence and bringing about, at least temporarily, radical changes in the way a community was governed.
