 Thus the battle lines of the civil war were drawn up between urban and rural factions. The cities, dominated by the middle-class civil bureaucracy and merchant class (the "people of the market"), favoured a more mercantile economy and close relations with the Italian maritime republics, while the countryside remained under the control of the conservative landed aristocracy, which derived its wealth from its estates and traditionally shunned commercial and entrepreneurial activities as unworthy of its status. The lower social strata tended to support the respective dominant faction, the middle classes in the cities and the landholding magnates in the countryside.
