The assessment of Piero as an unworthy opponent helps to explain why the leaders of the Hill were so unprepared for the coming fight. Also greatly hampering their effort was the lack of a clear chain of command. “There were three chiefs,” says Marco Parenti, “and each one waited for the others to act.” The Party of the Hill was, in fact, nothing more than a temporary coalition of men “unified more by a common hatred than a common ideal.” Even in these early hours the alliance was beginning to show signs of cracking under the pressure of events.
By contrast, across the city Lorenzo’s arrival at the Medici palace had sparked a flurry of purposeful activity. The one guest whose presence is recorded that day was Nicodemo Tranchedini, the Milanese ambassador to Florence, and it was this battle-tested veteran who girded the residents for the expected onslaught. “Nicodemo [Tranchedini], well schooled in these arts, set about defending Piero’s house,” wrote Parenti, “erecting scaffolding above the windows to serve as battlements, with many stones and other arms of war, and occupying the streets around the house with armed troops, he seized as well the gate of San Gallo in order to allow the entrance of his own men, who were expected to arrive, while the others were closed to ensure that their enemies would not be able to enter the city.”*
To those dithering across the river at Luca Pitti’s home, confidence soon gave way to concern. Only when couriers brought word of growing crowds outside the Palazzo Medici did they begin, belatedly, to prepare their own defenses. Soon cries of “Popolo e Liberta!” rang out in the neighborhoods of the Oltrarno, the gonfaloni of the Dragon and the Ladder, while anyone of known Medici sympathies was forced to beat a strategic retreat across town. “And thus,” records Marco Parenti, “there arose two fortresses, each guarded by its own men.”
Marco Parenti says that Piero returned “around the 22nd hour [that is, around four in the afternoon] in great fright with many armed men,” while Machiavelli confirms that he arrived “in the midst of a great multitude of armed men.” At least some of these must have been with him when he left Careggi, while others may have joined the cavalcade along the way. Once inside the city walls Piero’s entourage was joined by additional partisans, who escorted him to the Via Larga. That the neighborhoods closest to the Medici palace remained solidly behind their cause is revealed by the fact that Neroni, whose palace was only a few doors down from theirs, was unable to return to his own house for fear the enraged mob would tear him limb from limb.
As soon as he was safely home Piero assembled his closest advisors. In addition to Lorenzo and Nicodemo Tranchedini, they included Francesco Sassetti, manager of the Medici bank in Florence, and Tommaso Soderini, Niccolò’s younger brother, whose loyalty to the Medici was cemented by his recent marriage to Dianora Tornabuoni, Lucrezia’s sister.*
For Piero and his advisors, survival would depend as much on the skill-full manipulation of popular sentiment as on the application of brute force. In times of political crisis the greatest danger was that quarrels among the city’s rulers would lead to violent social revolution. With their masters at each other’s throats, the downtrodden workers might grasp the opportunity to throw off their yoke as they had in the summer of 1378 during the violent upheaval known as the revolt of the Ciompi.† Visions of the hungry masses pouring out from their squalid hovels in San Frediano and rampaging through the streets was enough to send chills down the spines of the burghers who ran things in Florence.
For the Medici faction, maintaining discipline among the armed mobs now gathering to defend their palace was vital; as representatives of the status quo they had the most to lose should the situation descend into general anarchy. Here Lorenzo played a pivotal role, as Niccolò Valori writes: “The plebs, thirsting after novelty, thought of nothing but riot, and as happens in similar cases, with suspicion growing and without hope of receiving pardon, every day their sedition and mischief increased. And if to these dangers Lorenzo, along with those citizens who loved him and counseled him, did not find remedy, without doubt the city with the greater part of the noblemen would have been endangered.”
But while Piero and his advisors kept a tight rein on their supporters, the leaders of the Hill could ill afford to be so fastidious. They had already stirred up the masses with cries of “Popolo e Liberta!” and it was on their strong backs that they hoped to ride to victory. But in exploiting the discontent of the city’s underclass, potentially their most effective weapon, they risked being destroyed by forces they themselves had unleashed. This points out a fatal contradition at the heart of the reform movement. The leaders of the Hill were not radicals but social conservatives who believed that the removal of the Medici would lead to a return to the good old days when the city’s wealthy merchants took collective responsibility for government. However much they resented Piero and his cronies, the nightmare that kept them awake at night was the specter of destitute workers rising up to slit the throats of their masters.
With signs that the tide in the city was beginning to flow against them, the leaders of the Hill did in fact briefly contemplate tapping into that undercurrent of poverty and despair among the weavers and dyers and using it against the reggimento. “While things were in such a state,” records Marco Parenti, “Niccolò Soderini, a spirited man as we have said, reached the house of messer Luca armed and on horseback, accompanied by many companions.” Already present as we have seen were Neroni, Acciaiuoli, “and other honorable citizens” engaged with their host in lengthy but fruitless discussions. Soderini, frustrated that there was much discussion but little action, proposed that
all those who were armed should follow him, and go to the houses of their friends who were hidden out of doubt and timidity and rouse them to join with them, and those who did not would be treated as enemies, and having gathered together many in this way, as it seemed to him would surely happen, he would gallop through the city shouting “Liberty!”…and proceed to Piero’s house with every promise of victory…. It seemed to everyone that this was sure to succeed, but doubt crept in: this was caused by the fear that the little people, all in arms and having sacked Piero’s house, would be so aroused that, having tasted the sweetness of such destruction, would turn against other magnates, thinking in this way to relieve their poverty and becoming themselves among the well-to-do, and then perhaps, turn against the government and take it for themselves as they did in 1378.
In the end their fear of the mob proved greater than their fear of Piero. The three other leaders vetoed Soderini’s proposal, a decision Parenti describes as “very cowardly, since their situation had become so precarious that they had no other means to preserve their own safety.”
Throughout the evening of August 27, while Pitti, Neroni, Acciaiuoli, and Soderini quarreled over basic elements of strategy and even ideology, the Medici seized the initiative. Confronting his cousin Pierfrancesco, whose palace was next door to his on the Via Larga, Piero extracted an emergency loan of 10,000 florins, demonstrating that the rabbit had now become the wolf. Pierfrancesco had been one of the signatories to the oath of May 4 aimed at undermining Medici authority, and Piero must have relished the opportunity to settle the score. The sight of heavily armed men outside his window proved sufficient inducement for Pierfrancesco to rediscover the virtue of the family solidarity he had so recently forgotten.
While the leaders of the Hill, showing themselves to be frugal as well as indecisive, were reluctant to dip into their own pockets, Piero put his coins to immediate use. “With this money he showed great liberality in spending on what was required. First he emptied the bakeries in Florence of bread and sent it to his house, a double blow since it supplied his men while denying sustenance to his adversaries. He emptied the shops of their arms and the piazza of wine.” The Party of the Hill, which earlier in the day seemed to hold all the cards, suddenly showed itself to be outmatched by the sickly and reputedly weak-willed Piero. “Messer Luca, messer Dietisalvi and messer Agnolo, seeing fall so great and sudden a blow, stupefied and without pr
ovision, seemed almost lost.”
As the sun set over the city, Florence was divided into two hostile camps. Men and women flocked to the churches to pray for a peace that seemed ever more improbable, then returned home and locked their doors against the coming conflagration. In the courtyards of the Pitti and Medici palaces torches crackled and sparked while armed guards kept up a tense vigil. In the gran sala of the Medici palace, surrounded by suitably warlike scenes painted by Antonio del Pollaiuolo depicting the labors of Hercules,* Piero, Lorenzo, and their trusted lieutenants prepared for the decisive confrontation, which was sure to come the next day. A comical scene played out at the Medici palace captures the eerie mood of the long night:
Messer Antonio Ridolfi, one of Piero’s friends, wishing to go that night to his house to talk over events, reached the door of the house with a company of armed men and, knocking, the armed guards inside, wishing to know who had come and why, as was only reasonable, raised some small ruckus with their weapons and loud voices. From this came a rumor among some of the armed men inside that their enemies had come to attack them. Thus was born such a great fright that many sought out hiding places while others threw down their arms hoping to flee; soon, seeing their error, order was restored. From this one can judge how Piero’s defenses would have held had he actually been attacked.
In spite of this fiasco, by the time the sun rose above the Arno valley Piero had taken up a commanding position. As the mists parted, the roads from the north could be seen filling with armed men streaming toward the city walls. Some came from the hills near Mugello, the Medici’s ancestral home, others from nearby Arezzo and Pistoia. Luca Pitti was also bringing reinforcements toward the city, but they were of little use to him since Medici partisans had already shut the gates. Now Piero’s foresight in buying up all the bread and wine was revealed; while his supporters, camped outside the Porta San Gallo, were well provisioned, Pitti’s men across the river were forced to scrounge for whatever scraps they could find.
Had Piero so desired, it is almost certain that he could have taken the government by force, storming the Palace of the Priors, arresting his opponents, and establishing a despotism of the kind already common throughout the Italian peninsula. (Cosimo himself had famously quipped, “Better a city ruined than a city lost.”) But with absolute power within his grasp, Piero chose a different course. Rather than seizing the government and abolishing the constitution and the civic traditions to which Florentines were so deeply attached, he preferred to rely, as his father had before him, on those very instruments to legitimize and perpetuate his personal authority.
Here the calendar came to his aid. August 28 was election day, and in spite of the crisis the citizens were determined to press ahead with the cumbersome ceremony that to a Florentine was the essential ingredient of his cherished liberty. Piero, in fact, had much to gain from a change in the executive. Though under the timid leadership of Bernardo Lotti the current Signoria had been unable to impose its will on either faction, most of its members were known to be in sympathy with the Hill. The election of a new government—the eight priors plus the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia who comprised the Signoria, the chief executive body of the land—could well tip the balance of power in his favor.
With bells ringing out from dozens of churches all across the city, the attention of the citizens was drawn to the great basilica of Santa Croce, where the leather purses containing the names of those eligible for office were stored in large chests under the watchful eyes of the Franciscan brothers. Even as armed bands converged on the city, officials of the government, accompanied by a mounted escort and led by heralds and trumpeters, arrived at the sacristy to remove the purses and carry them in solemn procession to the Palace of the Priors, where the drawing of the names would take place.
Once inside the palace, the nine purses—one for each of the priors and another for the Gonfaloniere—were brought to the great hall and placed in full view of the current government and the assembled citizenry. As the podestà, the chief judicial official of the state, proceeded to draw a name ticket from each of the purses, tension in the hall mounted. The bags contained scores of names: scoundrels and sages, rabid partisans of one faction or another and those with no known political affiliation, all jumbled together. In this strange procedure lay the heart of Florentine democracy. By choosing their officials at random from a large pool of eligible citizens—and by reducing the term of service for the most important offices to a mere two months—Florentines believed they had perfected a democratic system that would best represent the community as a whole and, as important, would prevent a single man or clique from monopolizing power. It was a process that guaranteed inefficiency because the corrupt and incompetent were as likely to serve as those of proven ability. Over the years Florentines had devised ingenious methods for mitigating the most baleful consequences—by weeding out undesirables from the purses or by instituting various councils of wise men who could steer the government in the desired direction—but there remained an element of unpredictability that to a true Florentine was synonymous with liberty itself.
The results of the current election would be all the more unpredictable because only months earlier the reformers had pushed through—against Piero’s will—a measure to close the electoral purses, that is, to prevent members of the reggimento from removing from the bags the names of those they deemed unreliable. Thus today’s election would be one of the freest in recent memory. Again, Marco Parenti is an eyewitness: “That same morning, at the usual hour, with high expectations from every corner, a new Signoria was drawn. The lottery went to friends of Piero, demonstrating the truth of Virgil’s verses—Audaces fortuna iuvat, timidosque repellit—Fortune rewards the bold and repels the meek.”
Some partisans of the Hill cried foul, claiming that Piero had tampered with the purses to ensure a friendly majority in the Signoria. According to one contemporary observer, “before the drawing for the Signoria, the bags had been gone through, and all those Piero suspected were removed.”* But the charge is implausible. Not only does Parenti—a man usually willing to believe the worst of Piero—make no mention of such nefarious doings, but for the Medici to tamper with the bags stored in the sacred precinct of Santa Croce would have almost certainly provoked a violent backlash. However much the Medici and their cronies were accustomed to interfering in the electoral process, they were careful to do so by scrupulously legal means. Such a blatant subversion of the process would have risked alienating the very people whose support they now needed.
Even more telling is the fact that while Parenti declared in hindsight that all were “friends of Piero,” at the time he made no such claim. In fact the new Gonfaloniere di Giustizia, Roberto Lioni, was initially described by Parenti as “a sensible man and a good man of the people who, had he followed his own inclinations, would have been in favor of the commune and of liberty.” Parenti attributes his change of heart to ambition, which is another way of saying that both Lioni and his colleagues (who quickly followed the new Gonfaloniere’s lead) knew a winner when they saw one and had concluded that the Medici were more likely to be in a position to reward their followers than their feckless opponents. It is not surprising that the newly elected government bent to the prevailing wind that now blew strongly in the Medici’s direction.
Piero, still in bed at his palace on the Via Larga, received word of the election with satisfaction, but he realized that the successful election brought new dangers as well as opportunities. With superior forces at his disposal and a friendly government scheduled to be seated on the first of September, time was on Piero’s side. But if this was obvious to Piero, so it was to his opponents; the looming deadline might well provoke them to desperate acts. Tensions continued to run high in the Palazzo della Signoria as the newly elected priors, now openly committed to Piero, refused to leave the premises as required by law, fearing the old Signoria had no intention of relinquishing power when their term of office expired in three days. A confrontat
ion was avoided only when Piero persuaded his newfound allies to return peaceably to their homes.
Still unwilling to concede defeat, the rebels sought to erase the advantage Piero had gained by the morning’s election. Piero’s worst fears seemed to be realized when a courier arrived with a demand from the Signoria that he immediately appear before them at the Palace of the Priors. This placed him in a difficult position. He had gained the moral high ground by adhering to the strict letter of the law, but in obeying the government’s summons he knew he would be venturing onto unfriendly turf. Earlier in the day Neroni had appeard before the Signoria to plead his case, and the sympathetic hearing he had received could have left Piero in little doubt as to what his own reception might be. Piero was acutely aware that after obeying a similar summons his father had been arrested and imprisoned in the palace tower by the Albizzi. Rather than leave his well-guarded home, then, Piero “excused himself because of his illness…and instead sent Lorenzo and Giuliano his sons.”
Awaiting Lorenzo and Giuliano at the Palazzo della Signoria were the assembled Priors and Gonfaloniere, seated on a dais and dressed in their scarlet robes of office. The atmosphere was decidedly chilly. The Signoria, which compensated for a lack of effective power by an inflated sense of their own dignity, made it clear that they believed the substitution of the Medici boys for their father was a calculated snub. “In not coming, [Piero] showed his arrogance and lack of civility, sending instead his sons Lorenzo and Giuliano,” complained Alamanno Rinuccini. The moment was made all the more awkward by the presence of Luca Pitti, who, like his rival, had been called before the government to account for his actions. In the end the Signoria issued a stern message to both Lorenzo and Pitti, demanding that each party “expel from Florence all the soldiers stationed at his house…and that all the citizens who had taken up arms by that same hour be disarmed.”
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