some boys disinterred it a second time, and dragged it through Florence by the piece of rope that was still round its neck; and when they came to the door of his house, they tied the rope to the door-bell, saying: “Knock at the door!” and they made great sport all through the town. And when they grew tired and did not know what more to do with it, they went to the Ponte al Rubiconte and threw it into the river. And they sang a song with certain rhymes, amongst others this line: “Messer Jacopo is floating away down the Arno.” And it was considered an extraordinary thing, first because children are usually afraid of dead bodies, and secondly because the stench was so bad that it was impossible to go near it.
On April 30, the Feast of the Ascension, Giuliano was laid to rest in the church of San Lorenzo in a funeral attended by much of the populace of Florence.* Giuliano, the Prince of Youth, had been immensely popular and the outpouring of grief was genuine. His sunny disposition, athleticism, and good looks had appealed even to those who resented the Medici hegemony. Poliziano concludes his account of the Pazzi conspiracy with a tribute to his friend: “He was very mild, very kind, very respectful of his brother, and of great strength and virtue. These virtues and others made him beloved by the people and his own family during his lifetime, and they rendered most painful and bitter to us all the memory of his loss.”
Some sense of the shock Lorenzo felt at the death of his beloved brother can be gleaned by an uncharacteristic five-day gap in his correspondence. The heading over two blank pages in his secretary’s ledger reads, “Here and on the following page must be recorded the letters written about the tumult, when Giuliano de’ Medici was killed in Santa Reparata, may God have mercy on his soul.” The fact that they remained empty speaks volumes about Lorenzo’s state of mind.
One ray of light pierced these dark days. Shortly after Giuliano’s murder, his mother, Lucrezia, received the surprising information that Giuliano had recently fathered an illegitimate son.† Lucrezia sought out the baby and brought him to the Via Larga palace, where Lorenzo happily agreed to raise him as his own. The child, christened Giulio after his father, grew into a clever if somewhat dour man. Following his cousin Giovanni into the Church, he would ultimately ascend St. Peter’s throne as Pope Clement VII.
Francesco Pagano, Port of Naples, 15th century (Art Resource)
XVII. NEAPOLITAN GAMBIT
“For we make war on no one save on that ungrateful, excommunicated, and heretical Lorenzo de’ Medici; and we pray to God to punish him for his iniquitous acts, and to you as God’s minister deputed to avenge the wrongs he iniquitously and without cause committed against God and His Church, with such ingratitude that the fountain of infinite love has been dried up.”
—POPE SIXTUS IV TO FEDERICO DA
MONTEFELTRO, JULY 25, 1478
“It is thus with a good heart that I depart, knowing that perhaps it is God’s will that this war that began with the blood of my brother and myself should be brought to an end by my own hand. My greatest wish is that by my life or by my death, by my misfortune or my prosperity, I should make a contribution to the good of the city.”
—LORENZO DE’ MEDICI TO THESIGNORIA
OF FLORENCE, DECEMBER 7, 1479
LORENZO’S TROUBLES DID NOT END WITH THE GRUESOME spectacle of his enemies dangling from the facade of the Palazzo Publico or even with the retreat of the invading armies from the gates of the city. The failure of the Pazzi conspiracy did nothing to resolve the root causes of the conflict or to deter those determined to bring about regime change in Florence.
Foremost among those still striving to redraw the political map of Italy was Pope Sixtus. Upon learning of the plot’s failure, the pope flew into a rage, hurling abuse on Lorenzo and threatening the destruction of his state. Count Girolamo Riario’s reaction was equally intemperate. Receiving the bad news from Florence, he lashed out at the nearest target, the Florentine ambassador, Donato Acciaiuoli. “The Count went to Donato’s house,” recorded Vespesiano da Bisticci, “accompanied by more than thirty men-at-arms, each with his halberd on shoulder.”* They seized the ambassador and dragged him to the Castel Sant’ Angelo, where he was imprisoned against all the customs of diplomacy. Hauled before the pope to answer for Lorenzo’s crimes, Acciaiuoli was defiant: “[Acciauoli] addressed the pope and complained bitterly of the insult that had been done to his state and himself, and turning to Count Girolamo, said, ‘Sir Count, I am indeed astonished at your rash presumption, that you have ventured to come to my house with an armed band, I being the ambassador of Florence, to carry me off as if I had been a traitor.’” Acciaiuoli might well have lost his life had it not been for the swift intervention of the ambassadors from Milan and Venice, who protested the rough treatment of their colleague and threatened to leave the city unless he were freed.
Sixtus reluctantly complied, but he remained as determined as ever to punish Lorenzo and the Republic of Florence. Since the mere fact that Lorenzo had escaped assassination was not sufficient reason to take up arms against him, Sixtus was forced to cast around for another excuse. He discovered his casus belli in the unlawful execution of Salviati, who, as a member of the clergy, was subject to ecclesiastical rather than secular judgment. Adding to the severity of the crime was the fact that the archbishop had been hanged in his sacerdotal robes, an intolerable affront to the dignity of the Holy Church.
Sixtus’s freedom to maneuver was hampered by the fact that his seventeen-year-old great-nephew, Cardinal Raffaele, was now effectively a hostage. Lorenzo hoped to use him as a bargaining chip, assuming that as long as he remained in his custody the pope would not dare move against him. But it soon became apparent that holding Raffaele was doing Lorenzo more harm than good. The one great advantage Lorenzo had over the pope was the aura of martyrdom that had surrounded him ever since the attack. Sympathy for his loss and outrage over what had befallen him filled the letters, both public and private, that issued in a veritable torrent from the courts and capitals of Europe. Raffaele’s sojourn as a reluctant guest in Florence was becoming an embarrassment both to Lorenzo and to those who supported him. Early in June, Lorenzo decided to relinquish his hostage, hoping thereby to take some of the sting out of the pope’s attack. According to an eyewitness, when Raffaele was finally handed over to papal allies in Siena he appeared “more dead than alive from the terror he had endured, and still feeling as if the rope were about his neck.”
If Lorenzo thought this generous act would restore him to the pope’s good graces, he quickly learned his mistake. One day after his nephew’s release the pope issued a bull of excommunication, referring to Lorenzo as “that son of iniquity and foster-child of perdition, with a heart harder than Pharaoh’s.” His crime was that “kindled with madness, torn by diabolical suggestions,” he had “disgracefully raged against ecclesiastical persons and laid violent hands upon the Archbishop, detained him prisoner for several hours and hanged him on a Sunday from the windows of the Palazzo.” (Presumably if he’d been hanged on any other day of the week this would have mitigated the offense.) While Sixtus pursued Lorenzo with the grim determination of the Furies he made it clear that he had no quarrel with the people of Florence. From the beginning his strategy had been to wean them from their dependence on Lorenzo, a tactic he had tried before with little success. Late in July he explained his policy to his general, Federico da Montefeltro. “For we make war on no one save on that ungrateful, excommunicated, and heretical Lorenzo de’ Medici,” he wrote, implying that the Florentine people might escape his wrath at the small price of sacrificing their leader.
But far from rejecting Lorenzo, the bloody assault in the cathedral seemed to have rekindled their devotion. All differences vanished the moment the citizens of Florence found themselves under attack by a cabal of traitors and foreigners. Spontaneous demonstrations of affection were plentiful in the days and weeks that followed as Lorenzo was mobbed by cheering crowds who lined up on the Via Larga anxious to offer their condolences and to pledge their support.
Armed with the knowledge that the people of Florence would stand behind him—at least in the short run—Lorenzo proceeded to furnish himself with the tools necessary to make the government an efficient instrument of his will. As was usual in times of crisis, a new emergency committee, the Ten of War, was appointed and granted extraordinary powers to govern the city. Since this involved not only organizing and supplying armies in the field but also raising revenue, the Ten possessed almost unlimited authority for the duration of hostilities. Lorenzo himself was given the lead role, and with a supporting cast that included such close allies as Tommaso Soderini, Luigi Guicciardini, and Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, he now possessed almost dictatorial powers. His new status received official sanction when the Priors voted this ostensibly private citizen a twelve-man bodyguard, as clear a signal as this republican government could send that he was more than “first among equals.”
Having put the government in fighting trim, Florence prepared to meet the threat posed by the pope and his allies. Before the actual fighting began this was largely a war of words. In response to the barrage of abuse spewing from Rome, Florence counterattacked along two fronts. The Signoria replied to the pope’s denunciations in an open letter dripping with sarcasm: “Your Holiness says you are only waging war against our State to free it from a tyrant. We are grateful for your paternal love, but we cannot without sorrow behold an army of the Shepherd entering our territories (when the enemy of Christendom, the Turk himself, is on the threshold of Italy), ravaging its crops, seizing its villages and carrying off its maidens and the treasures of its shrines as booty.”
While papal forces laid waste to the countryside, Sixtus placed Florence under interdict, threatening not only the bodies but the immortal souls of her citizens. Preparing to meet the metaphysical challenge was an assembly of priests, monks, and other ecclesiastical officers under the leadership of Lorenzo’s old tutor, Gentile Becchi. United in their love for Lorenzo and their devotion to their native land, they declared they owed no obedience to one who had so brazenly abused his holy office:
We and the people have proved [Lorenzo] to be, and with one voice we acclaim that he is, the defender of our liberties. We are prepared to sacrifice everything for his safety, which is the one undoubted guarantee of the safety and liberty of the State. Your charges move us to laughter, for you wish us to drive out a man who has in no way degenerated from his illustrious forebears, Cosimo and Piero; a man to whom no one in Florence is to be preferred for true religion, worship of God, charity and piety…. Had he permitted himself to be slaughtered by your atrocious satellites whom you sent to Florence for that purpose; had we failed to recover our Palazzo Publico, the citadel of our liberties, from the hands of your traitors; had we delivered up ourselves, our magistrates and our citizens to you to be assassinated, then there would be no cause of contention between us!…Since you have occupied the Chair of Peter, everyone knows how you have used your office. It is too well known who is the enemy of the public good. Put on, then, a better mind. Remember that the Keys were not given you for such uses.
It was a remarkable act of defiance on the part of the city’s spiritual leaders and Lorenzo was deeply moved by this show of solidarity. The priesthood of Florence, united in its opposition to the Holy Father, would play a key role in the war effort, since without the consolation of the sacred rites demoralization would quickly have set in.
As news of the murders spread across the continent the reaction from foreign capitals was also heartening. Louis XI, King of France, proved a particularly vocal supporter, penning letters of condolence to Lorenzo and launching a blistering attack on the pope.* Expressions of sympathy for Lorenzo and his family poured in from as far away as Constantinople, as did condemnations of the plotters and of the man now widely believed to have been their secret backer. From the beginning Sixtus’s complicity was assumed, even if most were too tactful to voice their suspicions in public. In a report issued by the Milanese ambassador two days after the attempted coup it was revealed that the Venetian Senate “holds for certain, and states in public without any hesitation, that the King Ferdinando along with Count Ienronimo [Riario] has hatched this plot in Florence to kill Lorenzo de’ Medici, and that the Pope has agreed to all of it.”
By early June the forces of the pope and the king of Naples were poised to launch an all-out attack. Unfortunately for Lorenzo, occupying the moral high ground could not make up for a lack of reliable soldiers on the field of battle. On paper at least the combined armies of Florence, Milan, and Venice outnumbered the attackers three to one, but from the beginning Lorenzo’s alliance was rent by local rivalries and undermined by incompetent leadership. Before the fighting began, the triple alliance issued a proclamation declaring itself to be “one body, with one mind, sincere and indissoluble, so that we are determined to share the fortunes of [Florence] and of the Magnificent Lorenzo.” But brave words masked a more disturbing reality. Milan had been weakened by the death of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and after a quick response in the days immediately following the attempt on Lorenzo’s life, the government was preoccupied by more pressing problems, including a revolt by Genoa, instigated by agents of King Ferrante, and the ongoing power struggle between the duchess and her brothers-in-law.
The Republic of Venice, famous for its stability, could offer no such excuses for her halfhearted efforts. Having seduced Lorenzo away from his former attachments, she now proved herself a reluctant bride. Galeazzo Maria Sforza’s warnings about the faithlessness of the Venetians must have haunted Lorenzo in the early months of the war. In public the Venetians claimed to be fully behind Lorenzo, but behind the scenes they did their best to wriggle out of their obligations. “It is necessary that this Senate bestir itself or that we be clear that they can’t or they won’t,” Lorenzo wrote to Giovanni Lanfredini, his representative in the maritime republic. The Venetian ambassador himself despaired of his government, writing to Lanfredini, “I do not know what hope I can have, when, even such grave injuries as we have suffered, cannot persuade [the Venetians] to move. I see that at Rome they understand the humor of Venice and speak sweet words in order to send to sleep him who sleeps already.”
No such indecision plagued their opponents. On July 13 a herald arrived from the king of Naples bearing a formal declaration of war to the Signoria. Six days later Sienese forces invaded Florentine territory, spreading panic in the countryside and sending a wave of refugees fleeing toward the capital. Soon Neapolitan troops under the command of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria—Ferrante’s oldest son—and Federico da Montefeltro joined the Sienese in laying waste to the Tuscan countryside. Things hardly improved when Florentine forces counterattacked, “pillaging and working great havoc…so that everyone left their homes and felt safe nowhere but in Florence.” Initial skir
mishes were fought in the Val di Chiana south of Florence, a valley of malarial swamps whose foul miasmas Dante recalled as he traversed the bridge that led to the ninth circle of Hell. But while crops were destroyed and houses put to the torch little was achieved on either side. This lack of progress was the inevitable result of employing mercenary armies whose loyalty was to the general who paid them rather than the state they ostensibly served. Luca Landucci sums up the prevailing attitude toward these professional marauders: “The rule for our Italian soldiers seems to be this: ‘You pillage there, and we will pillage here; there is no need for us to approach too close to one another.’”
As the leading member of the Ten, and as the indispensable man within the regime, responsibility for the war’s conduct fell almost exclusively on Lorenzo’s shoulders. Like most Florentines, however, Lorenzo had not been schooled in the arts of war, a failing he himself recognized.* Thus he was forced to rely on his commanders, who gladly took his money but seemed to feel this put them under no obligation to consult him or heed his advice. Often the war seemed to proceed of its own accord, while those in the Palazzo Publico looked on helplessly as the situation went from bad to worse. From the outset Florentine forces were undisciplined and poorly led. Ercole d’Este, Marquis of Ferrara, whom Lorenzo hoped to name as captain general of allied forces, remained at home for the first months of the war while he haggled over his fee. Even after he made his tardy arrival on the field of battle his presence did little to alter the basic equation. Inspecting the motley array of forces assembled for the defense of Florence, the condottiere Gian Jacopo Trivulzio was horrified by what he saw: “The Florentine troops passed in such a wretched state that I was disgusted—without order or connection, the different troops mingled together, so that I could not distinguish them, one squadron half a mile distant from the other.” Given the disarray, exacerbated by the traditional rivalries between some of the cities in the coalition, it was not surprising that they offered little resistance to the first concerted enemy advance. On July 23 the main Florentine camp at Rencine, between Siena and Poggibonsi, was overrun, sending the allied forces retreating toward Poggio Imperiale.
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