and since there is no fatigue, hardship, cost, nay not even death
itself, but, endured for any one of you, it would appear to me a
benefit, how much more do I not welcome these rude chances for the sake
of the universal city!
“Be sure, if I return it will be to bring good tidings to you and to the
city; either this, or I shall leave my life in the camp of the enemy.
“To you, in this extreme moment, I recommend my brothers and my
children. And, for the faith and affection you bare to the bones of
Lorenzo my father, I pray you be content to pray to God for me.”[115]
Footnote 115:
“Négociations diplomatiques dans la Toscane,” vol. i. p. 587, _et
seq._
--------------
“EMPOLI, _26 Oct_.
“_Piero de’ Medici to Bibbiena._
“Comfort, dear Bibbiena, my little household troop till I return; and,
above all things, be good to Alfonsina and to poor little Lorenzio[116]
who has none of the blame to bear. All of you, pray to God for me and
for the city.”
Footnote 116:
His infant son, born 1492, in after days the father of Catherine de’
Medici.
--------------
“PISA, _27 Oct., 1494_.
“_Piero de’ Medici to Bibbiena._
“I arrived in Pisa this evening, very weary with the road, with my own
thoughts, with the rain that has rained the live-long day, and with the
uncomfortable bed I had last night.... ’Tis but a line I send you, only
that you may assure my magnificent Messer Marino (the Neapolitan
Ambassador) of the complete devotion that I bear his master... A
devotion which to day _traho ad immolandum_! Perchance it is my fault I
did not earlier discover the desertion of the Florentines, the want of
money, arms, and credit that I had; but ’tis so difficult to doubt in
such a city as our Florence. Let me be excused before His Majesty, since
I am not the first sick man who has gone to death’s door before he has
discovered he was mortal. In short, tell him this, that even unto hell I
will keep my faith to His Majesty King Alfonso (_insino all’ Inferno
conserveró la fede mia al Signor Re Alfonso_). And perhaps in my present
low and humble state, I may serve him better as a private gentleman in
the camp of France than I served him as the first in Florence.”
--------------
“PIETRA SANTA, _29 Oct_.
“_Piero de’ Medici to Bibbiena._
“I beg you ask the Signory to send here at once 500 foot. With so much
aid we might hold out, at least until I have made good terms.... There
is not much to eat, ’tis true, but there is always something. And send
off the men-at-arms to Pisa.
“I wrote to the Duke of Milan when I was at Pisa. I believe him to have
reached Sarzana.... Arrange all these matters that there be no hitch.”
--------------
“_30 Oct., 1494._
“_Piero de’ Medici to Bibbiena._
“Last night the French lords came here to Pietra Santa, and were most
honourably received. The Bishop of St. Malo tells me the King will be at
Florence _viâ_ Pisa in four or five days.
“It is to fetch _me_ they have come. The King’s herald is with them, I
am just off to Sarzana with St. Malo and two other gentle lords. Rejoice
with me at the honour they have done me. These lords were sent here on
purpose to receive me! Tell the Eight! Tell Alfonsina! Tell
Monsignore.[117] Tell Giuliano!”
Footnote 117:
The boy-cardinal, Giovanni de’ Medici, Piero’s brother, afterwards Leo
X.
III.
Piero de’ Medici set out for the French camp from Pietra Santa on the
30th of October. Although the winter was afterwards so mild, the autumn
had been severe, and the roads were marvellously deep with snow. All
round Sarzana there extends a barren country, desolate, and full of
little hills. At last a long ride of thirty miles brought the tired
horsemen in sight of the French camp. The tents were pitched all round
the frontier-fortress, a strong place in bad repair, which had cost the
Republic fifty thousand florins not many years ago. Sarzana was guarded
by Sarzanello, a fort surrounded by great towers built on a steep hill
above the town. When Piero arrived the French were beginning to bombard
Sarzanello with that strange, improved artillery of theirs which caused
such panic in Italy. The young man, alone in the midst of an enemy he
had done his best to ruin, assailed by visions of death and prison, was
exhausted with fatigue, with restrained terror, and with the novelty of
his position. The French lords led him at once to the tent of Charles.
Contrary to his expectations, the King—a young man of his own
age—received him kindly, even benignly. They were not going to kill him
after all. In the exquisite relaxation of his dread, Piero sank upon his
knees before the King, stammered an excuse, and hung his handsome head.
“I will do everything your Majesty may require!”
Where was now that devotion to Arragon, which (as he told Bibbiena with
so proud a swagger) _traho ad immolandum_? Where was that loyalty,
“which I shall preserve in hell itself”? They had vanished to that dim
limbo of generous resolutions where they would meet his fealty to the
Republic, his love of country, and his self-sacrificing affection for
his people. All these golden sentiments had completely vanished from the
mind of Piero. The warm tent, after the long snowy ride, the kind
reception, so different from his terrified previsions, the amiable
friendliness of the French lords, who showed no humiliating surprise at
his visit, all combined to fill him with a sense of genial relief. After
all, Capponi was right: “Look at these French near, and there is nothing
to be afraid of.” Piero, if he was afraid at all, was only filled with
that pleasant awe which the reverential _parvenu_ experiences when
received on kindly terms in aristocratic society. He had not quite
recovered yet from the honour that the French had shown him in sending
St. Malo and the King’s herald to receive him. Perhaps on the rack Piero
might have kept his word an hour or so. It vanished quite out of
remembrance as soon as he felt the soft influence of royal converse.
And this was the King, the second Charlemagne, the marvel of nations,
the terrible _Flagellum Dei_! Piero, accustomed to the kind voice,
raised his eyes, and beheld a very small man of four-and-twenty,
unusually youthful in aspect, with high shoulders, a sickly air, and
extraordinarily thin long legs. He looked not quite grown up; and he was
certainly very ugly, with his large head, long nose, wide mouth, and
timid, delicate appearance. His ugliness was, however, redeemed by a
pair of singularly beautiful and shining eyes, whose intelligent, kind,
straightforward glance promised a liberal and honest nature. The King
was, in fact, both liberal and honest; a simple, inconsequent,
honourable creature, too nonchalant to make himself obeyed, and too
incapable of dissimulation to win by art what he could not gain by
force. He was, we learn from Commines, “the gentlest creature alive; of
no great sense, but of so good a nature it were impossible to find a
kinder creature; a youth but newly crept out of the shell.” This
description does not promise a very terrible monarch, or an insidious
diplomatist, but all the duplicity of Lodovico il Moro could not have
gained a greater triumph than the careless good-nature of Charles
achieved over the flattered Florentine.
The King sat like a quaint elfin child in his tent among his splendid
counsellors. These polite and courtly people had rather a more decided
smile than usual about their pleasant lips as they glanced towards
Piero. The young Florentine was submerged, drowned, in his satisfaction
with the King and with his own reception. He was on the best terms with
his friend, the King of France. Charles, who did not quite understand
the situation, asked a great deal more than ever he hoped to obtain from
penitent Florence, thinking he would have to abate his demands (a few
weeks in Italy had taught him how to bargain), especially when dealing
with a mercantile person like Piero de’ Medici. He put forward in fact
an extravagant requisition: the Florentine troops were all to be
dismissed (the troops that Piero had ordered yesterday), the fortresses
of Sarzana, of Sarzanello, Librafatto, Pisa, Leghorn, and Pietra Santa
were to be delivered to the King; his army was to have free passage, and
he was to receive a loan of 200,000 ducats. Now the French party of
Florence were prepared to allow the King to lodge in Pisa, and to grant
him a free passage, but more than this had never been dreamed of by
Savonarola or Capponi. Piero, however, when he heard the King’s demand,
did not abate a jot of it. Who was he to contradict the King? (“I go,”
he had said; “I go head down in front of peril to bring you back a
welcome message, or else to leave my bones in the camp of the enemy!”)
He immediately agreed to grant the whole, yielding the entire force and
estate of Florence into the power of France. “Those that negotiated with
the said Peter,” says Commines, “have often told me, scoffing and
jesting at him, that they wondered to see him so lightly condescend to
so weighty a matter, granting more than they looked for.” And
Guicciardini adds: “There was no Frenchman there that did not greatly
marvel that Piero so easily consented to matters of so great importance,
because without a doubt the King would have accepted very far inferior
conditions.” But Piero, the hero of fidelity, the new Lorenzo, did not
think of this. “I require the six fortresses, the dismissal of your
army, free passage, and a loan of 200,000 ducats,” repeated the slow,
stammering, timid voice of the King. “I agree,” said Piero.
There was a silence in the tent, half-amused, half-painful, a feeling as
if they had overreached a little child.
IV.
Piero de’ Medici was not the only Italian tyrant who had come to visit
the camp of Charles before Sarzana. The day after Piero had arrived,
Lodovico il Moro of Milan, who had been called home from Piacenza by the
most timely death of his nephew, returned this time as Duke of Milan, to
the tents of his allies. He had not expected to encounter there the ally
of Alfonso, the tyrant of Florence, and the meeting was not pleasant.
Lodovico had an especial dislike to Piero de’ Medici; firstly, because
Florence possessed the forts of Pietra Santa and Sarzana, which used to
belong to the Genoese, of whom Lodovico was the suzerain; secondly,
because Piero was the staunchest ally of Arragon in Italy; and lastly,
because on one occasion that charming fool had actually outwitted the
wise Lodovico himself. On this occasion Piero, suspecting Lodovico of a
Janus face that turned different fronts to Florence and to France, had
hidden the French ambassador behind a screen in his audience-chamber,
while he made Lodovico’s ambassador protest that Charles had no surer
enemy than his master. The French envoy had been very properly
scandalized, but instead of preserving a quiet distrust of Milan, King
Charles had proclaimed his wrongs from the house-tops; Lodovico had
persuaded him they were inventions of the enemy, and henceforth had
vowed an eternal hate to Piero.
Thus there was a personal coolness between the Duke of Milan and the
head of the Florentine Republic; but on political grounds their meeting
was still more awkward. Lodovico il Moro was a man who loved to fish in
troubled waters. He had sown dislike and distrust between the French and
Florence; he had meant the Florentines to keep the troops of Charles all
the winter imprisoned in the fastnesses of their hills. And when in the
spring, the King, disgusted with the Neapolitan enterprise, should
return to France, he had hoped to obtain for himself whatever places the
French had gained from Tuscany. Lodovico had gained the great object
which had made him call the French into Italy; he was Duke of Milan. He
now wished no farther progress for Charles. He hoped that the King might
winter in Tuscany, and then retire to France, having handed over to
Milan Sarzana and Pietra Santa, and leaving behind an intimidated
Naples, a plundered Florence, a triumphant and victorious Milan. Judge
of his immense displeasure when he discovered that, in the few days of
his absence, Piero de’ Medici had delivered to the King the passes of
the Apennines.
Lodovico was of that far-sighted order of politicians who, when a
cherished project fails, have ever an under-study ready to supply its
place. It was an unfortunate fact that nothing now prevented Charles
from making himself the lord of Italy; but at any rate Milan might gain
possession of the towns in the Lunigiana. Lodovico went to Charles, and
asked him for the six fortresses which Piero had yielded yesterday. But
Charles, though a very simple and youthful person, was not a fool; he
would not close himself in a trap in the South of Italy with all the
passes homeward shut behind him. He answered Lodovico that he preferred
to keep the fortresses, at least until after his return from Naples. The
Duke of Milan was a grave and modest man, quiet in manner and majestic,
never irascible or angry; he feigned to agree with his ally the King of
France. Yes, it would certainly be wiser for Charles to keep the passes;
and, to add a point to his conciliation, he remembered that Milan owed
the King the 30,000 ducats due for the investiture of Genoa.
But, notwithstanding his beautiful manners, the Duke of Milan did not
smile when, in the King’s camp, he encountered the man who had spoiled
all his well-considered policy. He had left Milan at an awkward moment
in order to get the promise of Sarzana and Pietra Santa. The King had
promised him nothing; had got beyond his reach, had just cost him 30,000
ducats; and all this was the fault of Piero. The young Florentine saw
the look of irritation on Lodovico’s face, and in his eternal
self-preoccupation he thought it due to the fact that he had received no
official welcome into Tuscany.
“I rode out to meet you yesterday,” cried Piero, “but I could not find
you anywhere. You must have missed the way!”
“It is true, young man,” said Lodovico, in his grave, sinister voice;
“it is true that one of us has missed the way. But it is possible that
_you_ may be the man.”
Charles—looking on, understanding little, thinking far more of the
falcon on his wrist than of the manœuvres and intrigues of these
Italians—Charles was no match for either of these men. And yet, in
coming to his camp, each of them had missed the way. Had the merciful
curtain of the future been for a moment lifted on that evening, either
had swooned with terror to see to what end that mistaken path should
lead them. What is this? An old French street, surging with an eager
mob, through which there jostles a long line of guards and archers; in
their midst a tall man, dressed in black camlet, seated on a mule. In
his hands he holds his biretta, and lifts up, unshaded, his pale,
courageous face, showing in all his bearing a great contempt of death.
It is Lodovico, Duke of Milan, riding to his cage at Loches.
And there, in the rapidly running Garigliano, where the French soldiery
are struggling in their all too hasty flight, that dead, comely face,
swirled here and there by the dark, washing waters—that is the face of
Piero de’ Medici.
V.
But the end is not yet; a little longer the cunning Lodovico and the
empty-headed Medici have still their parts to play, and for the next few
days the part of Piero is no easy one. He has to answer to Florence for
having delivered her, without her own consent, into the hands of the
French.
For the Signory were still in ignorance of this sad disposal of their
fate. So soon as they discovered the flight of Piero they sent off seven
envoys to the camp of Charles to treat with the King, “with Piero or
without Piero,” and to express the thanks of Florence for his honourable
welcome accorded “to our fellow-citizen, Piero de’ Medici.” When the
seven Florentine negotiators arrived at the French camp they found the
French had been three days already in Sarzana and Sarzanello; they found
that their fellow-citizen had dispossessed them of all that they had
gained in a hundred years or more—of Sarzana, their frontier town;
Pietra Santa, which had cost them 150,000 ducats and a two months’
siege; of Leghorn and Pisa—her seaports, the two eyes of
Florence—without which her commerce were impossible: and he had
promised, in the name of the Republic, the extravagant subsidy of
200,000 ducats!
Before the bad news could reach home the Signory had sent off a second
embassy of five: Tanai dei Nerli, Savonarola, Capponi, and two other
staunch Republicans, Guelfs and democrats, the leaders of the French
party. They arrived to discover in their late opponent a more disastrous
friend, so French that he had ceased to be Florentine at all. Capponi
then and there determined to prevent the continuance of the Medici in
Florence. Savonarola spoke words of tragic warning to the astonished
King: “If thou respect not Florence, God shall whip thee with His whips
and scourges.” But no eloquence and no resolve could change the fact
that the French were in the fortresses.
So the twelve ambassadors mournfully set their faces homewards; and
Piero also returned to Florence—Piero, brilliant, presumptuous, arrogant
as ever. There was no sign of shame or sorrow about him; but even he
could notice the cold reception of the people. Every man frowned upon
him as he passed along the streets; they murmured together and talked of
banishment.
It was the 8th of November when he came home to Florence. On the morning
of the 9th he rode to the Piazza with his ordinary guard to announce the
King’s coming, but when he knocked at the gate of the Palazzo Vecchio,
young Nerli refused to let him in unless he sent away his soldiery.
Piero, indignant at this behaviour, rode home again and sent a message
to his wife’s brother, Pagolo Orsini, captain of the horse, to bid him
lead the troops at once to Florence. Meanwhile, in the streets the
ominous cry of “Liberty, liberty!” gathered and grew. All the
adventurous temper of Piero de’ Medici was roused. Without waiting for
the troops, he armed himself and a few servants, and rushed cavalcading
along the hostile streets, crying out the rallying cry of his family,
“Palle! Palle!” But everywhere he was met with sullen silence—silence
that gradually broke into a roar of disapproval, a shout of “Libertà!”
By the time Orsini and the soldiers came, Piero was glad of their
assistance, not to quell the disaffected Florentines, but to escape from
a town in open mutiny. They left the women behind in the great house in
Via Larga, and, accompanied by a few cavaliers, the three young Medici
fled from their city. Piero rode in the middle, disguised as a monk. It
was the second time in fourteen days that he had secretly escaped from
Florence.
When the sun rose on the 10th of November, Florence was in deed, as well
as in name, a republic. Piero was a fugitive in reproachful Bologna, a
price of 5,000 ducats on his head. Nor ever again, in the ten remaining
years of his life, did he re-enter Florence; and when his brothers,
seventeen years after, were readmitted to their ancient home, it was
through the blood of Prato that they waded into Florence.
Florence would brave any danger rather than receive the Medici. When
King Charles, a few days after the escape of Piero, made a brave stand
for his guest of Sarzana, the Florentines threatened him with open war.
“You can sound your trumpets,” said Piero Capponi; “I will ring my
bells.” Charles looked out of the window at the narrow streets, at the
solemn, strong-walled city that, at the sound of the tocsin, became a
mysterious and terrible ambush, raining death from every window,
shooting unsuspected sallies along the tortuous streets. He understood
that a plain French soldier could not deal with such an enemy as this.
“Take off the price upon his head,” he declared, “and I will say no
more.”
Nevertheless, had Piero gone at once to Charles instead of to Bologna,
the King might have forced him back on Florence. But the young man fled
from Bologna to Venice; and when King Charles sent him a message and
bade him come to his camp, Piero refused to stir. Piero Capponi, he
said, had told him the French King meant only to betray him. Piero
Capponi was at least resolved that his namesake should no more betray
the city, and by his persuasions the Medicean Piero remained at Venice.
“There I often saw him,” wrote Commines, “and he discoursed to me at
large of all his misfortunes, and I, as well as I could, comforted him.
Methought him a man of no great stuff or sense.”
THE FRENCH AT PISA.
In the eleventh century the King of Tunis asked of the Pisan merchants
at his Court: “What are the Florentines?” “They are our Arabs of the
desert,” replied those prosperous tradesmen. “They are our poor!”
But in the next century these Arabs of Tuscany proved themselves
formidable rivals to their neighbours; though for another hundred years
Pisa, with diminishing resources, retained a superior prestige. That
superiority of hers became the occasion of her final ruin; for in 1197
when Volterra, Lucca, Florence, San Miniato, Arezzo, and Siena united in
the Great Guelf League of Independence, Pisa alone stood out resolutely
Ghibelline, isolated in the dignity of her Imperialism. This abstention
of Pisa, then the first of the Tuscan cities, gave to Florence the front
place in the League, and made her the head of the Guelfs in Central
Italy.
Thenceforth, for centuries Florence gloriously flourished, while the
fame of Pisa dwindled to a mere proverb, an old tale but half believed.
First she lost her supremacy, then her wealth, then her renown, and at
last her independence. A family of despots arose in her midst. Soon she
was to regret this comparative liberty, for in 1397 Giangaleazzo
Visconti conquered the city, and left it, on his death in 1402, to his
mistress, Agnese Mantegazza, and to their son, Gabriello Maria Visconti.
But Messer Gabriel’ Maria was not strong enough to keep Pisa single
handed against his envious neighbours of Florence, Genoa, and Lucca; so
on April 15, 1404, he agreed to hold the city as a fief of France.
I.
Few of the details of history are more involved, perplexed, or dependent
on the revelations of unpublished archives than the delicate intrigues
of France for the possession of Pisa. A Mediterranean seaport, a link in
the precious chain that ran (Marseilles, Genoa, Pisa, Naples) from
Provence to Sicily, she was an invaluable supporter of the Angevines in
the south; and holding the passes of the Apennines, she was scarcely
less necessary to Orleans in Lombardy, glad indeed of an ally among the
Tuscan republics, so irreconcilably inimical to the Visconti. But, as we
have already seen, the plans of Orleans were liable to suffer from the
counter plans of France; and as at Genoa in 1395 so it was at Pisa in
1404.