The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici (24 page)

King Ferrante was not, however, a man with whom it was easy to come to terms. Shrewd and with much political ability, he was at the same time hard, vindictive and dissimulating. A sallow-faced man inclined to fat and to periods of moody silence, it was impossible to tell, so Commines commented, what he was really like or what he was thinking: ‘no man knew when he was angry or pleased’. But he shared Lorenzo’s love of country life, of falconry and hunting; he shared his taste for poetry, for the new learning and for the distant past. During his long talks with Ferrante, Lorenzo frequently alluded to those rulers in classical times who had achieved greatness by being men of peace, rather than of war, and to the ideal of a united Italy. In more practical terms, he argued that, although the Pope had been cultivating Naples of late, though he had created Ferrante’s son, Giovanni, a cardinal, though his nephew had given a banquet of unparalleled magnificence for Ferrante’s daughter, though he had waived the customary annual tribute due from Naples to the Pope, the Papacy could never prove so useful a friend to Naples as could Florence. Sixtus was merely trying to use Naples for his own selfish purposes.

But Ferrante seemed unconvinced; the talks dragged on; and
Lorenzo grew more and more depressed, walking gloomily round the gardens of the Duchess of Calabria’s seaside villa. ‘He seemed to be two men, not one,’ an official in his suite commented.

During the day he appeared perfectly easy, graceful, cheerful and confident, but at night he grieved bitterly about his own ill fortune and that of Florence, saying repeatedly that he did not care a fig for his own life but that it distressed him beyond measure that he could not save his country from the dangers which beset her.

While doing his best to convince Ferrante by his arguments, Lorenzo succeeded in impressing the Neapolitans by his generosity. He had raised sixty thousand florins for his journey by mortgaging Cafaggiolo and his lands in the Mugello; and immediately upon his arrival he had bought the freedom of a hundred galley slaves to each of whom he had presented ten florins and a suit of smart clothes. He followed this up by providing handsome dowries for several poor girls and by donating generous sums to numerous charities. Valori said that he remembered hearing from Paolo Antonio Soderini the total amount that Lorenzo spent during his visit to Naples, but he dared not write so huge a figure down.

Yet still Ferrante declined to come to terms. Eventually, after nearly ten weeks in Naples, Lorenzo was driven to bring matters to a head by declaring that he was unable to wait any longer, that urgent matters required his immediate return to Florence. After hurried farewells, he rode out of the city and headed north. With equal haste, King Ferrante drew up a peace treaty and sent it after him.

The war was finally over. The terms of the peace were not very favourable to Florence. She had to agree to the payment of an indemnity to the Duke of Calabria and, at the Pope’s insistence, to the release of the still imprisoned members of the Pazzi family; she had also to agree to various places in southern Tuscany remaining in alien hands. But at least peace had been secured; the Pope’s ambitions had been thwarted; and Florence and Naples were friends and allies once more.

XII

‘
If Florence was to have a tyrant, she could never have found a better or more delightful one
’

I
N MARCH
1480 Lorenzo returned to Florence to be greeted by even greater enthusiasm than had welcomed his grandfather on his return from exile in 1434. During the war repeated efforts had been made to ruin him. The Riario family had continued to plot his destruction, and Girolamo Riario had twice attempted to have him assassinated. Now, though there were complaints about the large indemnity that had to be paid to the Duke of Calabria, his position in Florence was virtually unassailable. And he made the most of his opportunity to strengthen it.

Up till then, as the Milanese ambassador put it, he had been ‘determined to follow his grandfather’s example and use, as much as possible, constitutional methods’ in preserving his ascendancy. Indeed, he was still determined to do nothing that would antagonize the Florentines’ susceptibilities. But his long absence in Naples had placed the Medicean regime under dangerous strain, and he considered it essential to provide it with a firmer base, to carry it to a further stage in its development Less than a month after his return from Naples, the need to overcome the financial problems created by the war was given as an excuse to create a new
Balìa
. The
Balìa
immediately created a Council of Seventy whose members were to remain in office for five years. This new Council was to take over from the
Accoppiatori
the right to elect the
Signoria
, which was not in
future to be permitted to initiate any important bills. The Council of Seventy was also empowered to elect from among its own members two new government agencies, the
Otto di Pratica
, which was to be responsible for foreign policy, and the
Dodici Procuratori
which was to have control of home affairs and finance. The authority of both the
Signoria
and the
Cento
was thus severely limited; and the Council of Seventy became, in effect, the government of Florence.

It was a government that even now Lorenzo did not fully control. Poliziano referred to him as Florence’s
caput
; others would have liked to bestow upon him his grandfather’s title of
Pater Patriae
. But the Council of Seventy, jealously guarding its independent authority, was not always willing to carry out his wishes. As he was to have cause to explain to some foreign envoys who failed to understand why he could not commit the State to a certain policy, he was ‘not
Signore
of Florence but merely a citizen’. He had more authority than he deserved, he admitted, but even
he
‘had to be patient and to conform to the will of the majority’. Of course it often suited him for men to suppose that his influence was far less effective than it was. This enabled him not only to avoid granting inconvenient or expensive favours to friends – as his grandfather had done when asked to contribute to Pope Calixtus III’s crusade – but also to disprove the charges of such enemies of his regime as Alamanno di Filippo Rinuccini that he was a dictator. In fact, his influence was extensive, persuasive and usually decisive. When he made it known to a council or an official what he wanted done, his wishes were normally carried out; when he suggested that a man should be elected to a certain office, the required election generally took place. He may never have held any official title as
Capo della Repubblica
, but when, after his death, an official document styled him
vir primarius nostrae civitatis
, no one could deny that he was, indeed, the first citizen of Florence. His enemies, of course, had no hesitation in labelling him a tyrant; but, as Francesco Guicciardini admitted, ‘if Florence was to have a tyrant she could never have found a better or more delightful one’. This was a view which was certainly shared by most people in the city, particularly the poorer people. To them it did not matter whether he was a tyrant or not. Under his rule they had food, they had exciting
public holidays and they had justice – or most of them had justice: ‘On the fifteenth day of October 1480,’ wrote Landucci in his diary of one poor fellow to whom justice was denied,

the said hermit [who was alleged to have attempted the assassination of Lorenzo] died in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova because he was quite torn to pieces by various tortures. They said the soles were stripped from his feet, which were then put over the fire, and held over the logs till the fat ran. Then they stood him up and made him walk over coarse-crusted salt, so that he died of this. It was never really established whether he had sinned or not. Some said yes, and some said no.

Yet if Lorenzo’s position in Florence was now secure, the fortunes of the Medici bank were fast declining. Lorenzo had none of his grandfather’s taste or talent for business; he gave far too much scope to his branch managers and relied far too heavily upon the often ill-judged advice of his temporizing, ingratiating general manager, Francesco Sassetti. When other advisers warned him against Sassetti’s policies he would brush their counsel aside while confessing that he ‘did not understand such matters’. Mismanagement and excessive loans to King Edward IV during the Wars of the Roses put an end to the London branch; the Bruges branch also collapsed; so did the branch in Milan, where the premises which Francesco Sforza had given to Cosimo were sold to Lodovico il Moro. The branches in Lyons, Rome and Naples were all in difficulties, the result partly of managerial incompetence, partly of that general collapse in Florentine banking which was within twelve years to lead to its virtual eclipse.

Even before the Pazzi conspiracy, which had aimed not merely at bringing down the Medicean regime but also at destroying the Medici bank, the whole complex organization was tottering on the verge of bankruptcy. Indeed, it was mainly because he felt sure it would soon go bankrupt anyway, and that Lorenzo would tumble with it, that Renato de’ Pazzi had declined to play a part in the plot. Now that the plot had failed, Lorenzo still faced financial ruin. Refusing as always to allow moral scruples to inhibit political or personal ambition, he did not hesitate to delay that ruin by dipping
his hands into funds that did not belong to him. He helped himself to over 55,000 florins which was being held in trust for his two young cousins, the sons of Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, whose guardian he had been appointed; and when these boys came of age in 1485 he could not pay them back. He was obliged to make over to them the villa of Cafaggiolo and other property in the Mugello, though they claimed that this did not fully compensate them for their loss. Lorenzo also helped himself to money from the public treasury. After his death his heirs were held responsible for the return of almost 75,000 florins which had been withdrawn ‘without the sanction of any law and without authority, to the damage and prejudice of the Commune’.

Beset by financial worries, he was also troubled on his return to Florence by the continuing insecurity of the frontiers of the Republic. In his absence the Genoese had captured the fortress of Sarzana. Since then, Girolamo Riario had extended his possessions in the Romagna towards the borders of Tuscany; while the Duke of Calabria had taken advantage of an uprising in Siena to establish himself as its ruler. Worst of all, the Pope’s venomous dislike of Lorenzo had been much increased by his having come to terms with Naples, an arrangement which prompted the Pope’s other allies to forsake him. The Pope could not carry on the war by himself, yet he steadfastly refused to remove the interdict or to withdraw the Bull of Excommunication.

But then, in August 1480 – so conveniently for Lorenzo that it was afterwards suggested that it was he who had arranged the timing of the attack – a Turkish army of seven thousand men landed at Otranto and, having established a strong bridgehead in the heel of Italy, threatened to march across to Naples and from there north to Rome. This fearful calamity, dreaded for so long, brought the Duke of Calabria scurrying south from Siena, induced King Ferrante to hand back to Florence the towns that Neapolitan troops were still occupying in Tuscany, and persuaded the Pope that, with all Christendom in peril, this was no time for the Italian states to be quarrelling amongst themselves. So it was agreed that a deputation comprising members of leading Florentine families would go to
Rome, make vague apologies for the city’s misbehaviour and, in return, receive His Holiness’s forgiveness. The deputation arrived in Rome on 3 December and in St Peter’s knelt before the Pope, who received them sitting on a canopied throne which had been specially erected in the nave for the occasion. Luigi Guicciardini, as leader of the deputation, mumbled their apology which could not be heard above the chatter of the onlookers. The Pope made a similarly inaudible speech of reproof, tapped them in turn on the shoulder with a penitent’s staff, formally lifted his interdict, then gave them his blessing. The ambassadors, having promised to supply and equip fifteen galleys for service against the Turks, returned to Florence to report to Lorenzo that all had gone as planned. A few months later the Sultan, Mahomet the Conqueror, died suddenly at Gebze. His forces at Otranto were brought home, and peace in Italy seemed assured.