Part 24

“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.