CHAPTER I.

SIXTH BOOKTHE LAST YEARS OF LORENZO DE’ MEDICICHAPTER I.THE FLORENTINE STATE; PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND FINANCES ABOUT 1490.Thereform in the constitution made in the summer of 1480, whereby the decisive part in the affairs of the State was concentrated in the Council of Seventy, had now held its ground for ten years. These ten years, added to the fifty during which the house of Medici had risen to the head of the State, necessarily excluded all families which maintained not only a hostile, but even an independent position. Amongst the ruling portion of the aristocracy, including many popular but not therefore liberal elements, there were men who, in their hearts, detested both the system and its most illustrious supporter; but the majority were attached to it both from interest or from necessity. Others silently accepted what they could not alter without resorting to a great revolution and outward shock which, doubtless, few desired. The lower classes were so much influenced by the arts of those in power, and the governments preceding that of the Medici had oppressed them to such an extent, popular revolutions had been of so tumultuous a character, and had always so speedily paved the way for despotism, that there could be no serious thought of change. The upper class of citizens, who had a share in the government in the wider sense, who were represented in the councils and admitted to office, contented themselves with the measure and appearance of authority, influence, and other advantages given them by the constitution. All the hostile families of rankwere ruined by exile, confiscation, and taxes; their old chiefs were either dead or in banishment, they had completely lost their influence and were no longer to be feared; or they had allowed themselves to be gained over in one way or another, and now acted in concert with their former opponents.According to the time of their fall these families may be divided into three groups: the Albizzi and their adherents fell in 1434, the partisans of Diotisalvi Neroni in 1466, the Pazzi in 1478. Lorenzo had no need to trouble himself about any of them. In the first part of this history we pointed out the extent of the misery into which the Albizzi of Messer Rinaldo’s line had sunk. Forty-four years after their banishment the rights of citizenship were restored to Alessandro, a great-grandson of the former head of the Republic, for having, when far away from Florence during the war which broke out after the Pazzi conspiracy, discovered to the Signoria a plot whereby the town of Pistoja was to be betrayed into the hands of the Duke of Urbino.[367]The descendants of Rinaldo’s brothers remained friendly to the Medici. The Neroni party were become powerless since the Colleone affair. Piero de’ Medici himself had some idea of becoming reconciled with Agnolo Acciaiuolo, more than one of whose relatives were among his own warmest adherents; so the disunion was not likely to continue between their posterity. But for the Pazzi affair Agnolo’s descendants, favoured by the Aragonese, would doubtless have been taken back into favour long before 1482. The enmity between the Medici and the Soderini ended with the death of Niccolò Soderini in 1474, though it came to life again later under different circumstances in the sons of that Tommaso who was so closely connected with Piero and Lorenzo. The Pazzi were thoroughly put out of the way; the scaffold and the prison of Volterra swallowed up both guilty andguiltless; and even when, in consequence of agreements with the Pope and Naples, the survivors were set free in 1482, they were still subjected to many restraints which lasted till the revolution of 1494. Lorenzo’s brother-in-law, Guglielmo, after a long confinement in a house in the country, was sent to Faenza, where Galeotto Manfredi kept him in custody at Lorenzo’s disposal, as is shown by a letter of Galeotto’s dated February 25, 1483. Three days later he received orders for the liberation of his prisoner, and this decision was announced by Lorenzo to his sister Bianca, who had remained in Florence, and to his brother-in-law himself. In the autumn of the following year Guglielmo was in Rome, and in friendly intercourse with the Medici and Bernardo Rucellai.[368]After the revolution of 1494 he was re-admitted to political offices; but he showed little capacity for the work, and his son Alessandro (eleven years old when his uncle Lorenzo died), notwithstanding his sagacity and experience, was better fitted for scholarly work than for public life. Of the other families who arrayed themselves against the Medici in the attack before referred to, some never again played any important part in politics; others let themselves be chained to the victor’s chariot. Thus it was with the Peruzzi, the Gianfigliazzi, the Pitti, and others. The first-named—old, rich, and illustrious—were excluded from office after the return of Cosimo de’ Medici. The two branches of the Strozzi, whose influence had formerly been considerable, were now in some degree estranged, and the most famous of the two was just rising to the height of its splendour.Lorenzo, as he looked around him, had no need to fear the recurrence of such opposition as had endangered the authority of his grandfather and father. There seemed no room for even attempts at violence, and the tendencies which sprang forth after his death were at this time hardlyperceptible even in the germ. Francesco Guicciardini described the situation in a few sentences: ‘The city was in perfect peace. The citizens in whose hands was the administration held firmly together; the government, carried on and supported by them, was so powerful that no one dared contradict it. The people were daily entertained with festivals, spectacles, and novelties; to their profit the city abounded in everything; trade and business were at the height of prosperity. Men of talent found their proper place in the great liberality with which the arts and sciences were promoted and those who practised them were honoured. This city, quiet and peaceful at home, enjoyed also high esteem and great consideration abroad, because she had a government whose head had full authority; because her dominions had lately been extended; because the deliverance of Ferrara and that of King Ferrante were mainly owing to her; because she had complete sway over Pope Innocent; and because, in alliance with Naples and Milan, she in some measure kept all Italy in equilibrium.’Amid this happy state of things, however, symptoms showed themselves which decidedly pointed out something insecure in the foundations. From a moral point of view there were drawbacks whose influence on the general development and final determination of affairs was inevitable. Anyone who looked below the glittering surface must have felt yearly increasing care about the political situation. Putting aside foreign politics, the home affairs gave extra cause for anxiety. It was becoming more and more evident that everything, present and future, depended on one man alone. It could hardly therefore go unperceived that the necessary consequences of this man’s position and career furnished a prospect, perhaps not a distant one, of a radical change in the constitution.Alessandro de’ Pazzi graphically described the difficulties of his uncle’s position:[369]‘When Lorenzo came to the headof the party after Piero’s death he found a serious task before him, and, young as he was, he had need of great prudence to keep together and govern this party; so much the more because the citizens who were then powerful thought they could retain their commanding position, without allowing Lorenzo to usurp the same authority that his grandfather and father had enjoyed. In my opinion this was a mistake; discord would soon have parted them. But his exertions were great, and it was owing to him that no division occurred at that time. His patience with his adherents deserves as much praise as his prudence, activity, and liberality; and I know from my mother that in these first years he thought day and night of nothing but gaining over his friends for his own objects.’Again, after referring to the dangers and consequences of the years 1478-1480, he says: ‘By dint of skill and luck, without which nothing is to be attained in human affairs, he consolidated his position and maintained it all his life long, not merely as his grandfather had done, but a step higher and with fuller powers. He was in more danger than Cosimo, but he stood so high that the danger was outweighed. Nevertheless, with all his good fortune and the favour of circumstances, with his superhuman intellect and his great number of trustworthy friends, he gave himself an immense deal of trouble. He went to work with the greatest caution, with many arts and secret allies who knew nothing of each other, with inexhaustible patience and endurance. He was assisted, moreover, by his wonderfully acute judgment of foreign affairs, which he understood how to direct and balance better than any other living man in Italy. Herein also fortune favoured him, that he lived at a time when forces were more equally divided than usual, and there was little danger of foreign interference. Above all it was a happy circumstance that Cosimo had preceded him as founder of the position of the family, and for many years past no other and in some senseno more popular form of government had been known in Florence. His merits, however, were his own; vigilance, patience, perseverance, splendour combined with elegance, whereby he made himself a great name among the Italian princes and in other lands, while at home he attracted and gained over all to himself. This also is to be highly esteemed in him, that he influenced his friends into moderation and kept their hands clean, so that it may be said that, with a few exceptions, there occurred no cases of rapine. In truth he directed the State and his party in the best manner possible under the circumstances. With all his good fortune and his uncommon qualities, however, it cost him great exertions, for he never spared himself, but took a personal share in all that occurred, whether in the square or in the palace.’Although business was transacted not in the house of Medici but in the palace of the Signoria, where Lorenzo passed many hours as a member of councils and committees, still the government was becoming more and more a personal one. The constant change in the members of the Signoria, intended to prevent the authority of individuals from increasing, necessarily promoted this personal government; so much the more as a regular and consistent treatment became necessary for the direction of foreign affairs, ever increasing in continuity and importance. Only in this manner could Florence maintain her position against the larger Italian and foreign states—all monarchic except Venice, who preserved her constitution almost unchanged. Naturally, however, such a personal government had the grave defects of all political arrangements where legal right and hereditary prescription are not the fundamental principles, and whose internal nature is a negation of their external form. This State, apparently constituted on a broad basis, was in reality ruled by a comparatively small party with a recognised chief at their head. Lorenzo’s contemporaries said that he had greater authority and morepersonal power than any despotic ruler.[370]Nothing was done without his initiative and approval. Popes, kings, and princes applied to him; ambassadors corresponded with him; thousands besieged him with petitions for offices, posts of honour, favours, remission of taxes and imposts, and personal interests of all kinds both at home and in the neighbouring states. Each found him willing to listen; the letters he wrote were innumerable, many of them written by his own hand, to different parties of high and low rank, some personally known to him, others quite strangers. He would willingly help merchants, stewards, farmers, countrymen, and people of all sorts and positions in life. Besides the countless clients of the family there were those recommended by them—as he called them, ‘my good old friends.’ He applied to the Duke of Ferrara on behalf of the money-changers in the Prato, ‘these Jews, my friends.’[371]His correspondence contains the strangest medley of subjects, events, and persons; contraventions of the toll-regulations at the passage of the flocks coming down for the winter from the Casentino and the Pistojan hills to the Sienese Maremma; frauds by merchants; thefts from Florentine subjects; differences with the administration of salt; deeds of violence and murder, are all mixed up with recommendations for judicial offices, especially the office of Podestà, judge of the court of appeal, capitano, &c., and for spiritual dignities and benefices; settlement of boundary disputes; concessions about the corn trade; mediation on the passage of troops; and the affairs of the petty dynasties seated around the Siena district, the Sforzas of Santafiora, the Orsini of Pitigliano, and many others. His constant desire was to oblige as many as possible at home and abroad, and to have the influence of his personal position felt and understood on all sides.This position was becoming year by year very glaringlyexceptional, not only to the eyes of foreign sovereigns but to those of Italian princes as well. The authority which Lorenzo was believed to possess with Innocent VIII., ‘because,’ as he wrote to Lanfredini on August 26, 1489, ‘I am extremely devoted to his Holiness and obliged to him for many favours,’ caused him to be applied to by all parties whenever a petition to Rome was to be presented. Almost simultaneously Guid’Antonio Arcimboldo begged his recommendation to obtain the archbishopric of Milan, and the Duke of Britanny sent a messenger to request his support for the nomination of one of the Duke’s secretaries to the see of Nantes. Lodovico il Moro applied to him to procure the Sienese bishopric of Pienza, and Charles, Duke of Savoy, to have his uncle—that Francis so well known in connection with the episcopal troubles at Geneva—advanced to the cardinalate. When Federigo Sanseverino, Monsignor de’ Grassi, the Archbishop of Auch, and others desired the cardinal’s hat, he was asked to help them to procure it. It was he who recommended to the Pope the young Alessandro Farnese, who in 1489 was studying at Pisa and sought to obtain one of the posts of Apostolic Secretary created by Innocent at the end of 1487. ‘I wish you to know,’ wrote Lorenzo to Lanfredini on April 10,[372]‘that this gentleman, besides coming of such a noble family (oltre allo esser nato della casa che è) has many distinguished qualities, among them unusual learning and excellent morals, being at once very accomplished and a model of virtuous conduct. For these reasons, the weight of which with me you know, I recommend him to you as if he were my own son, and beg you to present him to his Holiness, for which I shall be very grateful.’ This is perhaps the first testimony, and certainly a most honourable one, on behalf of Pomponio Leto’s former pupil, then one-and-twenty, and destined forty-five yearslater to succeed a Medici on the Papal throne. When the Duke of Ferrara and the lord of Camerino wanted help at Rome, they applied to Lorenzo; when the Duke of Savoy sent an ambassador thither, he recommended him to Lorenzo. King John of Portugal wrote from Santarem, Charles VIII. from Amboise, the Duchess Blanche from Savoy, Anne de Beaujeu and her husband Pierre de Bourbon from Moulins, to the ‘Seigneur Laurens.’ His friendly relations with Matthias Corvinus have been repeatedly mentioned; they seem to have been none the worse for the fact that Matthias was for a long time on bad terms with the Sforza, having, for the sake of his brother-in-law Don Federigo of Aragon, accepted among the conditions of the treaty with Kaiser Frederic in 1477 the proceedings against the ruling house of Milan, which was not recognised by the Empire. To the Pope Lorenzo often commended his own subjects, as, for instance, Giovanni Savelli, ‘to whom I have especial goodwill because he is in the service of our army, and to whom I am bound by a friendship of many years’ standing,’ and the distinguished priest Francesco de’ Massimi. Everyone considered a matter secured in Rome if once Lorenzo took it in hand; and perhaps the secret of his great success in many things arose from the shrewdness of his calculation as to what lay within the limits of possibility.Lorenzo was surrounded by numerous friends and adherents, some of whom had inherited distinction, while others had been raised by him. It was only by their help that he could maintain his position at home and keep up his connections abroad. He was well and skilfully supported by the Acciaiuoli, the Pandolfini, the Vespucci, the Soderini, the Pucci, the Guicciardini, the Capponi, the Vettori, the Lanfredini, the Alamanni, the Ridolfi, the Gaddi, &c. They and their families had a corresponding share in the administration, in honours and privileges, and held a prominent position; the consequence of which was that when circumstances were altered there remained a powerful Mediceanparty which at last gained the victory through external political circumstances; for the family which had risen to greatness with their support naturally seized the lion’s share. But Lorenzo, while advancing his adherents in power, never allowed them to become too independent of him. For this purpose the means he chiefly employed was that of placing on the same level with citizens who had long been great others who had risen solely by help of the Medici; in matters which required entire devotion to his interests he rather gave a preference to the latter. The most active and influential of the Florentine diplomatists, Giovanni Lanfredini, sprung from a family originally Roman and which became extinct in the last century in the person of a cardinal, had become a business-partner of the Medici as early as Cosimo’s time. Lorenzo’s policy was to let one person keep another in check. He was probably suspicious by nature, a quality which developed as years went on, for he often employed the chancery-officers who accompanied the ambassadors to Rome, Naples, and Milan to send him special reports,[373]while his creatures in Florence, especially Ser Piero of Bibiena and Piero Michelozzi, kept up a correspondence in various other quarters. We have remarked before that Bartolommeo Scala, the chancellor of the Signoria, was in very intimate relations with him. The chancellors of the other government offices, the only really stable officials in whom the traditions of business survived, were all in his interest, most of them having attained their influential posts through him. Thus he let no family and no individual gain an influence inconvenient to himself, and kept his eyes on all. He even meddled in family affairs: hindered marriages if they seemed to him dangerous, furthered them if he thought them likely to prove useful. Those whom some special circumstances had unusually elevated, even when he himself profited thereby, he always kept in check; as exemplified inthe case of Tommaso Soderini, and, after the Pazzi conspiracy, Girolamo Morelli. Of the former, indeed, there is nothing more to add, save that he was a member of the Council of Seventy and died as Capitano at Pisa in 1485. Lorenzo overlooked many things in his adherents, but he kept them under his control and took care that they should feel that their position and advantages were derived from him. A man who was, indeed, ill-disposed towards him on account of an event which concerned his family, remarked:[374]‘The great citizens raised and supported Lorenzo in his youth; in later years he would not have as companions, but used as servants, those who had been like fathers to him.’The event alluded to is characteristic of the political power and position of Lorenzo with regard to the official representatives of the State. It made no difference to him if the man on whom his resentment fell[375]had his cause defended by others in power. When Neri Cambi degli Opportuni was Gonfaloniere in 1488, and at the end of the year the Signoria were to be elected for the following January and February, it was found that the legal number of members of the colleges was not complete, many having absented themselves without leave and gone to the chase. To the great irritation of the people assembled in the square the election could not take place till one of the missing members was fetched from his country-house, from whence he came booted and spurred to the palace, and the election then proceeded. Indignant at what had occurred, the outgoing Signoria determined to punish the delinquents, and condemned four of them to exclusion from office for four years. Lorenzo was in Pisa at the time. ‘To him,’ says Guicciardini, ‘and to all the heads of the party it was a very disagreeable affair; for it seemed to them that if a Signoria could use the right ofammonirewithout previous deliberationwith those in power, their own government was hanging in the air by a thread (lo stato loro fussi a cavallo in su uno baleno), and they might one fine morning be driven out of Florence by only six beans (votes). So, after that Signoria had gone out of office, the matter was again brought up before the Magistracy of Eight and the Council of Seventy; the decree against the four citizens was revoked, and Neri Cambi was declared ineligible for office for the rest of his life. The council was by no means unanimous, but Lorenzo’s will carried the day.’This was a pretty clear token of how matters stood with regard to the powers of the supreme court. But this was not all; participation in the government was to be yet further restricted. In the summer of 1490 a measure was carried which concentrated the actual direction of affairs in the hands of a small body. The Council of Seventy was to remain as a council of State; but the elections to the Signoria were transferred, as under the old system, toaccoppiatori, named by a committee of seventeen, of whom Lorenzo was one. The members of this committee were chosen arbitrarily, and only one of them belonged to the minor guilds. On them was dependent every branch of the administration, more especially finances and the national debt.The new committee’s first measure concerned the coinage. In appearance it was sensible enough. The city and country were overwhelmed with small and base foreign coin; Sienese, Lucchese, Bolognese, &c. August 28, 1490, a decree was issued forbidding the circulation of foreign coins on and after September 8. As Alamanno Rinuccini remarked, it was not the first decree of the kind, and it was no more observed this time than heretofore. Indeed, it was practically impossible to distinguish the foreignquattrinifrom the Florentine, outwardly very like them. So on May 1, 1491, a radical reform was undertaken. The old native small coin, the so-called black quattrino, was called in, and replaced by a new coin containing two ounces of silver tothe pound of copper, and reckoned as equivalent to five danari, while the old one was called in at the rate of four danari. The public treasuries were in future to receive only the new white quattrini. The people were pleased, hoping to get rid of the confusion. Their rejoicing did not last long. Instead of melting down the old money, it was stealthily brought into circulation again, and the old quattrino remained in use side by side with the new one. Out of this confusion arose endless difficulties; and the people found that in taxes, duties, purchases of salt, everything where produce went into the treasury, they were the chief sufferers. The consequence was general discontent, directed principally against the heads of the government, as their limited number made them the more conspicuous.[376]The evil was great, but it had not yet reached its worst height. The increasingly demoralised condition of the administration of finance displayed itself in another way, which must have utterly ruined the credit of the State at the first serious political crisis. This was connected with the Medici finances. Lorenzo’s pecuniary difficulties had been in no wise removed by the precautionary measures of 1480. His manner of life, establishments, purchases, the provisions for his children, his by no means disinterested liberality, the bribes in money paid for his influence abroad, required large sums. To try to meet these requirements with the produce of his personal property (because he considered this more secure and honourable),[377]would have been chimerical. He had limited his banking-business and commercial speculations; and to draw upon them never entered his head. During his very last years he did a great deal of business in Rome. Innocent VIII. was financially still more dependent on him than on his own Genoese fellow-countrymen, and he allowed him corresponding advantages. In 1489 he soldhim 30,000 hundredweight of alum at a very low price, in compensation for losses sustained in the days of his predecessor; and the alum trade passed almost entirely into Lorenzo’s private hands. The farm-rent paid by him for the works of Tolfa amounted to 100,000 florins. In May of the same year Lorenzo furnished the Pope with a loan to the same amount for one year; one-third of the sum in cash, the other two-thirds in silk and woollen stuffs. For the repayment, two-tenths, amounting to 60,000 florins, were referred to the Florentine clergy, the rest to the revenues of Città di Castello.[378]In 1490 Lorenzo redeemed from the Centurioni of Genoa a valuable tiara which had been pledged to them.[379]Cosimo Sassetti, one of the partners in the Medici bank at Lyons, was also a papal collector in 1490. In the case of smaller loans, princes sent valuables as pledges; the Marquis of Mantua gave a precious stone for the sum of 4,000 gold florins, and when at a marriage-feast he wanted to have it back, his brother-in-law, Ercole d’Este, offered the salt-office of Modena for security in its place. These transactions went on under Lorenzo’s eldest son and even later.[380]But the profits were uncertain, for all the parties concerned were not skilful and prudent. Even supposing that Lorenzo drew an income of 15,000 to 20,000 gold florins from the old family estate, and about 10,000 from the newly-acquired and gradually increasing one in the Pisan territory, still it was terribly insufficient for his outlay. He was driven to all kinds of shifts, at times even somewhat mean ones, such as must have been sometimes very unpleasant to him; as, for instance, in 1484, when he had to take a loan of 4,000 ducats from Lodovico Sforza, or sell for the same price the house given by Duke Francesco to his grandfather.[381]During the difficulties of 1478 he had been compelled to borrow from his cousins, the other Medici, 60,000 gold florins, for the repayment of which he gave security on his possessions in Mugello. There were Florentine business houses which paid him a yearly sum for lending them his name.This mixing up of his private money-matters with those of the State brought about most unhappy consequences. In the war of 1478, the pay of the troops was furnished by the bank of the Bartolini, in which Lorenzo had a share. They deducted eight per cent., in return for which the commanders did not furnish the troops agreed upon, and the community had to make up the deficit. The wretched mismanagement of the military arrangements was all of a piece with this. Yet Lorenzo still thought himself entitled to venture on further operations of the same kind. The chief financial posts were held by his minions. From the treasurers (camarlinghi) of the offices of the national debt, of the customs, of salt, of judicial contracts, &c., he raised the needful sums, which they handed over to him without difficulty, first because they could refuse him nothing, and next because they thought their own responsibility covered and their personal security safe; for every newly appointed official had to recover the sum lent out by his predecessor; and as this process went on unchecked for years, it may easily be imagined what a deficit there was at last, after all the sham repayments one towards the other. The office of the national debt suffered most. The supreme provveditore, Antonio di Bernardo Miniati, had risen from the condition of an artisan by the favour of Lorenzo, who had actually made him a member of the Committee of Seventeen; and he proceeded quite arbitrarily, to oblige his patron and at once facilitate and hush up disgraceful embezzlement. During the revolution of 1494 the great book of the Monte wasmissing; nevertheless, there was an exposure of how many sums had gone to the numerous protégés and hangers-on of the Medici in and out of Florence. There was also another means by which to enrich them; and that was the furnishing of supplies, among which the supplying of cloth to the troops, in particular, brought great gain.[382]But all possible manœuvres and skill could not prevent the bad condition of this unprincipled finance from becoming known. How should they when, to mention only one instance, the Cardinalate of Giovanni de’ Medici cost the State an expenditure of 50,000 gold florins, independently of the sums which found their way secretly into Rome, and were reckoned at 200,000 more?[383]The State-creditors suffered most, from the reduction in the rate of interest caused by the drafts deposited in the Monte, and from the arrears of interest. These bills, together with the extraordinary additional taxes constantly repeated under various names, reduced the national debt. What offended the citizens most and damaged Lorenzo’s reputation with posterity more than anything else was the plundering of the before-mentionedMonte delle doti, the establishment intended for the dowries of maidens, and in which all citizens, great and small, were wont to make investments.[384]It was a sort of bank of deposit, somewhat on the plan of modern insurance-offices, and its usefulness was increased by the changes of fortune only too sudden in Florence. This establishment took its rise in 1424, when it was decreed that for the liquidation of the shares in the national debt dating from 1325 to 1336, and originally bringing in eighteen per cent. interest, the creditors should be at liberty to convert a quota of what was due to them into a dowry for their sons and daughters; from 1468 it was limited to daughters. The conditions were very liberal. Whosoever paid or gave security for the amount of104 gold florins, and had it put down to one of his children, received at the end of fifteen years the sum of a thousand florins in cash, or could, if he pleased, let it remain at five per cent. interest. If the child in whose name the money stood died, half the sum to which he would have had a claim, according to the time that had elapsed, was paid back to the father, and the other half went to the bank. The so-called reform of theMonte delle doti, which, like all such establishments, certainly needed improvement in its administration, was one of the avowed objects of the change made in the constitution in 1480; but it opened a door to the misappropriation of its funds. In 1485 a decree was issued whereby only a fifth of the dowry, i.e. two hundred florins in the case above described, was to be paid in cash; the rest was to be entered in a register calledlibro non ito, the unpaid book, and to bear an interest of seven per cent. This was not all. Six years later, the rate of interest was lowered to three per cent.[385]This came very near to bankruptcy, and this bankruptcy touched the citizens to the quick, while it brought the State into discredit. Hitherto the dower paid through the Monte had in most cases been sufficient; now the necessary additions to it became serious, and quite unattainable for many families. So the number of marriages diminished; that the consent of the head of the State had to be secured before they could take place would sound incredible, did it not belong to the system of such party-government.[386]‘For many years,’ says Rinuccini,[387]‘Lorenzo de’ Medici was doing his best, by a series of laws and decrees, to ruin the great bank of the commonwealth, for the purpose of getting rid of its obligations for the payment of annuities and dowries, and obtaining arbitrary control over the State finances. For this work he selected in particular two helpers, Antonio di Bernardo and Ser Giovanni of Pratovecchio (chancellor of the Riformagioni), worthless fellows,who pointed out to him day by day the way to attain his object.’Though the position of the Medici was secured for a time, their finances could not be set right. The banks of Lyons and Bruges, directed by Leonetti de’ Rossi, Francesco and Cosimo Sassetti, Tommaso Portinari, and others, only saved themselves by compounding with their creditors. Lorenzo’s correspondence shows what a vast deal of trouble these pecuniary embarrassments gave him, notwithstanding his levity in money-matters. As early as 1484 he had to write to de’ Rossi to insist on withdrawing the name of Medici from the Lyons firm before next Easter. Eighteen months after, he ordered the balance of the Bruges bank to be sent to him, in consequence of Portinari’s bad management. On one day, April 21, 1488, he despatched to the King of France, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon, the Seigneur du Bouchage, the Bishop of Valence, and others, no less than seventeen letters relating to the Lyons bank and Francesco Sassetti, after whose death in 1490 Lorenzo Spinelli took the direction of the Medici’s financial interests in France.[388]It was inevitable that there should be a vehement outcry against this disorder. Many foreigners who had placed their money in the banks sustained heavy losses, and on the violent overthrow of the Medici, when their palace was plundered at the entry of Charles VIII., the king’s quarter-master, the seigneur de Balassat, who had given the signal for the plundering, defended himself on the plea that the Medici bank of Lyons owed him large sums.[389]One of the sufferers by these shameful money-dealings was a man who had done much for Lorenzo, and who, on his side, was influenced in his relations with him and his business agents by a consideration of the advantages which Lorenzo’s political position might give him. Thiswas Philippe de Commines, who, at one of the most critical moments of his life, was greatly injured by the pecuniary difficulties of the Medici and their unwillingness or inability to meet their obligations. After the death of Louis XI., Commines, who had been an instrument of the king’s tyranny and enriched by his confiscations, was first sent away from court for taking part in the intrigues of the Princes against the Regent, Anne de Beaujeu; then shut up in one of the iron cages at Loches; and, in the spring of 1488, sentenced by the Parliament to lose a fourth part of his property, and find security for ten thousand crowns. He found it impossible to realise his demands on the Medici bank and liquidate the sums which he had deposited there since 1478 through Louis’ confidant Du Bouchage, and part of which had been employed in 1486 to support the opposition against the Regent.[390]Even when Commines, set free from his worst embarrassments, was again on the way to political influence, these difficulties remained, and a letter from Lorenzo to him[391]gives a glimpse into the financial troubles of the Medici.‘Illustrious Sir,’ so runs the letter, ‘I have received your lordship’s letter, and my mind is penetrated with grief at learning into what a state of irritation Cosimo Sassetti’s last statement of accounts has put you. My regret would be still greater could I imagine that you doubt the sentiments of my house towards you, whereas I am for many reasons so deeply indebted to you that I should deserve to be called the most ungrateful of men if I paid you now in any coin but such as I owe you for the numerous benefits received from you in good and evil days. When in my inmost mind I examine my obligations, I can assure your lordship that neither by me nor by any of mine shall anything be done which might indispose you towards me or give youan unfavourable opinion of me. If Cosimo Sassetti’s expressions with regard to your lordship’s interests should produce such an unhappy effect, I should be most deeply grieved, as it would be contrary to the true position of affairs and my earnest intentions. I do indeed confess, and your lordship knows it, that for some time past our Lyons house has suffered such heavy losses that it was impossible to conceal them from my present or former business friends, of whom your lordship is one, and not to complain of them as Cosimo has done. This may have made a bad impression on you; but you may rest assured that there is really no occasion for difference between us, for you can always dispose, not only of the sum in dispute between you and Cosimo, but of my whole means as if they were your own. I therefore beg your lordship to put faith in me, that this matter may be ended and leave no cloud between us. For your lordship’s friendship, whether in prosperity or adversity, is of more value to me than any sum of money.’In spite of all these assurances, Commines’ demands were discharged in what he considered a very inadequate manner (apointement bien mègre).[392]Nothing but the high value which he set on the friendship of the Medici induced him to keep quiet. ‘I believe,’ wrote Lorenzo Spinelli to Lorenzo at the close of 1491,[393]‘the Sieur d’Argenton will remain our friend. In order not to make him angry, I have always told him that if God gives us grace to do well in business and make up some of the losses we sustained in Leonetto’s time, you will give him his share. I am of opinion that this hope will induce him to further your interests, if he puts faith in my words.’ Spinelli was right.Commines’ humour was likewise influenced by the favourable turn which his affairs took after the agreement between the young king Charles VIII. and the Princes, in the beginning of September 1491. His last letter to Lorenzo,[394]dated January 13, 1492, and signed ‘more than entirely yours’ (plus que tout vostre), treats not of money-matters, but of Charles’ marriage with the heiress of Britanny, of the differences with Maximilian and England, and of the Duke of Lorraine’s attempt on Metz, which it had been hoped might be gained by treachery and surprise; a prelude to the treachery and surprise in which a French king succeeded but too well little more than a century later.

SIXTH BOOKTHE LAST YEARS OF LORENZO DE’ MEDICICHAPTER I.THE FLORENTINE STATE; PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND FINANCES ABOUT 1490.Thereform in the constitution made in the summer of 1480, whereby the decisive part in the affairs of the State was concentrated in the Council of Seventy, had now held its ground for ten years. These ten years, added to the fifty during which the house of Medici had risen to the head of the State, necessarily excluded all families which maintained not only a hostile, but even an independent position. Amongst the ruling portion of the aristocracy, including many popular but not therefore liberal elements, there were men who, in their hearts, detested both the system and its most illustrious supporter; but the majority were attached to it both from interest or from necessity. Others silently accepted what they could not alter without resorting to a great revolution and outward shock which, doubtless, few desired. The lower classes were so much influenced by the arts of those in power, and the governments preceding that of the Medici had oppressed them to such an extent, popular revolutions had been of so tumultuous a character, and had always so speedily paved the way for despotism, that there could be no serious thought of change. The upper class of citizens, who had a share in the government in the wider sense, who were represented in the councils and admitted to office, contented themselves with the measure and appearance of authority, influence, and other advantages given them by the constitution. All the hostile families of rankwere ruined by exile, confiscation, and taxes; their old chiefs were either dead or in banishment, they had completely lost their influence and were no longer to be feared; or they had allowed themselves to be gained over in one way or another, and now acted in concert with their former opponents.According to the time of their fall these families may be divided into three groups: the Albizzi and their adherents fell in 1434, the partisans of Diotisalvi Neroni in 1466, the Pazzi in 1478. Lorenzo had no need to trouble himself about any of them. In the first part of this history we pointed out the extent of the misery into which the Albizzi of Messer Rinaldo’s line had sunk. Forty-four years after their banishment the rights of citizenship were restored to Alessandro, a great-grandson of the former head of the Republic, for having, when far away from Florence during the war which broke out after the Pazzi conspiracy, discovered to the Signoria a plot whereby the town of Pistoja was to be betrayed into the hands of the Duke of Urbino.[367]The descendants of Rinaldo’s brothers remained friendly to the Medici. The Neroni party were become powerless since the Colleone affair. Piero de’ Medici himself had some idea of becoming reconciled with Agnolo Acciaiuolo, more than one of whose relatives were among his own warmest adherents; so the disunion was not likely to continue between their posterity. But for the Pazzi affair Agnolo’s descendants, favoured by the Aragonese, would doubtless have been taken back into favour long before 1482. The enmity between the Medici and the Soderini ended with the death of Niccolò Soderini in 1474, though it came to life again later under different circumstances in the sons of that Tommaso who was so closely connected with Piero and Lorenzo. The Pazzi were thoroughly put out of the way; the scaffold and the prison of Volterra swallowed up both guilty andguiltless; and even when, in consequence of agreements with the Pope and Naples, the survivors were set free in 1482, they were still subjected to many restraints which lasted till the revolution of 1494. Lorenzo’s brother-in-law, Guglielmo, after a long confinement in a house in the country, was sent to Faenza, where Galeotto Manfredi kept him in custody at Lorenzo’s disposal, as is shown by a letter of Galeotto’s dated February 25, 1483. Three days later he received orders for the liberation of his prisoner, and this decision was announced by Lorenzo to his sister Bianca, who had remained in Florence, and to his brother-in-law himself. In the autumn of the following year Guglielmo was in Rome, and in friendly intercourse with the Medici and Bernardo Rucellai.[368]After the revolution of 1494 he was re-admitted to political offices; but he showed little capacity for the work, and his son Alessandro (eleven years old when his uncle Lorenzo died), notwithstanding his sagacity and experience, was better fitted for scholarly work than for public life. Of the other families who arrayed themselves against the Medici in the attack before referred to, some never again played any important part in politics; others let themselves be chained to the victor’s chariot. Thus it was with the Peruzzi, the Gianfigliazzi, the Pitti, and others. The first-named—old, rich, and illustrious—were excluded from office after the return of Cosimo de’ Medici. The two branches of the Strozzi, whose influence had formerly been considerable, were now in some degree estranged, and the most famous of the two was just rising to the height of its splendour.Lorenzo, as he looked around him, had no need to fear the recurrence of such opposition as had endangered the authority of his grandfather and father. There seemed no room for even attempts at violence, and the tendencies which sprang forth after his death were at this time hardlyperceptible even in the germ. Francesco Guicciardini described the situation in a few sentences: ‘The city was in perfect peace. The citizens in whose hands was the administration held firmly together; the government, carried on and supported by them, was so powerful that no one dared contradict it. The people were daily entertained with festivals, spectacles, and novelties; to their profit the city abounded in everything; trade and business were at the height of prosperity. Men of talent found their proper place in the great liberality with which the arts and sciences were promoted and those who practised them were honoured. This city, quiet and peaceful at home, enjoyed also high esteem and great consideration abroad, because she had a government whose head had full authority; because her dominions had lately been extended; because the deliverance of Ferrara and that of King Ferrante were mainly owing to her; because she had complete sway over Pope Innocent; and because, in alliance with Naples and Milan, she in some measure kept all Italy in equilibrium.’Amid this happy state of things, however, symptoms showed themselves which decidedly pointed out something insecure in the foundations. From a moral point of view there were drawbacks whose influence on the general development and final determination of affairs was inevitable. Anyone who looked below the glittering surface must have felt yearly increasing care about the political situation. Putting aside foreign politics, the home affairs gave extra cause for anxiety. It was becoming more and more evident that everything, present and future, depended on one man alone. It could hardly therefore go unperceived that the necessary consequences of this man’s position and career furnished a prospect, perhaps not a distant one, of a radical change in the constitution.Alessandro de’ Pazzi graphically described the difficulties of his uncle’s position:[369]‘When Lorenzo came to the headof the party after Piero’s death he found a serious task before him, and, young as he was, he had need of great prudence to keep together and govern this party; so much the more because the citizens who were then powerful thought they could retain their commanding position, without allowing Lorenzo to usurp the same authority that his grandfather and father had enjoyed. In my opinion this was a mistake; discord would soon have parted them. But his exertions were great, and it was owing to him that no division occurred at that time. His patience with his adherents deserves as much praise as his prudence, activity, and liberality; and I know from my mother that in these first years he thought day and night of nothing but gaining over his friends for his own objects.’Again, after referring to the dangers and consequences of the years 1478-1480, he says: ‘By dint of skill and luck, without which nothing is to be attained in human affairs, he consolidated his position and maintained it all his life long, not merely as his grandfather had done, but a step higher and with fuller powers. He was in more danger than Cosimo, but he stood so high that the danger was outweighed. Nevertheless, with all his good fortune and the favour of circumstances, with his superhuman intellect and his great number of trustworthy friends, he gave himself an immense deal of trouble. He went to work with the greatest caution, with many arts and secret allies who knew nothing of each other, with inexhaustible patience and endurance. He was assisted, moreover, by his wonderfully acute judgment of foreign affairs, which he understood how to direct and balance better than any other living man in Italy. Herein also fortune favoured him, that he lived at a time when forces were more equally divided than usual, and there was little danger of foreign interference. Above all it was a happy circumstance that Cosimo had preceded him as founder of the position of the family, and for many years past no other and in some senseno more popular form of government had been known in Florence. His merits, however, were his own; vigilance, patience, perseverance, splendour combined with elegance, whereby he made himself a great name among the Italian princes and in other lands, while at home he attracted and gained over all to himself. This also is to be highly esteemed in him, that he influenced his friends into moderation and kept their hands clean, so that it may be said that, with a few exceptions, there occurred no cases of rapine. In truth he directed the State and his party in the best manner possible under the circumstances. With all his good fortune and his uncommon qualities, however, it cost him great exertions, for he never spared himself, but took a personal share in all that occurred, whether in the square or in the palace.’Although business was transacted not in the house of Medici but in the palace of the Signoria, where Lorenzo passed many hours as a member of councils and committees, still the government was becoming more and more a personal one. The constant change in the members of the Signoria, intended to prevent the authority of individuals from increasing, necessarily promoted this personal government; so much the more as a regular and consistent treatment became necessary for the direction of foreign affairs, ever increasing in continuity and importance. Only in this manner could Florence maintain her position against the larger Italian and foreign states—all monarchic except Venice, who preserved her constitution almost unchanged. Naturally, however, such a personal government had the grave defects of all political arrangements where legal right and hereditary prescription are not the fundamental principles, and whose internal nature is a negation of their external form. This State, apparently constituted on a broad basis, was in reality ruled by a comparatively small party with a recognised chief at their head. Lorenzo’s contemporaries said that he had greater authority and morepersonal power than any despotic ruler.[370]Nothing was done without his initiative and approval. Popes, kings, and princes applied to him; ambassadors corresponded with him; thousands besieged him with petitions for offices, posts of honour, favours, remission of taxes and imposts, and personal interests of all kinds both at home and in the neighbouring states. Each found him willing to listen; the letters he wrote were innumerable, many of them written by his own hand, to different parties of high and low rank, some personally known to him, others quite strangers. He would willingly help merchants, stewards, farmers, countrymen, and people of all sorts and positions in life. Besides the countless clients of the family there were those recommended by them—as he called them, ‘my good old friends.’ He applied to the Duke of Ferrara on behalf of the money-changers in the Prato, ‘these Jews, my friends.’[371]His correspondence contains the strangest medley of subjects, events, and persons; contraventions of the toll-regulations at the passage of the flocks coming down for the winter from the Casentino and the Pistojan hills to the Sienese Maremma; frauds by merchants; thefts from Florentine subjects; differences with the administration of salt; deeds of violence and murder, are all mixed up with recommendations for judicial offices, especially the office of Podestà, judge of the court of appeal, capitano, &c., and for spiritual dignities and benefices; settlement of boundary disputes; concessions about the corn trade; mediation on the passage of troops; and the affairs of the petty dynasties seated around the Siena district, the Sforzas of Santafiora, the Orsini of Pitigliano, and many others. His constant desire was to oblige as many as possible at home and abroad, and to have the influence of his personal position felt and understood on all sides.This position was becoming year by year very glaringlyexceptional, not only to the eyes of foreign sovereigns but to those of Italian princes as well. The authority which Lorenzo was believed to possess with Innocent VIII., ‘because,’ as he wrote to Lanfredini on August 26, 1489, ‘I am extremely devoted to his Holiness and obliged to him for many favours,’ caused him to be applied to by all parties whenever a petition to Rome was to be presented. Almost simultaneously Guid’Antonio Arcimboldo begged his recommendation to obtain the archbishopric of Milan, and the Duke of Britanny sent a messenger to request his support for the nomination of one of the Duke’s secretaries to the see of Nantes. Lodovico il Moro applied to him to procure the Sienese bishopric of Pienza, and Charles, Duke of Savoy, to have his uncle—that Francis so well known in connection with the episcopal troubles at Geneva—advanced to the cardinalate. When Federigo Sanseverino, Monsignor de’ Grassi, the Archbishop of Auch, and others desired the cardinal’s hat, he was asked to help them to procure it. It was he who recommended to the Pope the young Alessandro Farnese, who in 1489 was studying at Pisa and sought to obtain one of the posts of Apostolic Secretary created by Innocent at the end of 1487. ‘I wish you to know,’ wrote Lorenzo to Lanfredini on April 10,[372]‘that this gentleman, besides coming of such a noble family (oltre allo esser nato della casa che è) has many distinguished qualities, among them unusual learning and excellent morals, being at once very accomplished and a model of virtuous conduct. For these reasons, the weight of which with me you know, I recommend him to you as if he were my own son, and beg you to present him to his Holiness, for which I shall be very grateful.’ This is perhaps the first testimony, and certainly a most honourable one, on behalf of Pomponio Leto’s former pupil, then one-and-twenty, and destined forty-five yearslater to succeed a Medici on the Papal throne. When the Duke of Ferrara and the lord of Camerino wanted help at Rome, they applied to Lorenzo; when the Duke of Savoy sent an ambassador thither, he recommended him to Lorenzo. King John of Portugal wrote from Santarem, Charles VIII. from Amboise, the Duchess Blanche from Savoy, Anne de Beaujeu and her husband Pierre de Bourbon from Moulins, to the ‘Seigneur Laurens.’ His friendly relations with Matthias Corvinus have been repeatedly mentioned; they seem to have been none the worse for the fact that Matthias was for a long time on bad terms with the Sforza, having, for the sake of his brother-in-law Don Federigo of Aragon, accepted among the conditions of the treaty with Kaiser Frederic in 1477 the proceedings against the ruling house of Milan, which was not recognised by the Empire. To the Pope Lorenzo often commended his own subjects, as, for instance, Giovanni Savelli, ‘to whom I have especial goodwill because he is in the service of our army, and to whom I am bound by a friendship of many years’ standing,’ and the distinguished priest Francesco de’ Massimi. Everyone considered a matter secured in Rome if once Lorenzo took it in hand; and perhaps the secret of his great success in many things arose from the shrewdness of his calculation as to what lay within the limits of possibility.Lorenzo was surrounded by numerous friends and adherents, some of whom had inherited distinction, while others had been raised by him. It was only by their help that he could maintain his position at home and keep up his connections abroad. He was well and skilfully supported by the Acciaiuoli, the Pandolfini, the Vespucci, the Soderini, the Pucci, the Guicciardini, the Capponi, the Vettori, the Lanfredini, the Alamanni, the Ridolfi, the Gaddi, &c. They and their families had a corresponding share in the administration, in honours and privileges, and held a prominent position; the consequence of which was that when circumstances were altered there remained a powerful Mediceanparty which at last gained the victory through external political circumstances; for the family which had risen to greatness with their support naturally seized the lion’s share. But Lorenzo, while advancing his adherents in power, never allowed them to become too independent of him. For this purpose the means he chiefly employed was that of placing on the same level with citizens who had long been great others who had risen solely by help of the Medici; in matters which required entire devotion to his interests he rather gave a preference to the latter. The most active and influential of the Florentine diplomatists, Giovanni Lanfredini, sprung from a family originally Roman and which became extinct in the last century in the person of a cardinal, had become a business-partner of the Medici as early as Cosimo’s time. Lorenzo’s policy was to let one person keep another in check. He was probably suspicious by nature, a quality which developed as years went on, for he often employed the chancery-officers who accompanied the ambassadors to Rome, Naples, and Milan to send him special reports,[373]while his creatures in Florence, especially Ser Piero of Bibiena and Piero Michelozzi, kept up a correspondence in various other quarters. We have remarked before that Bartolommeo Scala, the chancellor of the Signoria, was in very intimate relations with him. The chancellors of the other government offices, the only really stable officials in whom the traditions of business survived, were all in his interest, most of them having attained their influential posts through him. Thus he let no family and no individual gain an influence inconvenient to himself, and kept his eyes on all. He even meddled in family affairs: hindered marriages if they seemed to him dangerous, furthered them if he thought them likely to prove useful. Those whom some special circumstances had unusually elevated, even when he himself profited thereby, he always kept in check; as exemplified inthe case of Tommaso Soderini, and, after the Pazzi conspiracy, Girolamo Morelli. Of the former, indeed, there is nothing more to add, save that he was a member of the Council of Seventy and died as Capitano at Pisa in 1485. Lorenzo overlooked many things in his adherents, but he kept them under his control and took care that they should feel that their position and advantages were derived from him. A man who was, indeed, ill-disposed towards him on account of an event which concerned his family, remarked:[374]‘The great citizens raised and supported Lorenzo in his youth; in later years he would not have as companions, but used as servants, those who had been like fathers to him.’The event alluded to is characteristic of the political power and position of Lorenzo with regard to the official representatives of the State. It made no difference to him if the man on whom his resentment fell[375]had his cause defended by others in power. When Neri Cambi degli Opportuni was Gonfaloniere in 1488, and at the end of the year the Signoria were to be elected for the following January and February, it was found that the legal number of members of the colleges was not complete, many having absented themselves without leave and gone to the chase. To the great irritation of the people assembled in the square the election could not take place till one of the missing members was fetched from his country-house, from whence he came booted and spurred to the palace, and the election then proceeded. Indignant at what had occurred, the outgoing Signoria determined to punish the delinquents, and condemned four of them to exclusion from office for four years. Lorenzo was in Pisa at the time. ‘To him,’ says Guicciardini, ‘and to all the heads of the party it was a very disagreeable affair; for it seemed to them that if a Signoria could use the right ofammonirewithout previous deliberationwith those in power, their own government was hanging in the air by a thread (lo stato loro fussi a cavallo in su uno baleno), and they might one fine morning be driven out of Florence by only six beans (votes). So, after that Signoria had gone out of office, the matter was again brought up before the Magistracy of Eight and the Council of Seventy; the decree against the four citizens was revoked, and Neri Cambi was declared ineligible for office for the rest of his life. The council was by no means unanimous, but Lorenzo’s will carried the day.’This was a pretty clear token of how matters stood with regard to the powers of the supreme court. But this was not all; participation in the government was to be yet further restricted. In the summer of 1490 a measure was carried which concentrated the actual direction of affairs in the hands of a small body. The Council of Seventy was to remain as a council of State; but the elections to the Signoria were transferred, as under the old system, toaccoppiatori, named by a committee of seventeen, of whom Lorenzo was one. The members of this committee were chosen arbitrarily, and only one of them belonged to the minor guilds. On them was dependent every branch of the administration, more especially finances and the national debt.The new committee’s first measure concerned the coinage. In appearance it was sensible enough. The city and country were overwhelmed with small and base foreign coin; Sienese, Lucchese, Bolognese, &c. August 28, 1490, a decree was issued forbidding the circulation of foreign coins on and after September 8. As Alamanno Rinuccini remarked, it was not the first decree of the kind, and it was no more observed this time than heretofore. Indeed, it was practically impossible to distinguish the foreignquattrinifrom the Florentine, outwardly very like them. So on May 1, 1491, a radical reform was undertaken. The old native small coin, the so-called black quattrino, was called in, and replaced by a new coin containing two ounces of silver tothe pound of copper, and reckoned as equivalent to five danari, while the old one was called in at the rate of four danari. The public treasuries were in future to receive only the new white quattrini. The people were pleased, hoping to get rid of the confusion. Their rejoicing did not last long. Instead of melting down the old money, it was stealthily brought into circulation again, and the old quattrino remained in use side by side with the new one. Out of this confusion arose endless difficulties; and the people found that in taxes, duties, purchases of salt, everything where produce went into the treasury, they were the chief sufferers. The consequence was general discontent, directed principally against the heads of the government, as their limited number made them the more conspicuous.[376]The evil was great, but it had not yet reached its worst height. The increasingly demoralised condition of the administration of finance displayed itself in another way, which must have utterly ruined the credit of the State at the first serious political crisis. This was connected with the Medici finances. Lorenzo’s pecuniary difficulties had been in no wise removed by the precautionary measures of 1480. His manner of life, establishments, purchases, the provisions for his children, his by no means disinterested liberality, the bribes in money paid for his influence abroad, required large sums. To try to meet these requirements with the produce of his personal property (because he considered this more secure and honourable),[377]would have been chimerical. He had limited his banking-business and commercial speculations; and to draw upon them never entered his head. During his very last years he did a great deal of business in Rome. Innocent VIII. was financially still more dependent on him than on his own Genoese fellow-countrymen, and he allowed him corresponding advantages. In 1489 he soldhim 30,000 hundredweight of alum at a very low price, in compensation for losses sustained in the days of his predecessor; and the alum trade passed almost entirely into Lorenzo’s private hands. The farm-rent paid by him for the works of Tolfa amounted to 100,000 florins. In May of the same year Lorenzo furnished the Pope with a loan to the same amount for one year; one-third of the sum in cash, the other two-thirds in silk and woollen stuffs. For the repayment, two-tenths, amounting to 60,000 florins, were referred to the Florentine clergy, the rest to the revenues of Città di Castello.[378]In 1490 Lorenzo redeemed from the Centurioni of Genoa a valuable tiara which had been pledged to them.[379]Cosimo Sassetti, one of the partners in the Medici bank at Lyons, was also a papal collector in 1490. In the case of smaller loans, princes sent valuables as pledges; the Marquis of Mantua gave a precious stone for the sum of 4,000 gold florins, and when at a marriage-feast he wanted to have it back, his brother-in-law, Ercole d’Este, offered the salt-office of Modena for security in its place. These transactions went on under Lorenzo’s eldest son and even later.[380]But the profits were uncertain, for all the parties concerned were not skilful and prudent. Even supposing that Lorenzo drew an income of 15,000 to 20,000 gold florins from the old family estate, and about 10,000 from the newly-acquired and gradually increasing one in the Pisan territory, still it was terribly insufficient for his outlay. He was driven to all kinds of shifts, at times even somewhat mean ones, such as must have been sometimes very unpleasant to him; as, for instance, in 1484, when he had to take a loan of 4,000 ducats from Lodovico Sforza, or sell for the same price the house given by Duke Francesco to his grandfather.[381]During the difficulties of 1478 he had been compelled to borrow from his cousins, the other Medici, 60,000 gold florins, for the repayment of which he gave security on his possessions in Mugello. There were Florentine business houses which paid him a yearly sum for lending them his name.This mixing up of his private money-matters with those of the State brought about most unhappy consequences. In the war of 1478, the pay of the troops was furnished by the bank of the Bartolini, in which Lorenzo had a share. They deducted eight per cent., in return for which the commanders did not furnish the troops agreed upon, and the community had to make up the deficit. The wretched mismanagement of the military arrangements was all of a piece with this. Yet Lorenzo still thought himself entitled to venture on further operations of the same kind. The chief financial posts were held by his minions. From the treasurers (camarlinghi) of the offices of the national debt, of the customs, of salt, of judicial contracts, &c., he raised the needful sums, which they handed over to him without difficulty, first because they could refuse him nothing, and next because they thought their own responsibility covered and their personal security safe; for every newly appointed official had to recover the sum lent out by his predecessor; and as this process went on unchecked for years, it may easily be imagined what a deficit there was at last, after all the sham repayments one towards the other. The office of the national debt suffered most. The supreme provveditore, Antonio di Bernardo Miniati, had risen from the condition of an artisan by the favour of Lorenzo, who had actually made him a member of the Committee of Seventeen; and he proceeded quite arbitrarily, to oblige his patron and at once facilitate and hush up disgraceful embezzlement. During the revolution of 1494 the great book of the Monte wasmissing; nevertheless, there was an exposure of how many sums had gone to the numerous protégés and hangers-on of the Medici in and out of Florence. There was also another means by which to enrich them; and that was the furnishing of supplies, among which the supplying of cloth to the troops, in particular, brought great gain.[382]But all possible manœuvres and skill could not prevent the bad condition of this unprincipled finance from becoming known. How should they when, to mention only one instance, the Cardinalate of Giovanni de’ Medici cost the State an expenditure of 50,000 gold florins, independently of the sums which found their way secretly into Rome, and were reckoned at 200,000 more?[383]The State-creditors suffered most, from the reduction in the rate of interest caused by the drafts deposited in the Monte, and from the arrears of interest. These bills, together with the extraordinary additional taxes constantly repeated under various names, reduced the national debt. What offended the citizens most and damaged Lorenzo’s reputation with posterity more than anything else was the plundering of the before-mentionedMonte delle doti, the establishment intended for the dowries of maidens, and in which all citizens, great and small, were wont to make investments.[384]It was a sort of bank of deposit, somewhat on the plan of modern insurance-offices, and its usefulness was increased by the changes of fortune only too sudden in Florence. This establishment took its rise in 1424, when it was decreed that for the liquidation of the shares in the national debt dating from 1325 to 1336, and originally bringing in eighteen per cent. interest, the creditors should be at liberty to convert a quota of what was due to them into a dowry for their sons and daughters; from 1468 it was limited to daughters. The conditions were very liberal. Whosoever paid or gave security for the amount of104 gold florins, and had it put down to one of his children, received at the end of fifteen years the sum of a thousand florins in cash, or could, if he pleased, let it remain at five per cent. interest. If the child in whose name the money stood died, half the sum to which he would have had a claim, according to the time that had elapsed, was paid back to the father, and the other half went to the bank. The so-called reform of theMonte delle doti, which, like all such establishments, certainly needed improvement in its administration, was one of the avowed objects of the change made in the constitution in 1480; but it opened a door to the misappropriation of its funds. In 1485 a decree was issued whereby only a fifth of the dowry, i.e. two hundred florins in the case above described, was to be paid in cash; the rest was to be entered in a register calledlibro non ito, the unpaid book, and to bear an interest of seven per cent. This was not all. Six years later, the rate of interest was lowered to three per cent.[385]This came very near to bankruptcy, and this bankruptcy touched the citizens to the quick, while it brought the State into discredit. Hitherto the dower paid through the Monte had in most cases been sufficient; now the necessary additions to it became serious, and quite unattainable for many families. So the number of marriages diminished; that the consent of the head of the State had to be secured before they could take place would sound incredible, did it not belong to the system of such party-government.[386]‘For many years,’ says Rinuccini,[387]‘Lorenzo de’ Medici was doing his best, by a series of laws and decrees, to ruin the great bank of the commonwealth, for the purpose of getting rid of its obligations for the payment of annuities and dowries, and obtaining arbitrary control over the State finances. For this work he selected in particular two helpers, Antonio di Bernardo and Ser Giovanni of Pratovecchio (chancellor of the Riformagioni), worthless fellows,who pointed out to him day by day the way to attain his object.’Though the position of the Medici was secured for a time, their finances could not be set right. The banks of Lyons and Bruges, directed by Leonetti de’ Rossi, Francesco and Cosimo Sassetti, Tommaso Portinari, and others, only saved themselves by compounding with their creditors. Lorenzo’s correspondence shows what a vast deal of trouble these pecuniary embarrassments gave him, notwithstanding his levity in money-matters. As early as 1484 he had to write to de’ Rossi to insist on withdrawing the name of Medici from the Lyons firm before next Easter. Eighteen months after, he ordered the balance of the Bruges bank to be sent to him, in consequence of Portinari’s bad management. On one day, April 21, 1488, he despatched to the King of France, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon, the Seigneur du Bouchage, the Bishop of Valence, and others, no less than seventeen letters relating to the Lyons bank and Francesco Sassetti, after whose death in 1490 Lorenzo Spinelli took the direction of the Medici’s financial interests in France.[388]It was inevitable that there should be a vehement outcry against this disorder. Many foreigners who had placed their money in the banks sustained heavy losses, and on the violent overthrow of the Medici, when their palace was plundered at the entry of Charles VIII., the king’s quarter-master, the seigneur de Balassat, who had given the signal for the plundering, defended himself on the plea that the Medici bank of Lyons owed him large sums.[389]One of the sufferers by these shameful money-dealings was a man who had done much for Lorenzo, and who, on his side, was influenced in his relations with him and his business agents by a consideration of the advantages which Lorenzo’s political position might give him. Thiswas Philippe de Commines, who, at one of the most critical moments of his life, was greatly injured by the pecuniary difficulties of the Medici and their unwillingness or inability to meet their obligations. After the death of Louis XI., Commines, who had been an instrument of the king’s tyranny and enriched by his confiscations, was first sent away from court for taking part in the intrigues of the Princes against the Regent, Anne de Beaujeu; then shut up in one of the iron cages at Loches; and, in the spring of 1488, sentenced by the Parliament to lose a fourth part of his property, and find security for ten thousand crowns. He found it impossible to realise his demands on the Medici bank and liquidate the sums which he had deposited there since 1478 through Louis’ confidant Du Bouchage, and part of which had been employed in 1486 to support the opposition against the Regent.[390]Even when Commines, set free from his worst embarrassments, was again on the way to political influence, these difficulties remained, and a letter from Lorenzo to him[391]gives a glimpse into the financial troubles of the Medici.‘Illustrious Sir,’ so runs the letter, ‘I have received your lordship’s letter, and my mind is penetrated with grief at learning into what a state of irritation Cosimo Sassetti’s last statement of accounts has put you. My regret would be still greater could I imagine that you doubt the sentiments of my house towards you, whereas I am for many reasons so deeply indebted to you that I should deserve to be called the most ungrateful of men if I paid you now in any coin but such as I owe you for the numerous benefits received from you in good and evil days. When in my inmost mind I examine my obligations, I can assure your lordship that neither by me nor by any of mine shall anything be done which might indispose you towards me or give youan unfavourable opinion of me. If Cosimo Sassetti’s expressions with regard to your lordship’s interests should produce such an unhappy effect, I should be most deeply grieved, as it would be contrary to the true position of affairs and my earnest intentions. I do indeed confess, and your lordship knows it, that for some time past our Lyons house has suffered such heavy losses that it was impossible to conceal them from my present or former business friends, of whom your lordship is one, and not to complain of them as Cosimo has done. This may have made a bad impression on you; but you may rest assured that there is really no occasion for difference between us, for you can always dispose, not only of the sum in dispute between you and Cosimo, but of my whole means as if they were your own. I therefore beg your lordship to put faith in me, that this matter may be ended and leave no cloud between us. For your lordship’s friendship, whether in prosperity or adversity, is of more value to me than any sum of money.’In spite of all these assurances, Commines’ demands were discharged in what he considered a very inadequate manner (apointement bien mègre).[392]Nothing but the high value which he set on the friendship of the Medici induced him to keep quiet. ‘I believe,’ wrote Lorenzo Spinelli to Lorenzo at the close of 1491,[393]‘the Sieur d’Argenton will remain our friend. In order not to make him angry, I have always told him that if God gives us grace to do well in business and make up some of the losses we sustained in Leonetto’s time, you will give him his share. I am of opinion that this hope will induce him to further your interests, if he puts faith in my words.’ Spinelli was right.Commines’ humour was likewise influenced by the favourable turn which his affairs took after the agreement between the young king Charles VIII. and the Princes, in the beginning of September 1491. His last letter to Lorenzo,[394]dated January 13, 1492, and signed ‘more than entirely yours’ (plus que tout vostre), treats not of money-matters, but of Charles’ marriage with the heiress of Britanny, of the differences with Maximilian and England, and of the Duke of Lorraine’s attempt on Metz, which it had been hoped might be gained by treachery and surprise; a prelude to the treachery and surprise in which a French king succeeded but too well little more than a century later.

SIXTH BOOK

THE LAST YEARS OF LORENZO DE’ MEDICI

THE FLORENTINE STATE; PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND FINANCES ABOUT 1490.

Thereform in the constitution made in the summer of 1480, whereby the decisive part in the affairs of the State was concentrated in the Council of Seventy, had now held its ground for ten years. These ten years, added to the fifty during which the house of Medici had risen to the head of the State, necessarily excluded all families which maintained not only a hostile, but even an independent position. Amongst the ruling portion of the aristocracy, including many popular but not therefore liberal elements, there were men who, in their hearts, detested both the system and its most illustrious supporter; but the majority were attached to it both from interest or from necessity. Others silently accepted what they could not alter without resorting to a great revolution and outward shock which, doubtless, few desired. The lower classes were so much influenced by the arts of those in power, and the governments preceding that of the Medici had oppressed them to such an extent, popular revolutions had been of so tumultuous a character, and had always so speedily paved the way for despotism, that there could be no serious thought of change. The upper class of citizens, who had a share in the government in the wider sense, who were represented in the councils and admitted to office, contented themselves with the measure and appearance of authority, influence, and other advantages given them by the constitution. All the hostile families of rankwere ruined by exile, confiscation, and taxes; their old chiefs were either dead or in banishment, they had completely lost their influence and were no longer to be feared; or they had allowed themselves to be gained over in one way or another, and now acted in concert with their former opponents.

According to the time of their fall these families may be divided into three groups: the Albizzi and their adherents fell in 1434, the partisans of Diotisalvi Neroni in 1466, the Pazzi in 1478. Lorenzo had no need to trouble himself about any of them. In the first part of this history we pointed out the extent of the misery into which the Albizzi of Messer Rinaldo’s line had sunk. Forty-four years after their banishment the rights of citizenship were restored to Alessandro, a great-grandson of the former head of the Republic, for having, when far away from Florence during the war which broke out after the Pazzi conspiracy, discovered to the Signoria a plot whereby the town of Pistoja was to be betrayed into the hands of the Duke of Urbino.[367]The descendants of Rinaldo’s brothers remained friendly to the Medici. The Neroni party were become powerless since the Colleone affair. Piero de’ Medici himself had some idea of becoming reconciled with Agnolo Acciaiuolo, more than one of whose relatives were among his own warmest adherents; so the disunion was not likely to continue between their posterity. But for the Pazzi affair Agnolo’s descendants, favoured by the Aragonese, would doubtless have been taken back into favour long before 1482. The enmity between the Medici and the Soderini ended with the death of Niccolò Soderini in 1474, though it came to life again later under different circumstances in the sons of that Tommaso who was so closely connected with Piero and Lorenzo. The Pazzi were thoroughly put out of the way; the scaffold and the prison of Volterra swallowed up both guilty andguiltless; and even when, in consequence of agreements with the Pope and Naples, the survivors were set free in 1482, they were still subjected to many restraints which lasted till the revolution of 1494. Lorenzo’s brother-in-law, Guglielmo, after a long confinement in a house in the country, was sent to Faenza, where Galeotto Manfredi kept him in custody at Lorenzo’s disposal, as is shown by a letter of Galeotto’s dated February 25, 1483. Three days later he received orders for the liberation of his prisoner, and this decision was announced by Lorenzo to his sister Bianca, who had remained in Florence, and to his brother-in-law himself. In the autumn of the following year Guglielmo was in Rome, and in friendly intercourse with the Medici and Bernardo Rucellai.[368]After the revolution of 1494 he was re-admitted to political offices; but he showed little capacity for the work, and his son Alessandro (eleven years old when his uncle Lorenzo died), notwithstanding his sagacity and experience, was better fitted for scholarly work than for public life. Of the other families who arrayed themselves against the Medici in the attack before referred to, some never again played any important part in politics; others let themselves be chained to the victor’s chariot. Thus it was with the Peruzzi, the Gianfigliazzi, the Pitti, and others. The first-named—old, rich, and illustrious—were excluded from office after the return of Cosimo de’ Medici. The two branches of the Strozzi, whose influence had formerly been considerable, were now in some degree estranged, and the most famous of the two was just rising to the height of its splendour.

Lorenzo, as he looked around him, had no need to fear the recurrence of such opposition as had endangered the authority of his grandfather and father. There seemed no room for even attempts at violence, and the tendencies which sprang forth after his death were at this time hardlyperceptible even in the germ. Francesco Guicciardini described the situation in a few sentences: ‘The city was in perfect peace. The citizens in whose hands was the administration held firmly together; the government, carried on and supported by them, was so powerful that no one dared contradict it. The people were daily entertained with festivals, spectacles, and novelties; to their profit the city abounded in everything; trade and business were at the height of prosperity. Men of talent found their proper place in the great liberality with which the arts and sciences were promoted and those who practised them were honoured. This city, quiet and peaceful at home, enjoyed also high esteem and great consideration abroad, because she had a government whose head had full authority; because her dominions had lately been extended; because the deliverance of Ferrara and that of King Ferrante were mainly owing to her; because she had complete sway over Pope Innocent; and because, in alliance with Naples and Milan, she in some measure kept all Italy in equilibrium.’

Amid this happy state of things, however, symptoms showed themselves which decidedly pointed out something insecure in the foundations. From a moral point of view there were drawbacks whose influence on the general development and final determination of affairs was inevitable. Anyone who looked below the glittering surface must have felt yearly increasing care about the political situation. Putting aside foreign politics, the home affairs gave extra cause for anxiety. It was becoming more and more evident that everything, present and future, depended on one man alone. It could hardly therefore go unperceived that the necessary consequences of this man’s position and career furnished a prospect, perhaps not a distant one, of a radical change in the constitution.

Alessandro de’ Pazzi graphically described the difficulties of his uncle’s position:[369]‘When Lorenzo came to the headof the party after Piero’s death he found a serious task before him, and, young as he was, he had need of great prudence to keep together and govern this party; so much the more because the citizens who were then powerful thought they could retain their commanding position, without allowing Lorenzo to usurp the same authority that his grandfather and father had enjoyed. In my opinion this was a mistake; discord would soon have parted them. But his exertions were great, and it was owing to him that no division occurred at that time. His patience with his adherents deserves as much praise as his prudence, activity, and liberality; and I know from my mother that in these first years he thought day and night of nothing but gaining over his friends for his own objects.’

Again, after referring to the dangers and consequences of the years 1478-1480, he says: ‘By dint of skill and luck, without which nothing is to be attained in human affairs, he consolidated his position and maintained it all his life long, not merely as his grandfather had done, but a step higher and with fuller powers. He was in more danger than Cosimo, but he stood so high that the danger was outweighed. Nevertheless, with all his good fortune and the favour of circumstances, with his superhuman intellect and his great number of trustworthy friends, he gave himself an immense deal of trouble. He went to work with the greatest caution, with many arts and secret allies who knew nothing of each other, with inexhaustible patience and endurance. He was assisted, moreover, by his wonderfully acute judgment of foreign affairs, which he understood how to direct and balance better than any other living man in Italy. Herein also fortune favoured him, that he lived at a time when forces were more equally divided than usual, and there was little danger of foreign interference. Above all it was a happy circumstance that Cosimo had preceded him as founder of the position of the family, and for many years past no other and in some senseno more popular form of government had been known in Florence. His merits, however, were his own; vigilance, patience, perseverance, splendour combined with elegance, whereby he made himself a great name among the Italian princes and in other lands, while at home he attracted and gained over all to himself. This also is to be highly esteemed in him, that he influenced his friends into moderation and kept their hands clean, so that it may be said that, with a few exceptions, there occurred no cases of rapine. In truth he directed the State and his party in the best manner possible under the circumstances. With all his good fortune and his uncommon qualities, however, it cost him great exertions, for he never spared himself, but took a personal share in all that occurred, whether in the square or in the palace.’

Although business was transacted not in the house of Medici but in the palace of the Signoria, where Lorenzo passed many hours as a member of councils and committees, still the government was becoming more and more a personal one. The constant change in the members of the Signoria, intended to prevent the authority of individuals from increasing, necessarily promoted this personal government; so much the more as a regular and consistent treatment became necessary for the direction of foreign affairs, ever increasing in continuity and importance. Only in this manner could Florence maintain her position against the larger Italian and foreign states—all monarchic except Venice, who preserved her constitution almost unchanged. Naturally, however, such a personal government had the grave defects of all political arrangements where legal right and hereditary prescription are not the fundamental principles, and whose internal nature is a negation of their external form. This State, apparently constituted on a broad basis, was in reality ruled by a comparatively small party with a recognised chief at their head. Lorenzo’s contemporaries said that he had greater authority and morepersonal power than any despotic ruler.[370]Nothing was done without his initiative and approval. Popes, kings, and princes applied to him; ambassadors corresponded with him; thousands besieged him with petitions for offices, posts of honour, favours, remission of taxes and imposts, and personal interests of all kinds both at home and in the neighbouring states. Each found him willing to listen; the letters he wrote were innumerable, many of them written by his own hand, to different parties of high and low rank, some personally known to him, others quite strangers. He would willingly help merchants, stewards, farmers, countrymen, and people of all sorts and positions in life. Besides the countless clients of the family there were those recommended by them—as he called them, ‘my good old friends.’ He applied to the Duke of Ferrara on behalf of the money-changers in the Prato, ‘these Jews, my friends.’[371]His correspondence contains the strangest medley of subjects, events, and persons; contraventions of the toll-regulations at the passage of the flocks coming down for the winter from the Casentino and the Pistojan hills to the Sienese Maremma; frauds by merchants; thefts from Florentine subjects; differences with the administration of salt; deeds of violence and murder, are all mixed up with recommendations for judicial offices, especially the office of Podestà, judge of the court of appeal, capitano, &c., and for spiritual dignities and benefices; settlement of boundary disputes; concessions about the corn trade; mediation on the passage of troops; and the affairs of the petty dynasties seated around the Siena district, the Sforzas of Santafiora, the Orsini of Pitigliano, and many others. His constant desire was to oblige as many as possible at home and abroad, and to have the influence of his personal position felt and understood on all sides.

This position was becoming year by year very glaringlyexceptional, not only to the eyes of foreign sovereigns but to those of Italian princes as well. The authority which Lorenzo was believed to possess with Innocent VIII., ‘because,’ as he wrote to Lanfredini on August 26, 1489, ‘I am extremely devoted to his Holiness and obliged to him for many favours,’ caused him to be applied to by all parties whenever a petition to Rome was to be presented. Almost simultaneously Guid’Antonio Arcimboldo begged his recommendation to obtain the archbishopric of Milan, and the Duke of Britanny sent a messenger to request his support for the nomination of one of the Duke’s secretaries to the see of Nantes. Lodovico il Moro applied to him to procure the Sienese bishopric of Pienza, and Charles, Duke of Savoy, to have his uncle—that Francis so well known in connection with the episcopal troubles at Geneva—advanced to the cardinalate. When Federigo Sanseverino, Monsignor de’ Grassi, the Archbishop of Auch, and others desired the cardinal’s hat, he was asked to help them to procure it. It was he who recommended to the Pope the young Alessandro Farnese, who in 1489 was studying at Pisa and sought to obtain one of the posts of Apostolic Secretary created by Innocent at the end of 1487. ‘I wish you to know,’ wrote Lorenzo to Lanfredini on April 10,[372]‘that this gentleman, besides coming of such a noble family (oltre allo esser nato della casa che è) has many distinguished qualities, among them unusual learning and excellent morals, being at once very accomplished and a model of virtuous conduct. For these reasons, the weight of which with me you know, I recommend him to you as if he were my own son, and beg you to present him to his Holiness, for which I shall be very grateful.’ This is perhaps the first testimony, and certainly a most honourable one, on behalf of Pomponio Leto’s former pupil, then one-and-twenty, and destined forty-five yearslater to succeed a Medici on the Papal throne. When the Duke of Ferrara and the lord of Camerino wanted help at Rome, they applied to Lorenzo; when the Duke of Savoy sent an ambassador thither, he recommended him to Lorenzo. King John of Portugal wrote from Santarem, Charles VIII. from Amboise, the Duchess Blanche from Savoy, Anne de Beaujeu and her husband Pierre de Bourbon from Moulins, to the ‘Seigneur Laurens.’ His friendly relations with Matthias Corvinus have been repeatedly mentioned; they seem to have been none the worse for the fact that Matthias was for a long time on bad terms with the Sforza, having, for the sake of his brother-in-law Don Federigo of Aragon, accepted among the conditions of the treaty with Kaiser Frederic in 1477 the proceedings against the ruling house of Milan, which was not recognised by the Empire. To the Pope Lorenzo often commended his own subjects, as, for instance, Giovanni Savelli, ‘to whom I have especial goodwill because he is in the service of our army, and to whom I am bound by a friendship of many years’ standing,’ and the distinguished priest Francesco de’ Massimi. Everyone considered a matter secured in Rome if once Lorenzo took it in hand; and perhaps the secret of his great success in many things arose from the shrewdness of his calculation as to what lay within the limits of possibility.

Lorenzo was surrounded by numerous friends and adherents, some of whom had inherited distinction, while others had been raised by him. It was only by their help that he could maintain his position at home and keep up his connections abroad. He was well and skilfully supported by the Acciaiuoli, the Pandolfini, the Vespucci, the Soderini, the Pucci, the Guicciardini, the Capponi, the Vettori, the Lanfredini, the Alamanni, the Ridolfi, the Gaddi, &c. They and their families had a corresponding share in the administration, in honours and privileges, and held a prominent position; the consequence of which was that when circumstances were altered there remained a powerful Mediceanparty which at last gained the victory through external political circumstances; for the family which had risen to greatness with their support naturally seized the lion’s share. But Lorenzo, while advancing his adherents in power, never allowed them to become too independent of him. For this purpose the means he chiefly employed was that of placing on the same level with citizens who had long been great others who had risen solely by help of the Medici; in matters which required entire devotion to his interests he rather gave a preference to the latter. The most active and influential of the Florentine diplomatists, Giovanni Lanfredini, sprung from a family originally Roman and which became extinct in the last century in the person of a cardinal, had become a business-partner of the Medici as early as Cosimo’s time. Lorenzo’s policy was to let one person keep another in check. He was probably suspicious by nature, a quality which developed as years went on, for he often employed the chancery-officers who accompanied the ambassadors to Rome, Naples, and Milan to send him special reports,[373]while his creatures in Florence, especially Ser Piero of Bibiena and Piero Michelozzi, kept up a correspondence in various other quarters. We have remarked before that Bartolommeo Scala, the chancellor of the Signoria, was in very intimate relations with him. The chancellors of the other government offices, the only really stable officials in whom the traditions of business survived, were all in his interest, most of them having attained their influential posts through him. Thus he let no family and no individual gain an influence inconvenient to himself, and kept his eyes on all. He even meddled in family affairs: hindered marriages if they seemed to him dangerous, furthered them if he thought them likely to prove useful. Those whom some special circumstances had unusually elevated, even when he himself profited thereby, he always kept in check; as exemplified inthe case of Tommaso Soderini, and, after the Pazzi conspiracy, Girolamo Morelli. Of the former, indeed, there is nothing more to add, save that he was a member of the Council of Seventy and died as Capitano at Pisa in 1485. Lorenzo overlooked many things in his adherents, but he kept them under his control and took care that they should feel that their position and advantages were derived from him. A man who was, indeed, ill-disposed towards him on account of an event which concerned his family, remarked:[374]‘The great citizens raised and supported Lorenzo in his youth; in later years he would not have as companions, but used as servants, those who had been like fathers to him.’

The event alluded to is characteristic of the political power and position of Lorenzo with regard to the official representatives of the State. It made no difference to him if the man on whom his resentment fell[375]had his cause defended by others in power. When Neri Cambi degli Opportuni was Gonfaloniere in 1488, and at the end of the year the Signoria were to be elected for the following January and February, it was found that the legal number of members of the colleges was not complete, many having absented themselves without leave and gone to the chase. To the great irritation of the people assembled in the square the election could not take place till one of the missing members was fetched from his country-house, from whence he came booted and spurred to the palace, and the election then proceeded. Indignant at what had occurred, the outgoing Signoria determined to punish the delinquents, and condemned four of them to exclusion from office for four years. Lorenzo was in Pisa at the time. ‘To him,’ says Guicciardini, ‘and to all the heads of the party it was a very disagreeable affair; for it seemed to them that if a Signoria could use the right ofammonirewithout previous deliberationwith those in power, their own government was hanging in the air by a thread (lo stato loro fussi a cavallo in su uno baleno), and they might one fine morning be driven out of Florence by only six beans (votes). So, after that Signoria had gone out of office, the matter was again brought up before the Magistracy of Eight and the Council of Seventy; the decree against the four citizens was revoked, and Neri Cambi was declared ineligible for office for the rest of his life. The council was by no means unanimous, but Lorenzo’s will carried the day.’

This was a pretty clear token of how matters stood with regard to the powers of the supreme court. But this was not all; participation in the government was to be yet further restricted. In the summer of 1490 a measure was carried which concentrated the actual direction of affairs in the hands of a small body. The Council of Seventy was to remain as a council of State; but the elections to the Signoria were transferred, as under the old system, toaccoppiatori, named by a committee of seventeen, of whom Lorenzo was one. The members of this committee were chosen arbitrarily, and only one of them belonged to the minor guilds. On them was dependent every branch of the administration, more especially finances and the national debt.

The new committee’s first measure concerned the coinage. In appearance it was sensible enough. The city and country were overwhelmed with small and base foreign coin; Sienese, Lucchese, Bolognese, &c. August 28, 1490, a decree was issued forbidding the circulation of foreign coins on and after September 8. As Alamanno Rinuccini remarked, it was not the first decree of the kind, and it was no more observed this time than heretofore. Indeed, it was practically impossible to distinguish the foreignquattrinifrom the Florentine, outwardly very like them. So on May 1, 1491, a radical reform was undertaken. The old native small coin, the so-called black quattrino, was called in, and replaced by a new coin containing two ounces of silver tothe pound of copper, and reckoned as equivalent to five danari, while the old one was called in at the rate of four danari. The public treasuries were in future to receive only the new white quattrini. The people were pleased, hoping to get rid of the confusion. Their rejoicing did not last long. Instead of melting down the old money, it was stealthily brought into circulation again, and the old quattrino remained in use side by side with the new one. Out of this confusion arose endless difficulties; and the people found that in taxes, duties, purchases of salt, everything where produce went into the treasury, they were the chief sufferers. The consequence was general discontent, directed principally against the heads of the government, as their limited number made them the more conspicuous.[376]

The evil was great, but it had not yet reached its worst height. The increasingly demoralised condition of the administration of finance displayed itself in another way, which must have utterly ruined the credit of the State at the first serious political crisis. This was connected with the Medici finances. Lorenzo’s pecuniary difficulties had been in no wise removed by the precautionary measures of 1480. His manner of life, establishments, purchases, the provisions for his children, his by no means disinterested liberality, the bribes in money paid for his influence abroad, required large sums. To try to meet these requirements with the produce of his personal property (because he considered this more secure and honourable),[377]would have been chimerical. He had limited his banking-business and commercial speculations; and to draw upon them never entered his head. During his very last years he did a great deal of business in Rome. Innocent VIII. was financially still more dependent on him than on his own Genoese fellow-countrymen, and he allowed him corresponding advantages. In 1489 he soldhim 30,000 hundredweight of alum at a very low price, in compensation for losses sustained in the days of his predecessor; and the alum trade passed almost entirely into Lorenzo’s private hands. The farm-rent paid by him for the works of Tolfa amounted to 100,000 florins. In May of the same year Lorenzo furnished the Pope with a loan to the same amount for one year; one-third of the sum in cash, the other two-thirds in silk and woollen stuffs. For the repayment, two-tenths, amounting to 60,000 florins, were referred to the Florentine clergy, the rest to the revenues of Città di Castello.[378]In 1490 Lorenzo redeemed from the Centurioni of Genoa a valuable tiara which had been pledged to them.[379]Cosimo Sassetti, one of the partners in the Medici bank at Lyons, was also a papal collector in 1490. In the case of smaller loans, princes sent valuables as pledges; the Marquis of Mantua gave a precious stone for the sum of 4,000 gold florins, and when at a marriage-feast he wanted to have it back, his brother-in-law, Ercole d’Este, offered the salt-office of Modena for security in its place. These transactions went on under Lorenzo’s eldest son and even later.[380]But the profits were uncertain, for all the parties concerned were not skilful and prudent. Even supposing that Lorenzo drew an income of 15,000 to 20,000 gold florins from the old family estate, and about 10,000 from the newly-acquired and gradually increasing one in the Pisan territory, still it was terribly insufficient for his outlay. He was driven to all kinds of shifts, at times even somewhat mean ones, such as must have been sometimes very unpleasant to him; as, for instance, in 1484, when he had to take a loan of 4,000 ducats from Lodovico Sforza, or sell for the same price the house given by Duke Francesco to his grandfather.[381]During the difficulties of 1478 he had been compelled to borrow from his cousins, the other Medici, 60,000 gold florins, for the repayment of which he gave security on his possessions in Mugello. There were Florentine business houses which paid him a yearly sum for lending them his name.

This mixing up of his private money-matters with those of the State brought about most unhappy consequences. In the war of 1478, the pay of the troops was furnished by the bank of the Bartolini, in which Lorenzo had a share. They deducted eight per cent., in return for which the commanders did not furnish the troops agreed upon, and the community had to make up the deficit. The wretched mismanagement of the military arrangements was all of a piece with this. Yet Lorenzo still thought himself entitled to venture on further operations of the same kind. The chief financial posts were held by his minions. From the treasurers (camarlinghi) of the offices of the national debt, of the customs, of salt, of judicial contracts, &c., he raised the needful sums, which they handed over to him without difficulty, first because they could refuse him nothing, and next because they thought their own responsibility covered and their personal security safe; for every newly appointed official had to recover the sum lent out by his predecessor; and as this process went on unchecked for years, it may easily be imagined what a deficit there was at last, after all the sham repayments one towards the other. The office of the national debt suffered most. The supreme provveditore, Antonio di Bernardo Miniati, had risen from the condition of an artisan by the favour of Lorenzo, who had actually made him a member of the Committee of Seventeen; and he proceeded quite arbitrarily, to oblige his patron and at once facilitate and hush up disgraceful embezzlement. During the revolution of 1494 the great book of the Monte wasmissing; nevertheless, there was an exposure of how many sums had gone to the numerous protégés and hangers-on of the Medici in and out of Florence. There was also another means by which to enrich them; and that was the furnishing of supplies, among which the supplying of cloth to the troops, in particular, brought great gain.[382]But all possible manœuvres and skill could not prevent the bad condition of this unprincipled finance from becoming known. How should they when, to mention only one instance, the Cardinalate of Giovanni de’ Medici cost the State an expenditure of 50,000 gold florins, independently of the sums which found their way secretly into Rome, and were reckoned at 200,000 more?[383]The State-creditors suffered most, from the reduction in the rate of interest caused by the drafts deposited in the Monte, and from the arrears of interest. These bills, together with the extraordinary additional taxes constantly repeated under various names, reduced the national debt. What offended the citizens most and damaged Lorenzo’s reputation with posterity more than anything else was the plundering of the before-mentionedMonte delle doti, the establishment intended for the dowries of maidens, and in which all citizens, great and small, were wont to make investments.[384]It was a sort of bank of deposit, somewhat on the plan of modern insurance-offices, and its usefulness was increased by the changes of fortune only too sudden in Florence. This establishment took its rise in 1424, when it was decreed that for the liquidation of the shares in the national debt dating from 1325 to 1336, and originally bringing in eighteen per cent. interest, the creditors should be at liberty to convert a quota of what was due to them into a dowry for their sons and daughters; from 1468 it was limited to daughters. The conditions were very liberal. Whosoever paid or gave security for the amount of104 gold florins, and had it put down to one of his children, received at the end of fifteen years the sum of a thousand florins in cash, or could, if he pleased, let it remain at five per cent. interest. If the child in whose name the money stood died, half the sum to which he would have had a claim, according to the time that had elapsed, was paid back to the father, and the other half went to the bank. The so-called reform of theMonte delle doti, which, like all such establishments, certainly needed improvement in its administration, was one of the avowed objects of the change made in the constitution in 1480; but it opened a door to the misappropriation of its funds. In 1485 a decree was issued whereby only a fifth of the dowry, i.e. two hundred florins in the case above described, was to be paid in cash; the rest was to be entered in a register calledlibro non ito, the unpaid book, and to bear an interest of seven per cent. This was not all. Six years later, the rate of interest was lowered to three per cent.[385]This came very near to bankruptcy, and this bankruptcy touched the citizens to the quick, while it brought the State into discredit. Hitherto the dower paid through the Monte had in most cases been sufficient; now the necessary additions to it became serious, and quite unattainable for many families. So the number of marriages diminished; that the consent of the head of the State had to be secured before they could take place would sound incredible, did it not belong to the system of such party-government.[386]‘For many years,’ says Rinuccini,[387]‘Lorenzo de’ Medici was doing his best, by a series of laws and decrees, to ruin the great bank of the commonwealth, for the purpose of getting rid of its obligations for the payment of annuities and dowries, and obtaining arbitrary control over the State finances. For this work he selected in particular two helpers, Antonio di Bernardo and Ser Giovanni of Pratovecchio (chancellor of the Riformagioni), worthless fellows,who pointed out to him day by day the way to attain his object.’

Though the position of the Medici was secured for a time, their finances could not be set right. The banks of Lyons and Bruges, directed by Leonetti de’ Rossi, Francesco and Cosimo Sassetti, Tommaso Portinari, and others, only saved themselves by compounding with their creditors. Lorenzo’s correspondence shows what a vast deal of trouble these pecuniary embarrassments gave him, notwithstanding his levity in money-matters. As early as 1484 he had to write to de’ Rossi to insist on withdrawing the name of Medici from the Lyons firm before next Easter. Eighteen months after, he ordered the balance of the Bruges bank to be sent to him, in consequence of Portinari’s bad management. On one day, April 21, 1488, he despatched to the King of France, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon, the Seigneur du Bouchage, the Bishop of Valence, and others, no less than seventeen letters relating to the Lyons bank and Francesco Sassetti, after whose death in 1490 Lorenzo Spinelli took the direction of the Medici’s financial interests in France.[388]It was inevitable that there should be a vehement outcry against this disorder. Many foreigners who had placed their money in the banks sustained heavy losses, and on the violent overthrow of the Medici, when their palace was plundered at the entry of Charles VIII., the king’s quarter-master, the seigneur de Balassat, who had given the signal for the plundering, defended himself on the plea that the Medici bank of Lyons owed him large sums.[389]One of the sufferers by these shameful money-dealings was a man who had done much for Lorenzo, and who, on his side, was influenced in his relations with him and his business agents by a consideration of the advantages which Lorenzo’s political position might give him. Thiswas Philippe de Commines, who, at one of the most critical moments of his life, was greatly injured by the pecuniary difficulties of the Medici and their unwillingness or inability to meet their obligations. After the death of Louis XI., Commines, who had been an instrument of the king’s tyranny and enriched by his confiscations, was first sent away from court for taking part in the intrigues of the Princes against the Regent, Anne de Beaujeu; then shut up in one of the iron cages at Loches; and, in the spring of 1488, sentenced by the Parliament to lose a fourth part of his property, and find security for ten thousand crowns. He found it impossible to realise his demands on the Medici bank and liquidate the sums which he had deposited there since 1478 through Louis’ confidant Du Bouchage, and part of which had been employed in 1486 to support the opposition against the Regent.[390]Even when Commines, set free from his worst embarrassments, was again on the way to political influence, these difficulties remained, and a letter from Lorenzo to him[391]gives a glimpse into the financial troubles of the Medici.

‘Illustrious Sir,’ so runs the letter, ‘I have received your lordship’s letter, and my mind is penetrated with grief at learning into what a state of irritation Cosimo Sassetti’s last statement of accounts has put you. My regret would be still greater could I imagine that you doubt the sentiments of my house towards you, whereas I am for many reasons so deeply indebted to you that I should deserve to be called the most ungrateful of men if I paid you now in any coin but such as I owe you for the numerous benefits received from you in good and evil days. When in my inmost mind I examine my obligations, I can assure your lordship that neither by me nor by any of mine shall anything be done which might indispose you towards me or give youan unfavourable opinion of me. If Cosimo Sassetti’s expressions with regard to your lordship’s interests should produce such an unhappy effect, I should be most deeply grieved, as it would be contrary to the true position of affairs and my earnest intentions. I do indeed confess, and your lordship knows it, that for some time past our Lyons house has suffered such heavy losses that it was impossible to conceal them from my present or former business friends, of whom your lordship is one, and not to complain of them as Cosimo has done. This may have made a bad impression on you; but you may rest assured that there is really no occasion for difference between us, for you can always dispose, not only of the sum in dispute between you and Cosimo, but of my whole means as if they were your own. I therefore beg your lordship to put faith in me, that this matter may be ended and leave no cloud between us. For your lordship’s friendship, whether in prosperity or adversity, is of more value to me than any sum of money.’

In spite of all these assurances, Commines’ demands were discharged in what he considered a very inadequate manner (apointement bien mègre).[392]Nothing but the high value which he set on the friendship of the Medici induced him to keep quiet. ‘I believe,’ wrote Lorenzo Spinelli to Lorenzo at the close of 1491,[393]‘the Sieur d’Argenton will remain our friend. In order not to make him angry, I have always told him that if God gives us grace to do well in business and make up some of the losses we sustained in Leonetto’s time, you will give him his share. I am of opinion that this hope will induce him to further your interests, if he puts faith in my words.’ Spinelli was right.Commines’ humour was likewise influenced by the favourable turn which his affairs took after the agreement between the young king Charles VIII. and the Princes, in the beginning of September 1491. His last letter to Lorenzo,[394]dated January 13, 1492, and signed ‘more than entirely yours’ (plus que tout vostre), treats not of money-matters, but of Charles’ marriage with the heiress of Britanny, of the differences with Maximilian and England, and of the Duke of Lorraine’s attempt on Metz, which it had been hoped might be gained by treachery and surprise; a prelude to the treachery and surprise in which a French king succeeded but too well little more than a century later.

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