Magnifico (16 page)

AROUND MIDDAY ON AUGUST 27, 1466, WHILE LORENZO
was completing his perilous journey from Careggi to the city, the leaders of the Hill gathered in Luca Pitti’s half-completed
palazzo
on the slopes of San Giorgio, just south of the Ponte Vecchio. Here, amid the sounds of hammering and the clattering of masons’ carts, Pitti, along with Agnolo Acciaiuoli and Dietisalvi Neroni, anxiously awaited word of Piero’s capture.

In fact, though they did not yet know it, Piero and his men had already slipped through the net. Warned by the horseman sent back by Lorenzo of the trap awaiting him at Sant’Antonio del Vescovo, they had turned off the main road and were somewhere unseen and unheard among the back country lanes. As minutes lengthened to hours with still no word, tensions rose in the cavernous rooms. The bid by leaders of the Hill to seize power had been predicated largely on the assumption that Piero was weak and incapable—a “vile rabbit” Agnolo Acciaiuoli had called him, a man unwilling or unable to take decisive action—but failure to seize the Medici patriarch would turn what was meant to be a swift and decisive coup into a long, drawn-out struggle for which they had not adequately planned.

The assessment of Piero as an unworthy opponent helps to explain why the leaders of the Hill were so unprepared for the coming fight. Also greatly hampering their effort was the lack of a clear chain of command. “There were three chiefs,” says Marco Parenti, “and each one waited for the others to act.” The Party of the Hill was, in fact, nothing more than a temporary coalition of men “unified more by a common hatred than a common ideal.” Even in these early hours the alliance was beginning to show signs of cracking under the pressure of events.

By contrast, across the city Lorenzo’s arrival at the Medici palace had sparked a flurry of purposeful activity. The one guest whose presence is recorded that day was Nicodemo Tranchedini, the Milanese ambassador to Florence, and it was this battle-tested veteran who girded the residents for the expected onslaught. “Nicodemo [Tranchedini], well schooled in these arts, set about defending Piero’s house,” wrote Parenti, “erecting scaffolding above the windows to serve as battlements, with many stones and other arms of war, and occupying the streets around the house with armed troops, he seized as well the gate of San Gallo in order to allow the entrance of his own men, who were expected to arrive, while the others were closed to ensure that their enemies would not be able to enter the city.”
*

To those dithering across the river at Luca Pitti’s home, confidence soon gave way to concern. Only when couriers brought word of growing crowds outside the
Palazzo Medici
did they begin, belatedly, to prepare their own defenses. Soon cries of “Popolo e Liberta!” rang out in the neighborhoods of the Oltrarno, the
gonfaloni
of the Dragon and the Ladder, while anyone of known Medici sympathies was forced to beat a strategic retreat across town. “And thus,” records Marco Parenti, “there arose two fortresses, each guarded by its own men.”

Marco Parenti says that Piero returned “around the 22nd hour [that is, around four in the afternoon] in great fright with many armed men,” while Machiavelli confirms that he arrived “in the midst of a great multitude of armed men.” At least some of these must have been with him when he left Careggi, while others may have joined the cavalcade along the way. Once inside the city walls Piero’s entourage was joined by additional partisans, who escorted him to the Via Larga. That the neighborhoods closest to the Medici palace remained solidly behind their cause is revealed by the fact that Neroni, whose palace was only a few doors down from theirs, was unable to return to his own house for fear the enraged mob would tear him limb from limb.

As soon as he was safely home Piero assembled his closest advisors. In addition to Lorenzo and Nicodemo Tranchedini, they included Francesco Sassetti, manager of the Medici bank in Florence, and Tommaso Soderini, Niccolò’s younger brother, whose loyalty to the Medici was cemented by his recent marriage to Dianora Tornabuoni, Lucrezia’s sister.
*

For Piero and his advisors, survival would depend as much on the skill-full manipulation of popular sentiment as on the application of brute force. In times of political crisis the greatest danger was that quarrels among the city’s rulers would lead to violent social revolution. With their masters at each other’s throats, the downtrodden workers might grasp the opportunity to throw off their yoke as they had in the summer of 1378 during the violent upheaval known as the revolt of the
Ciompi.
†
Visions of the hungry masses pouring out from their squalid hovels in San Frediano and rampaging through the streets was enough to send chills down the spines of the burghers who ran things in Florence.

For the Medici faction, maintaining discipline among the armed mobs now gathering to defend their palace was vital; as representatives of the status quo they had the most to lose should the situation descend into general anarchy. Here Lorenzo played a pivotal role, as Niccolò Valori writes: “The plebs, thirsting after novelty, thought of nothing but riot, and as happens in similar cases, with suspicion growing and without hope of receiving pardon, every day their sedition and mischief increased. And if to these dangers Lorenzo, along with those citizens who loved him and counseled him, did not find remedy, without doubt the city with the greater part of the noblemen would have been endangered.”

But while Piero and his advisors kept a tight rein on their supporters, the leaders of the Hill could ill afford to be so fastidious. They had already stirred up the masses with cries of “Popolo e Liberta!” and it was on their strong backs that they hoped to ride to victory. But in exploiting the discontent of the city’s underclass, potentially their most effective weapon, they risked being destroyed by forces they themselves had unleashed. This points out a fatal contradition at the heart of the reform movement. The leaders of the Hill were not radicals but social conservatives who believed that the removal of the Medici would lead to a return to the good old days when the city’s wealthy merchants took collective responsibility for government. However much they resented Piero and his cronies, the nightmare that kept them awake at night was the specter of destitute workers rising up to slit the throats of their masters.

With signs that the tide in the city was beginning to flow against them, the leaders of the Hill did in fact briefly contemplate tapping into that undercurrent of poverty and despair among the weavers and dyers and using it against the
reggimento.
“While things were in such a state,” records Marco Parenti, “Niccolò Soderini, a spirited man as we have said, reached the house of
messer
Luca armed and on horseback, accompanied by many companions.” Already present as we have seen were Neroni, Acciaiuoli, “and other honorable citizens” engaged with their host in lengthy but fruitless discussions. Soderini, frustrated that there was much discussion but little action, proposed that

In the end their fear of the mob proved greater than their fear of Piero. The three other leaders vetoed Soderini’s proposal, a decision Parenti describes as “very cowardly, since their situation had become so precarious that they had no other means to preserve their own safety.”

Throughout the evening of August 27, while Pitti, Neroni, Acciaiuoli, and Soderini quarreled over basic elements of strategy and even ideology, the Medici seized the initiative. Confronting his cousin Pierfrancesco, whose palace was next door to his on the Via Larga, Piero extracted an emergency loan of 10,000 florins, demonstrating that the rabbit had now become the wolf. Pierfrancesco had been one of the signatories to the oath of May 4 aimed at undermining Medici authority, and Piero must have relished the opportunity to settle the score. The sight of heavily armed men outside his window proved sufficient inducement for Pierfrancesco to rediscover the virtue of the family solidarity he had so recently forgotten.

While the leaders of the Hill, showing themselves to be frugal as well as indecisive, were reluctant to dip into their own pockets, Piero put his coins to immediate use. “With this money he showed great liberality in spending on what was required. First he emptied the bakeries in Florence of bread and sent it to his house, a double blow since it supplied his men while denying sustenance to his adversaries. He emptied the shops of their arms and the piazza of wine.” The Party of the Hill, which earlier in the day seemed to hold all the cards, suddenly showed itself to be outmatched by the sickly and reputedly weak-willed Piero. “
Messer
Luca,
messer
Dietisalvi and
messer
Agnolo, seeing fall so great and sudden a blow, stupefied and without provision, seemed almost lost.”

As the sun set over the city, Florence was divided into two hostile camps. Men and women flocked to the churches to pray for a peace that seemed ever more improbable, then returned home and locked their doors against the coming conflagration. In the courtyards of the Pitti and Medici palaces torches crackled and sparked while armed guards kept up a tense vigil. In the
gran sala
of the Medici palace, surrounded by suitably warlike scenes painted by Antonio del Pollaiuolo depicting the labors of Hercules,
*
Piero, Lorenzo, and their trusted lieutenants prepared for the decisive confrontation, which was sure to come the next day. A comical scene played out at the Medici palace captures the eerie mood of the long night:

In spite of this fiasco, by the time the sun rose above the Arno valley Piero had taken up a commanding position. As the mists parted, the roads from the north could be seen filling with armed men streaming toward the city walls. Some came from the hills near Mugello, the Medici’s ancestral home, others from nearby Arezzo and Pistoia. Luca Pitti was also bringing reinforcements toward the city, but they were of little use to him since Medici partisans had already shut the gates. Now Piero’s foresight in buying up all the bread and wine was revealed; while his supporters, camped outside the Porta San Gallo, were well provisioned, Pitti’s men across the river were forced to scrounge for whatever scraps they could find.

Had Piero so desired, it is almost certain that he could have taken the government by force, storming the Palace of the Priors, arresting his opponents, and establishing a despotism of the kind already common throughout the Italian peninsula. (Cosimo himself had famously quipped, “Better a city ruined than a city lost.”) But with absolute power within his grasp, Piero chose a different course. Rather than seizing the government and abolishing the constitution and the civic traditions to which Florentines were so deeply attached, he preferred to rely, as his father had before him, on those very instruments to legitimize and perpetuate his personal authority.

Here the calendar came to his aid. August 28 was election day, and in spite of the crisis the citizens were determined to press ahead with the cumbersome ceremony that to a Florentine was the essential ingredient of his cherished liberty. Piero, in fact, had much to gain from a change in the executive. Though under the timid leadership of Bernardo Lotti the current
Signoria
had been unable to impose its will on either faction, most of its members were known to be in sympathy with the Hill. The election of a new government—the eight priors plus the
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia
who comprised the
Signoria
, the chief executive body of the land—could well tip the balance of power in his favor.

With bells ringing out from dozens of churches all across the city, the attention of the citizens was drawn to the great basilica of Santa Croce, where the leather purses containing the names of those eligible for office were stored in large chests under the watchful eyes of the Franciscan brothers. Even as armed bands converged on the city, officials of the government, accompanied by a mounted escort and led by heralds and trumpeters, arrived at the sacristy to remove the purses and carry them in solemn procession to the Palace of the Priors, where the drawing of the names would take place.