Magnifico (17 page)

Once inside the palace, the nine purses—one for each of the priors and another for the
Gonfaloniere—
were brought to the great hall and placed in full view of the current government and the assembled citizenry. As the
podestà,
the chief judicial official of the state, proceeded to draw a name ticket from each of the purses, tension in the hall mounted. The bags contained scores of names: scoundrels and sages, rabid partisans of one faction or another and those with no known political affiliation, all jumbled together. In this strange procedure lay the heart of Florentine democracy. By choosing their officials at random from a large pool of eligible citizens—and by reducing the term of service for the most important offices to a mere two months—Florentines believed they had perfected a democratic system that would best represent the community as a whole and, as important, would prevent a single man or clique from monopolizing power. It was a process that guaranteed inefficiency because the corrupt and incompetent were as likely to serve as those of proven ability. Over the years Florentines had devised ingenious methods for mitigating the most baleful consequences—by weeding out undesirables from the purses or by instituting various councils of wise men who could steer the government in the desired direction—but there remained an element of unpredictability that to a true Florentine was synonymous with liberty itself.

The results of the current election would be all the more unpredictable because only months earlier the reformers had pushed through—against Piero’s will—a measure to close the electoral purses, that is, to prevent members of the
reggimento
from removing from the bags the names of those they deemed unreliable. Thus today’s election would be one of the freest in recent memory. Again, Marco Parenti is an eyewitness: “That same morning, at the usual hour, with high expectations from every corner, a new
Signoria
was drawn. The lottery went to friends of Piero, demonstrating the truth of Virgil’s verses—
Audaces fortuna iuvat, timidosque repellit
—Fortune rewards the bold and repels the meek.”

Some partisans of the Hill cried foul, claiming that Piero had tampered with the purses to ensure a friendly majority in the
Signoria
. According to one contemporary observer, “before the drawing for the
Signoria,
the bags had been gone through, and all those Piero suspected were removed.”
*
But the charge is implausible. Not only does Parenti—a man usually willing to believe the worst of Piero—make no mention of such nefarious doings, but for the Medici to tamper with the bags stored in the sacred precinct of Santa Croce would have almost certainly provoked a violent backlash. However much the Medici and their cronies were accustomed to interfering in the electoral process, they were careful to do so by scrupulously legal means. Such a blatant subversion of the process would have risked alienating the very people whose support they now needed.

Even more telling is the fact that while Parenti declared in hindsight that all were “friends of Piero,” at the time he made no such claim. In fact the new
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia,
Roberto Lioni, was initially described by Parenti as “a sensible man and a good man of the people who, had he followed his own inclinations, would have been in favor of the commune and of liberty.” Parenti attributes his change of heart to ambition, which is another way of saying that both Lioni and his colleagues (who quickly followed the new
Gonfaloniere
’s lead) knew a winner when they saw one and had concluded that the Medici were more likely to be in a position to reward their followers than their feckless opponents. It is not surprising that the newly elected government bent to the prevailing wind that now blew strongly in the Medici’s direction.

Piero, still in bed at his palace on the Via Larga, received word of the election with satisfaction, but he realized that the successful election brought new dangers as well as opportunities. With superior forces at his disposal and a friendly government scheduled to be seated on the first of September, time was on Piero’s side. But if this was obvious to Piero, so it was to his opponents; the looming deadline might well provoke them to desperate acts. Tensions continued to run high in the
Palazzo della Signoria
as the newly elected priors, now openly committed to Piero, refused to leave the premises as required by law, fearing the old
Signoria
had no intention of relinquishing power when their term of office expired in three days. A confrontation was avoided only when Piero persuaded his newfound allies to return peaceably to their homes.

Still unwilling to concede defeat, the rebels sought to erase the advantage Piero had gained by the morning’s election. Piero’s worst fears seemed to be realized when a courier arrived with a demand from the
Signoria
that he immediately appear before them at the Palace of the Priors. This placed him in a difficult position. He had gained the moral high ground by adhering to the strict letter of the law, but in obeying the government’s summons he knew he would be venturing onto unfriendly turf. Earlier in the day Neroni had appeard before the
Signoria
to plead his case, and the sympathetic hearing he had received could have left Piero in little doubt as to what his own reception might be. Piero was acutely aware that after obeying a similar summons his father had been arrested and imprisoned in the palace tower by the Albizzi. Rather than leave his well-guarded home, then, Piero “excused himself because of his illness…and instead sent Lorenzo and Giuliano his sons.”

Awaiting Lorenzo and Giuliano at the
Palazzo della Signoria
were the assembled Priors and
Gonfaloniere,
seated on a dais and dressed in their scarlet robes of office. The atmosphere was decidedly chilly. The
Signoria
, which compensated for a lack of effective power by an inflated sense of their own dignity, made it clear that they believed the substitution of the Medici boys for their father was a calculated snub. “In not coming, [Piero] showed his arrogance and lack of civility, sending instead his sons Lorenzo and Giuliano,” complained Alamanno Rinuccini. The moment was made all the more awkward by the presence of Luca Pitti, who, like his rival, had been called before the government to account for his actions. In the end the
Signoria
issued a stern message to both Lorenzo and Pitti, demanding that each party “expel from Florence all the soldiers stationed at his house…and that all the citizens who had taken up arms by that same hour be disarmed.”

Significantly, the implementation of this decree depended entirely on the goodwill of the parties involved since the government lacked the power to compel obedience. And, in fact, when Lorenzo returned home to inform his father of the
Signoria
’s demand, Piero dismissed it out of hand. Piero’s refusal to disband his forces, a departure from the path of strict legality he had so far adhered to, was viewed by his critics as a sign that he possessed “the soul of a tyrant rather than that of a good citizen.” But from Piero’s point of view, the demand, eminently evenhanded on its surface, was altogether unacceptable, since as matters currently stood his forces in the city and the surrounding countryside were clearly superior to those of his opponents. In insisting on the disarmament of both sides, the
Signoria
was in fact adopting a policy Neroni had urged upon them in his earlier visit to the palace.

In any case, Piero now had another option, one that might allow him to achieve his objectives without forcing him to rely on the honor and good intentions of his enemies. Returning from the
Palazzo della Signoria,
Lorenzo carried not only the government’s public pronouncement but also a private message. It was this second message that would ultimately provide the key to a peaceful resolution of the crisis.

The secret communication came, perhaps surprisingly, from Luca Pitti. Shortly after their joint appearance before the
Signoria,
Pitti and Lorenzo held a private meeting in which Lorenzo dangled the prospect of political rehabilitation for the old man were he to turn his back on his fellow conspirators and throw in his lot with the resurgent Medici. “In part through persuasive words and entreaties, and in part with promises of bonds of family,” wrote Niccolò Valori, “[he] began to pacify the leading rebels among whom the chief was Luca Pitti, such was the genius and art of Lorenzo, who could turn the most implacable foe into a friend.” In fact, Pitti’s sudden change of heart probably had less to do with Lorenzo’s eloquence than with his desperation to turn back from the brink of the precipice he now saw yawning before him.

Shortly after this meeting negotiations between
Messer
Luca and Piero’s agents began in earnest. The cagey Francesco Sassetti, general manager of the Medici bank, took charge of the delicate proceedings, crossing hostile lines for a meeting with Pitti in his palace. The agreement as it was finally hammered out between the two men captures Florentine political scheming at its cynical worst; Pitti’s loyalty was purchased through the promise of material benefits and, since loyalty in his case was an apparently mercurial substance, fixed more permanently through the extension of bonds of kinship. In return for abandoning both friends and principles, Luca’s brother Luigi was to be named one of the Eight of the Watch (the
Otto
), the city’s feared secret police commission, while Luca himself would be assured a permanent place in the upper echelons of the government as one of the
Accoppiatori,
the officials whose job it was to go through the electoral purses and remove the names of anyone unfriendly to the regime.
*
With a place in both these critical bodies, Luca Pitti’s position in Florence would be assured. As for those marriage ties that were the glue of party affiliation: “
Messer
Luca had a daughter of tender age whom he wished to see married, and Piero had his son Lorenzo, who was eighteen [sic]. It was
messer
Luca’s understanding that these two were to be wed, but out of delicacy he was not explicit. With these arrangements he believed himself secure and as exalted in the state as he had been previously.”

On this last point Francesco Sassetti was deliberately vague, and Pitti apparently did not press him, perhaps fearing that to insist on Lorenzo as a son-in-law might jeopardize a deal he was ever more desperate to conclude. Whatever Lorenzo’s virtues as a prospective son-in-law, they were not, apparently, worth risking his life for. (Ultimately, Piero fulfilled the letter of his promise to Pitti by arranging a marriage between his brother-in-law, Giovanni Tornabuoni, and Pitti’s daughter.)

The following morning the pact was sealed when Pitti rode to the Via Larga and embraced his former rival, “declaring himself,” said Piero, “ready to live or die with me.”

With Pitti’s abject surrender the rebellion effectively crumbled. Those who had opposed Piero now scrambled to salvage what they could from the wreckage. Soon a procession of men with frightened faces could be seen snaking its way along the Via Larga as those of suspect loyalty came to pay homage to the man they recently judged a “vile rabbit.” Among those seeking absolution was Agnolo Acciaiuoli, who, according to Tranchedini, pledged his obedience using “very submissive words.” Neroni and his brothers also came to beg forgiveness, receiving for their pains a tongue-lashing from Piero, who “rebuked them with grave words full of indignation.” Such was the mood among the Medici’s supporters that, according to Machiavelli, “if Piero had not held them back, they would have handled them with arms.”

Luca Pitti, compensating for past indescretions, worked harder than anyone to ensure the triumph of the man he had recently sought to destroy. It was he who in a meeting of leading citizens on September 2—one that took place, significantly enough, not in the
Palazzo della Signoria
but in the Medici palace—put the final seal on Piero’s victory by calling for a
parlamento,
an assembly of all citizens held in the great piazza before the palace, that would call on the government to enact sweeping reforms.
*
Any lingering doubts as to who was now in charge were put to rest by the official account of the assembly, which could have been written by Piero himself: “To establish the peace of the city there gathered in the house of Piero di Cosimo, who, being impeded, could not attend, in which it was decided to ask the
Signoria
to quell the disturbances in the city by means of a
parlamento
quickly, and do it today, so that the city gets rid of its arms as quickly as possible.”

On September 2, with three thousand armed men, all Medici loyalists, stationed at the narrow streets leading into the piazza, the citizens of Florence assembled. The Sienese ambassador, Cione de’ Ravi, claimed he had never seen “so many soldiers in one place” and that their “shouts of victory” helped sway the crowd in their favor. Towering above them, resplendent in full armor, rode Lorenzo, the glamourous, glittering symbol of Medici power. Under the circumstances the results were a foregone conclusion. With the
Signoria
and other high officials lining the podium in front of the
palazzo,
heralds read a petition put forward by one of the priors, Bernardo di Francesco Paganelli, to request that a special committee (known as a
Balìa
) be nominated with full powers to reform the government. According to Parenti, who witnessed the scene with a sinking heart, “it was approved with excited and loud voices by the great multitude of people who were in the piazza, both those armed and those unarmed, and having been accepted by two thirds of the people the reforms were thus ratified.”