IN THE LATE fifteenth century the world was entering a new age; and this is more than a commonplace of hindsight. The young men discussing Plato in the piazzas felt it; even the unlettered who stood in speechless awe before the new public works of art had an inkling. Brunelleschi’s cathedral dome, Ghiberti’s bronze doors, the vast palace slowly being erected by the Pitti family on the hill of the Oltrarno, the dazzling pageants laid on by Lorenzo the Magnificent – things could never be the same again. Florence was being transformed into a new city; yet something else was happening too. Beneath the thirst for new entertainments, new wonders and new ideas, there was a creeping bewilderment, as well as a creeping resentment, especially amongst the popolo minuto, who still traipsed back to the same slums when the tournaments and festivals were over.
England and the Low Countries had begun manufacturing their own cloth; as a result, they were exporting less wool and the Florentine cloth trade had undergone a slump. As ever, the ciompi had been the first to suffer, and as more men were laid off, more families began to be affected. There was increasing resentment against the new ways that Florence had begun to adopt; nothing was the same any more, all the old certainties were being eroded. In the midst of this slowly rising confusion, which was beginning to permeate all levels of society, only one man appeared to offer certainty, a priest called Savonarola.
Girolamo Savonarola had been born at Ferrara in 1452, the same year as Leonardo da Vinci; in all other respects, they were the antithesis of one another. Savonarola’s grandfather was an eminent physician at the court of the Dukes of Ferrara, and his father appears to have held minor posts at the same court, though without distinction. The young Savonarola was an introspective child who seldom smiled; he was educated at home by his grandfather, who as a physician had firmly advocated that alcohol, when taken regularly and in sufficient quantity, induced health and a long life. Unfortunately, his ideas on education were less enlightened; despite the closeness of Ferrara to Florence, and the consequent Renaissance influence on its court, Savonarola’s grandfather remained very much a believer in the old medieval approach to learning, as well as the attitude to life induced by the medieval belief in God. The gloomy, pale-faced youth with the hooked nose would listen intently to his grandfather’s tirades against the evils of the modern world: man’s sojourn on earth was but a preparation for the afterlife, and immorality resulted only in eternal damnation. In between times, the young Savonarola strummed mournful tunes on his lute and penned verses of depressive doggerel:
Seeing the whole world cast into darkness,
Utterly disappeared all virtue and goodness,
Nowhere a shining flame,
No one for his sins taking blame . . .
After his grandfather’s death, Savonarola went on to study at the University of Ferrara, and it was here that he first encountered the new humanist ideas, which he studied but instinctively rejected. During this period he became infatuated with a girl called Laodamia, the illegitimate daughter of one of the distinguished Florentine Strozzi family, then exiled in Ferrara. She lived in the house on the opposite side of the narrow street, and one day when she was leaning out of an overhanging window, Savonarola leaned from his own window and proposed to her. He was contemptuously turned down: even an illegitimate Strozzi would never conceive of marrying a mere Savonarola.
From this time on, Savonarola developed a nexus of increasing aversion towards women, all sorts of finery, the upper classes and any form of easy living. At the same time his attitude towards the new humanist ideas hardened, and what he had previously despised he now grew to hate. In the midst of the 1475 St George’s Day celebrations at his home, the twenty-three-year-old Savonarola crept out of the house and set off on foot for Bologna, thirty miles down the road, where he entered the Dominican order and became a monk. In a belated explanation of his actions to his father, he wrote: ‘I can no longer bear the wickedness of the people of Italy . . . As the instincts of the body are repugnant to reason, I must fight with all my strength to stop the Devil from leaping on my shoulders.’
In 1482, after living for seven years at various monasteries in northern Italy, Savonarola was posted to San Marco in Florence. This was the monastery that had been rebuilt at such huge cost by Cosimo de’ Medici, who had maintained his own cell here for private meditation. At San Marco, Savonarola quickly established a reputation amongst the monks as a driven man of extreme asceticism and purity; he slept on a straw-filled pallet placed on a plain board, and refrained from taking part in the relaxed feast-day celebrations enjoyed by the other monks. When it was his turn to deliver the Sunday sermon to the public in the church of San Marco, nobody was impressed by the ugly little priest with strangely sensual lips who stuttered and mumbled his words. Yet it soon became evident that his awkward manner had nothing to do with shyness; beneath his heavy dark eyebrows, which joined above his large hooked nose, Savonarola’s eyes burned with intensity. It was as if he was filled with a surging power that he was incapable of releasing. In his own later words, his sermons at this time were so ineffectual ‘they couldn’t even have frightened a chicken’.
Savonarola prayed and fasted, apparently begging God to reveal what it was that He wanted Savonarola to do in order to fulfil his wretched life on earth. Finally, in 1485 Savonarola experienced a revelation that inspired him ‘to reveal the word of God as it spoke through him, to warn the world of the horrors that lay in store for the wicked’. By now he was serving at the small fortified town of San Gimignano, thirty miles southwest of Florence. He began delivering the Lenten sermons with the passionate eloquence of a man who had at last discovered his mission in life, castigating his congregation, warning them of the catastrophes that God was about to release upon the world. God’s holy Church was holy no longer, for it had fallen into the ways of wickedness; from the lowest to the very highest, all had become sunk in iniquity; the Church would have to be scourged, and mightily purged, before it could return to the holiness and simplicity of true Christianity.
Word soon began to spread of this priest who preached like a man possessed, and within two years he was back at San Marco in Florence. Pico della Mirandola heard him speaking and was deeply impressed by the power and simple conviction with which Savonarola interpreted the biblical texts. Despite his great learning, Pico was undergoing a period of deep uncertainty; his ‘900 theses for the true religion’ had been condemned by Rome, and he faced the prospect of being judged as a heretic. As a result of his growing self-doubt, what Pico heard at San Marco struck him with the full force of its certainty.
Savonarola’s superiors were soon disconcerted with his new style of preaching, and decided that he would be better employed elsewhere. In 1487 he was posted to Bologna, as master of religious studies at the university; despite the occasional incoherence of his apocalyptic ideas, he had a deep knowledge and understanding of the Bible, the consequence of many hours of ceaseless study in his cell.
Back in Florence, Lorenzo de’ Medici sought Pico’s advice about his son Giovanni, the thirteen-year-old cardinal: what was to be done about the theological side of his education? Pico felt that the young Giovanni would benefit from being exposed to a good preacher, and recommended to Lorenzo that he use his influence to have Savonarola recalled to San Marco. This was just the kind of simple faith that the boy might appreciate.
Fig 9 Girolamo Savonarola
The city of Florence had felt deeply honoured when Lorenzo’s son was made a cardinal, and this had brought about a somewhat sentimental revival of religious interest amongst its citizens. Here was a jaded audience ripe for the hellfire message of Savonarola, and his sermons soon began attracting a large regular following. His fiery certainties seemed to strike a chord in all who heard him. The popolo minuto found comfort and reassurance: their poverty was like Christ’s poverty, they would be amongst the chosen when the rich suffered eternal damnation. Many of those who had embraced the new humanist ideas also found themselves swayed. The uncertainties and pretensions inspired by these new ideas were stripped away to reveal a deeper, more ancient malaise, one that longed for the medieval certainties of the past. As a result of his education, Savonarola was fully acquainted with the new humanism, and knew how to turn its ideas against itself – each man alone was responsible for his own soul, and as Pico had said, ‘You may give your life whatever form you choose’; yet what use were the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, when they had caused their authors to suffer eternal damnation in Hell? The new humanist ideas had led only to senseless luxury and sensual pleasures; why, the poems written by the humanist poets were not even on Christian subjects, since they preferred the pagan myths to parables of righteousness. The painters were no better, and even when they did choose to paint religious subjects they included such garish colours and human details that ‘they made the Virgin Mary look like a harlot’. (For reasons not too obscure, Savonarola was particularly keen on the iniquity of prostitutes, referring to them as lumps of meat with eyes’.) It did not take many such sermons to affect the fragile temperament of Botticelli; likewise, Poliziano soon recognised his own sins amongst Savonarola’s diatribes, and he too began wondering about the fate of his immortal soul. The new humanism had swayed their lives and enlivened their art, but it had not yet had sufficient time to take root in their souls.
During the summer months of 1489 Savonarola delivered a series of lectures in the gardens of the San Marco monastery. These would have been almost within earshot of the gardens housing Lorenzo’s school of sculpture, where Michelangelo was learning his art; and it must have been around this time that Michelangelo heard Savonarola preach, an experience that deeply impressed him. Even as an old man, he would claim that he could still hear Savonarola’s strident tones and see his impassioned gestures as if it were yesterday. Yet curiously, Michelangelo was one of those least affected: his faith had always been strong, and he had seen his artistic and literary talents as an integral part of his spiritual life. His art and his poetry would continue to develop free from any constricting puritanical piety.
As Savonarola’s audiences grew, so his message became bolder: If you wish to create good laws, first you must obey the laws of God, for all laws depend upon Eternal Law.’ His sermons began to take on an increasingly political tone – he preached against the abuses of power, and how it corrupted those who wielded it. Soon he was denouncing the misuse of authority by the tyrants who ruled the cities of this earth; and his audience was quick to recognise the ‘tyrant’ who ruled their city. Without Lorenzo’s name being mentioned, he soon became an increasing focus of resentment amongst the people.
At first Lorenzo decided to take a conciliatory approach, in the hope that Savonarola’s ire would soon be tempered by life in civilised Florence. Pico assured Lorenzo that Savonarola’s religious ideas were sound enough; he was at heart ‘a good man’. Poliziano also recommended caution, suggesting that there was a certain truth in what Savonarola said; besides, he was popular with the people – he provided a suitable release for any pent-up feelings. Then Savonarola went further, likening the excesses of the modern ‘tyrants’ to those of Nebuchadnezzar and Nero; but still Lorenzo decided to bide his time. In 1491 Savonarola was appointed prior of San Marco, and that year the attendance at his first Lenten sermon was so large that he requested to give the remaining sermons in the larger venue of the cathedral. Ill-advisedly, Lorenzo allowed this request to be granted; Savonarola’s sermons now began attracting vast crowds, and by word of mouth his latest castigation of the ‘tyrants’ spread throughout the entire city.
Although only in his early forties, Lorenzo was now beginning to succumb to the family illness: the gout and painfully swollen arthritic joints that had crippled his grandfather and killed his father. He too was suddenly reduced to being carried about on a litter, racked with pain; but the smooth government of the city continued as ever under its Medici appointees. Lorenzo remained in a quandary about what action to take over the troublesome priest who was beginning to question his authority; the undercover warnings that he sent to Savonarola by way of his supporters seemed to mean nothing, and went unheeded. He considered asking the pope to send Savonarola elsewhere, but the sixty-year-old Innocent VIII was also ill, the years of high living and depravity now beginning to take their toll.
News now began to reach Lorenzo that Savonarola was prophesying the death of the ‘tyrant’, and also the death of the pope. It was common gossip in Florence that Lorenzo was ill, and many also knew that Innocent VIII was not at all well; such knowledge only seemed to confirm the veracity of Savonarola’s prophecies. If he could foresee the deaths of popes and rulers, what else could he see? Perhaps his terrifying apocalyptic visions were going to come true after all.
On 11 December 1491 Leonardo’s second son Giovanni was sixteen. This marked his coming of age, and his official accession to the cardinalate to which he had been appointed three years previously. A great celebration was staged at the Palazzo Medici, but by now Lorenzo was too ill to attend; he was carried on his litter to an upper window, from where he watched briefly and unobtrusively as the banquet commenced below. Just over three months later, on 21 March 1492, he asked to be carried to the Medici villa at Careggi, where his grandfather Cosimo had died. Lorenzo was accompanied by his favourites Pico and Poliziano.
Two weeks after the ailing Lorenzo’s arrival at Careggi, news from Florence reached the villa that two of the city’s famous lions had mauled each other to death during a fight in their cage, an event that was taken by the citizens of Florence as a very bad omen. That night the new lantern placed atop the dome of the cathedral was struck by lightning, causing one of the marble balls supporting the lantern to be dislodged and roll down the dome, crashing to the pavement below and smashing into pieces. When news of this reached Lorenzo, he immediately demanded to know which side of the cathedral the ball had fallen, and was told that it had fallen on the north-west side. ‘That is the side pointing to this house,’ he told his attendants. ‘This means that I shall die.’ Even the great humanist, on his deathbed, was relapsing into the superstitions of a previous era.
Lorenzo summoned his eldest son Piero to his bedside, just as his great-grandfather Giovanni di Bicci and all subsequent heads of the family had done. Young Piero took after his uncle Giuliano, being unusually good-looking for a Medici; and now he was twenty-one, just four years younger than Giuliano when he had been assassinated. Unfortunately Piero had a tendency to arrogance and was more interested in hunting than in affairs of state. Lorenzo asked to be left alone with his son, then took his hand and began counselling him on the ways of the Medici: he was always to appear unassuming in public, remember the people of Florence as well as his own people . . . What had once been the earnest pleadings of his great-grandfather Giovanni di Bicci now had something of a hollow ring – such words had become a tradition rather than a testament.
According to Poliziano, it soon became clear that Lorenzo’s illness was attacking him ‘not only in all his veins, but also in his organs, his intestines, his bones, and even the very marrow of his bones’. As Lorenzo felt his life ebbing away, he took a momentous decision: privately, he sent word summoning Savonarola to his bedside. Whether he sent for the priest to give him absolution, or in a final attempt to heal the rift between them, so that he could bequeath his son a united city, is unclear; and descriptions of this fateful meeting vary greatly. The chastened Pico left a somewhat mystical version of events, while the deeply upset Poliziano described a poetically emotional scene.
Despite the conflicting descriptions, it seems clear that Savonarola made three demands of Lorenzo. First, he asked if Lorenzo repented of his sins and adhered to the faith; whereupon Lorenzo replied that he did. Second, Savonarola demanded that he give up all his wealth, to which Lorenzo did not reply. Then Savonarola asked him ‘to restore the liberty of the citizens of Florence’; once again Lorenzo said nothing, finally turning his face away from Savonarola. The priest stood in silence for a while, then muttered an absolution and left.
A short time later on 8 April 1492 Lorenzo the Magnificent died.
According to legend, the entire city of Florence followed Lorenzo de’ Medici to his grave, and this public display of grief confirmed in its unspoken way the succession of his son Piero. Others have suggested that this was indeed a legend, concocted by the Medici; instead, it is claimed that there was a conspicuous lack of public grief for Lorenzo, and in view of the troubled state of the city this seems more likely. Either way, Piero succeeded him as the uncrowned prince of Florence, for no one was in a position to stop this.
In Rome, the dying Innocent VIII voiced the fears of many: now that Lorenzo, ‘the needle of the Italian compass’, was gone, peace could not last long. Three months later Innocent VIII was succeeded as pope by Alexander VI, who gained office by the simple and effective (but highly expensive) method of bribing his opponents into supporting him. This involved no less than a mule train of gold and jewels, and is generally agreed to have been the first occasion on which someone actually bought the papacy outright. Alexander VI was a member of the Borgia family, which originated from Spain, and his papacy would introduce a new ruthlessness and ambition to this office, as well as a new rogue element to the Italian political scene.
Piero de’ Medici succeeded his father when he was twenty-one years old (just a year older than Lorenzo had been on his succession). Whoever succeeded Lorenzo the Magnificent was perhaps bound to suffer from comparison, though in fact Piero resembled his father in many ways. He was forceful and liked to enjoy himself; he also thought himself possessed of high artistic taste and considered himself something of a poet. Sadly, he was no poet; on the other hand, he did prove a great artistic encouragement to the young Michelangelo, with whom he had been brought up.
To begin with, Piero was content to leave the everyday business of ruling Florence to his father’s experienced chancellor Piero Dovizi da Bibiena, and the running of the bank to the ageing Giovanni Tornabuoni. The Medici Bank had been forced to close its London and Bruges branches in 1480, and for the bulk of Lorenzo’s reign it had survived on a severely reduced basis – almost certainly aided by occasional moneys covertly diverted from the Florentine exchequer by Lorenzo. Likewise, the Florentine wool trade had remained in deep decline, its impoverished workers and small merchants being amongst the earliest to swell the congregation at Savonarola’s sermons. Neither the Medici nor Florence could any longer afford the great popular pageants that had so endeared its citizens to Piero’s father.
Despite this, Piero showed every sign of wishing to follow in Lorenzo’s footsteps, though he also showed that he had no real understanding of his father’s rule. He saw Lorenzo, and himself, as a dashing prince – favoured by fortune, a leading player on the Italian political scene, and worshipped by the populace. Yet he had none of his father’s celebrated charm, and misjudged the basis of his power. The Medici family was the centre of a well-oiled political machine, which needed constant attention: rewards, important positions, gifts – all had to be regularly bestowed with tact and prudence. Without such things, the ever-shifting loyalties of Florentine politics were liable to turn treacherous. Piero also misjudged the balance of power that maintained peace on the larger Italian scene, and this conjunction of internal and external misjudgements would earn him the nickname ‘the Unfortunate’. Yet it is doubtful whether even Piero’s father could have overcome the series of unfortunate events that now took place.
Savonarola continued to preach his fiery sermons in Florence, telling his increasingly large and fearful congregations that in his visions he had seen ‘a fiery cross hanging in the dark clouds above Florence’. He called upon all citizens to repent before it was too late, and railed against the unspeakable iniquities that now pervaded the Church at every level, including the very highest of the high. All knew what this meant, for the reputation of Roderigo Borgia had preceded his transformation to Pope Alexander VI. Savonarola’s prophecy of the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Innocent VIII had proved correct; and now he prophesied the death of a third ‘tyrant’, the seventy-year-old King Ferrante of Naples. According to Savonarola, this event would be followed by an apocalyptic invasion of Italy by a vast foreign army, which would stream down from the Alps to ravage the entire land like ‘barber-surgeons with their choppers cutting off diseased and broken limbs’.
Piero de’ Medici, meanwhile, was faced with the current reality of Italian politics, which also had its frightening aspects. In order to understand this situation, it is necessary to sketch in the wider picture. The ruler of Milan, Lodovico ‘Il Moro’ Sforza, was in fact only the regent, intended to rule Milan until the rightful heir Gian Galeazzo (son of the assassinated Galeazzo Maria Sforza) finally came of age. In order to cement relations between Milan and Naples, the young Gian Galeazzo had been married to Isabella, granddaughter of the ageing King Ferrante of Naples. But when Gian Galeazzo finally came of age, Lodovico Sforza refused to hand over the reins of power, on the grounds that Gian Galeazzo was incapable of ruling Milan and was little better than an idiot’. Although there was some truth in this assessment, Gian Galeazzo’s wife Isabella thought otherwise, and appealed to her grandfather Ferrante of Naples to enforce the succession. Her father, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, the heir to the throne of Naples, was particularly incensed and let it be known that he intended to march north, as he had done so successfully in the war following the failure of the Pazzi conspiracy.
Lodovico of Milan appealed to Florence for support, but Piero de’ Medici prevaricated; his advisers were of two minds – Ferrante of Naples was also an ally of Florence. Lodovico then appealed to Venice and the pope: the peace of Italy was at stake, and only with their support could the balance of power be maintained. But they too prevaricated: no ruler wished to be seen supporting a usurper such as Lodovico Sforza – this could have had dangerous consequences in a land where there were frequently several claimants to any title. Lodovico ‘Il Moro’ Sforza quickly understood that he faced isolation – the whole of Italy could turn against him.
The Milan–Florence–Naples axis, which had been carefully maintained by Lorenzo de’ Medici and had kept the peace in Italy for so long, now lay in ruins. Worse still, Lodovico Sforza of Milan now took the drastic step of turning to an outside power for help. He appealed to Charles VIII of France for support, in return for which he would be willing to support Charles if ever he chose to exercise the dormant French claim to the throne of Naples.
Unbeknown to all the Italian powers, this was just the opportunity for which Charles VIII had been waiting. He was the only son of the ‘Spider King’ Louis XI, the eccentric monarch whose well-disguised capabilities had been responsible for consolidating France’s position as the wealthiest and most powerful nation in Europe. Charles VIII had succeeded to the thone at the age of thirteen, but had not come of age and taken full power until 1491. The young king had an odd appearance: his posture was stooped and he walked with a curious swinging limp on his oversized feet (which, according to popular legend, each had six toes). His character was equally unusual: he had received virtually no education and remained astonishingly naive; however, his excessive lasciviousness and gluttony, as well as his habit of muttering to himself through his wispy red beard, made people uneasy in his presence. He had already exhibited increasing signs of megalomania, foreseeing himself as the ruler of a vast empire, and this lust for foreign power was fed by his advisers, who wished him out of the country so that they could pursue their own nefarious ends. It was suggested to Charles VIII that if France took its rightful control of Naples, it could then set about retaking Constantinople and Jerusalem, leaving it in control of the vastly profitable trade route to the Near East. Charles VIII listened eagerly, and was easily persuaded of this pan-Mediterranean role for France.
In January 1494 King Ferrante of Naples died, fulfilling Savonarola’s prophecy concerning the third of the three ‘tyrants’. Ferrante was succeeded by his son the Duke of Calabria, who became Alfonso II, whereupon Charles VIII of France immediately asserted his right to the throne of Naples, and made it clear that he was willing to use force in pursuit of this claim. If the French army were to cross the Alps, all Italy – with the exception of Milan – stood in danger as it moved south. Piero de’ Medici announced that Florence would defend its territory against any invader, and would support Naples in repelling any foreign invasion of Italy. To many in Florence, who learned of these events with trepidation, it seemed that Savonarola’s further prophecies were on the point of being fulfilled.
Yet not everyone was so easily worried: as ever, to celebrate the coming of spring, the leading families of Florence held a succession of festive balls in their palazzi. However, despite the surface gaiety of these celebrations, all was far from well amongst the Medici faction; Piero’s neglect of the Medici party machine meant that growing tensions remained unresolved. Owing to the parlous state of the Medici Bank, the senior branch of the family headed by Piero was no longer the richest; the branch of the family headed by his cousins Giovanni and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici (who had commissioned Botticelli’s Birth of Venus) had made a large fortune in the grain trade. As a result, Giovanni and Lorenzo had begun to resent the political power wielded by Piero, and these tensions came to a head in a trivial dispute at one of the spring balls. Piero de’ Medici and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici clashed over who should dance with a local beauty whom they both desired. As a result, Piero publicly slapped Giovanni in the face; Giovanni knew that he could not reply by challenging the ruler of Florence to a duel, and was thus forced to withdraw, with evident bitterness. The split in the Medici faction was now in the open.
Piero brooded on this difficult state of affairs. How would his father have acted? Lorenzo would certainly have taken decisive action, either by using his charm and making a generous gesture to heal the rift, or by striking at once to eliminate any threat. After dithering for a while, Piero chose the latter course, having Giovanni and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici arrested and imprisoned at Cafaggiolo, the Medici villa in the Mugello. They were detained on the apparently trumped-up charge of sending a secret message to Charles VIII of France. According to Piero, this message informed the King of France that although Piero de’ Medici had said he would defend Florentine territory, there was a majority of others in the city who would not oppose any march on Naples.
In September 1494, Charles VIII led a vast French army across the Alps into Italy. Contemporary estimates of the size of this army vary between 30,000 and 60,000; it may well have contained at least 30,000 fighting men, and was probably accompanied by almost as many camp followers in the form of grooms, courtiers, musicians, jugglers, cooks, prostitutes and such. This was around twice the size of the previous largest army to cross the Alps and invade Italy, that of Hannibal in 218 BC, which is more reliably estimated to have contained 26,000 men. (The fact that this earlier estimate is more reliable is indicative of the state of organisation in the Roman era, and that of fifteenth-century France, which was still in the late medieval era.)
More ominous still, the army of Charles VIII contained hardened warriors used to taking part in the more bloody battles of northern Europe, which were a very different affair from the tactical ‘manoeuvres’ executed by the Italian city militia and their hired mercenaries, which passed for battles in Italy. The French army had at its vanguard the disciplined Swiss Guard, who were renowned for their ability to stand and break up any cavalry charge, whilst for Italian armies, a cavalry charge usually signalled the end of any battle, as all scattered for their lives. The French army was also equipped with formidable firepower in the form of mobile cannons, which fired iron cannonballs instead of stone ones; these could break up infantry charges in tight formation as well as inflict damage on city walls.
Lodovico Sforza welcomed Charles VIII to Milan. Charles VIII then passed on to Pavia, where he was received by the legitimate ruler of Milan, Gian Galeazzo and his wife Isabella, who pleaded with him not to attack her father Alfonso II of Naples. Charles VIII and his vast army continued on their inexorable march south, regardless. Lodovico of Milan was evidently disconcerted by Charles VIII’s visit to Gian Galeazzo; within days, news spread that Gian Galeazzo had died from poisoning, while his wife and four children had been imprisoned by Lodovico, who had now officially proclaimed himself the rightful Duke of Milan. At the same time, Alfonso II of Naples marched rapidly north to confront the invaders. The two armies met on the coast at Rapallo, some 250 miles north of Neapolitan territory, and the result was a rout, with Alfonso II fleeing back to Naples with the remains of his army. Charles VIII’s army advanced down the coast; the pope let it be known that the French army could have free passage through papal territory, and Venice declared itself neutral. Now only Florentine territory stood in the way. Charles VIII halted his army at the frontier of Florentine Tuscany, and a message was sent to Piero de’ Medici demanding free passage through Tuscany to Naples.
The situation was delicate in the extreme. Piero had promised his support to Alfonso II of Naples, expecting other Italian states to follow suit, but now he found himself on his own. Should he renege on his promise and declare Florence neutral? After five days, still no message arrived at the headquarters of Charles VIII from Piero de’ Medici, and in exasperation Charles ordered his troops to cross into Tuscany. The border castle at Fivizzano was overrun and all its garrison put to the sword; Charles VIII then ordered Florence to surrender.
The city was soon alive with rumour and counter-rumour. News now reached Florence that Giovanni and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici had escaped from Cafaggiolo and made their way to Charles VIII’s headquarters. Here they had assured the French king that Piero de’ Medici did not speak for all the citizens of Florence, most of whom wished to surrender. This evidence indicates that Piero’s reason for arresting them was in reality more than a trumped-up charge, though by this stage such matters were of little importance. It soon became clear that what Giovanni and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici had claimed to Charles VIII was true: they had many sympathisers in Florence who wished to surrender the city to the French. Leading citizens sought a scapegoat for the city’s plight, and soon found one in Piero. Meanwhile Savonarola continued to preach his hellfire sermons from the pulpit of the cathedral; in his visions the fiery cross that he had seen hanging above Florence was now transformed into a fiery sword, which threatened fire and damnation for all who did not repent.
Piero at last decided to act; intent upon defending Florence and her Tuscan territories, he summoned the mercenaries at the city’s disposal and despatched them north to defend the remaining border castles. Yet it soon became apparent to him that what little support he had in the city was draining away – even among his own branch of the family many were already openly speaking of surrender. It was now that Piero took the decision of his life. In emulation of his father, whose valiant one-man mission to Naples had saved Florence fifteen years previously, Piero set off alone to meet Charles VIII, pausing only to write an explanatory farewell letter to the Signoria.
But Piero was no Lorenzo the Magnificent, either in character or fortune; and Charles VIII was no impressionable Ferrante of Naples, who had been so readily moved by acts of heroism. Even at the time, Piero’s solo mission was widely regarded as an act of desperation, rather than one of bravery. When he arrived at Charles VIII’s headquarters at Sarzanello he did not receive a hero’s welcome; on the contrary, Piero was greeted with contempt. Charles VIII immediately demanded the right to seize the port cities of Pisa and Livorno and occupy them for as long as his ‘enterprise’ required. Meanwhile Piero behaved abjectly, rather than adopting the vainglorious bravado of his father; to the secret astonishment and delight of Charles VIII, Piero agreed to all the French king’s demands. Like Lorenzo, Piero’s intention was to save his city, but he had no real understanding of the wider situation. Charles VIII desperately needed a defensive line to protect his army from becoming encircled in Italy, and to allow for his eventual march back to France. Despite Piero’s much weaker forces, he had considerable bargaining power at his disposal; and had he shown strength of character, he might well have gained the respect of Charles VIII. They might even have been able to come to terms that would have been beneficial to them both; but this was not to be, and Piero’s behaviour would cost him dearly.
After two weeks away, Piero returned to Florence on 8 November 1494. When he arrived at the Palazzo della Signoria to report on the outcome of his mission, he was astonished to find the door slammed in his face. The Signoria had now found someone to blame for their own indecision and helplessness; as a result, Piero’s mission was regarded as an act of betrayal, and Piero himself was seen as a traitor. There was little justification for such accusations, which came from the very people who would have undermined his mission by surrendering at once; but Florence was a city in the grip of panic and hysteria – a scapegoat was needed, and Piero had presented himself for the role.
As Piero and his armed attendants waited uncertainly on their horses in the Piazza della Signoria, the Signoria ordered the vacca to be rung. The deep tones of the bell mooed from the tower over the city, summoning the citizens to the piazza; but events now began to take their own course. The congregating citizens in the piazza started jeering Piero and his men, then some began throwing stones and refuse at them; after a while Piero and his men rode off to the safety of the Palazzo Medici. In the distance they soon began to hear the roaring of the crowd from the direction of the Piazza della Signoria, where the members of the Signoria were publicly denouncing as traitors Piero de’ Medici and his brother Giovanni.
The nineteen-year-old Cardinal Giovanni had returned from Rome to Florence as soon as he heard of Piero’s mission to Charles VIII. Now he attempted to rally his brother, but to no avail. Piero appeared paralysed by despondency – the strain of his mission, and now his rejection by the people of Florence, had all been too much for him. Giovanni decided to take matters into his own hands, and together with an armed band of faithful Medici retainers he rode out into the streets, calling out the famous Medici rallying cry: ‘Palle! Palle!’ But his cries met only with boos, together with answering cries of: ‘Popolo e Libertà!’ Eventually the throng became so threatening that Cardinal Giovanni and his men were forced to retreat into the cortile of the Palazzo Medici, the great doors slamming closed behind them.
In the early hours of 9 November 1494, under cover of darkness, Piero de’ Medici with his wife and two young children made their way through the deserted streets to the San Gallo gate, and departed the city for exile. Meanwhile Cardinal Giovanni and the last remaining loyal Medici retainers began moving through the rooms of the Palazzo Medici, collecting up as many valuables as they could carry. Disguised as a Dominican monk, Giovanni is then said to have taken these to the monastery of San Marco. This may appear a curious choice, for although this was traditionally a Medici stronghold (Cosimo had stored treasures here, before his exile), the prior of the monastery was now Savonarola. Yet some of the monks must have secretly remained loyal to the Medici, for several of the valuables rescued by Giovanni have come down to us via later Medici sources. Having rescued as much as he could, Giovanni too fled the city into exile, still disguised as a Dominican monk.
Next day, the Signoria formally banished Piero de’ Medici and his family from Florence for ever, setting a reward of 4,000 florins on Piero’s head, and 2,000 florins on that of Giovanni. Cosimo de’ Medici had predicted: ‘within fifty years we Medici will have been exiled’. This had come true in just over thirty years.