Rise and Fall of the House of Medici by Christopher Hibbert

Author:Christopher Hibbert [Hibbert, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Medieval
ISBN: 9780140050905
Google: v46Rjb88mPsC
Amazon: 0688053394
Publisher: Penguin Adult
Published: 1979-01-14T08:00:00+00:00

Landucci’s confidence in the militia was not dispelled when the Spanish forces of the Holy League began to march for the Florentine frontier from Bologna under command of Raymond de Cardona. Even when the Spaniards, repeatedly demanding a change of government in Florence, reached Barberino and advanced on Campi and frightened peasants ran in from the hills to seek shelter behind the walls of the city, it seemed to Landucci as to all ‘intelligent people’ that there was ‘no need of fear. On the contrary it was rather for the enemy to fear, because if they came down into these plains, they would fare badly. Many battalions of militia had been levied, and all the men-at-arms were eager to encounter the enemy.’

Although Machiavelli, who had been busy organizing the defences of the Mugello, took a more realistic view of the situation, Soderini in Florence shared Landucci’s confidence. He had nine thousand men under arms; he knew that the Spanish army was much smaller, and mat, although the Medicean party in Florence were growing stronger as the Spaniards advanced on the city, their hopes of a revolution in Florence were ill-founded.

Cardona himself was not at all sure that his army was large enough to reduce Florence if threats proved not enough to gain the ends of the League. He had been reluctant to advance into Tuscany at all. The Pope’s nephew, the hot-tempered Duke of Urbino, had also disapproved of the expedition. But Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici was insistent. When the Duke of Urbino declined to supply Cardona with artillery, Giovanni offered the money to buy two cannon himself. When Cardona complained of a lack of provisions, he paid for these also himself. And when a Florentine delegation approached the Spanish army with an offer of reasonable terms, it was Giovanni who insisted that no terms could be accepted which did not provide for the restoration of the Medici. The Cardinal was already in touch with sympathizers in Florence, sending messages to them by means of a peasant who deposited them in the wall of a cemetery in Santa Maria Novella. His cousin, Giulio, had arranged a secret meeting at a country villa with Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, one of their most influential supporters, who assured him that, while Soderini would put on an act of defiance, the spirit of his supporters would collapse as soon as they heard the roar of the Spaniards’ cannon.

Faced with the cardinal’s demand that he should deliver up the city, Soderini gave orders for the imprisonment of all known supporters of the Medici; and in an eloquent speech before the assembled citizens in the Piazza della Signoria he gravely warned of the dangers of allowing the Medici to return to Florence even though they professed themselves anxious to do so only as private citizens. After all that had happened, they could not possibly remain private citizens; they would certainly set themselves up as tyrants. It was true, Soderini continued, that Lorenzo di Piero had never made

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