with the exiles had been discovered. The fortune of war, already unfavourable to the Albizzi, now entirely forsook them. When new quarrels broke out in the Romagna between the Florentines and the Duke of Milan, the former were defeated. The excitement in the city increased to an alarming degree. Rinaldo soon perceived that he was no longer master of the situation. When, towards the end of August 1434, came the election of the Signoria, who were to take office on September 1, Rinaldo perceived that he must use force if he would prevent his enemy’s return. When neither the attempt to force new elections nor the endeavours to attract the old nobility succeeded, and the new Signoria expressed itself without reserve in favour of the Medici, while representations on the other side were useless, the Albizzi began to arm their followers, and to draw a number of discharged warriors to their service, in the hope of having the majority of the city with them, and dictating the law to the highest magistrate. But they calculated wrongly; even the heads of their own party, like Palla Strozzi and Giovanni Guicciardini, did not all flock to them. The city remained divided.
At the news of the warlike preparations which threatened them, and relying upon the support of the majority of the people, the Signoria determined to be beforehand with their opponents. On September 26, they caused the Piazza to be lined with armed men, and invited Rinaldo and some of his most eminent friends to appear before them; when, however, instead of obeying, the latter came to Sant’Apollinare, and advanced to the Piazza, with more than 600 men, the gates of the palace were hastily closed. Had the assailants proceeded vigorously, their cause would have prevailed—at least for the moment; but instead of advancing, they condescended to bargain, and then they were lost. While Ridolfo Peruzzi, one of the leaders of the party, was parleying in the palace with the Signori, who did not spare fair words, Rinaldo allowed himself to be persuaded to repair to the convent Sta. Maria Novella, to Pope Eugene IV., who, having fled before the insurrectionary Romanists, had reached Florence not long before, and now wished to play the peace-maker. As the adherents and people of Albizzi in vain awaited their leader, whom the Pope delayed with long speeches, the crowd dispersed, some going here, some there. The Signori gathered courage as they saw the crowd of opponents diminish, and ordered the alarm to be rung. Armed burghers hastened from all sides, and country people flocked into the city.[70] Messer Bartolommeo Orlandini caused the entrances to the Piazza to be guarded: Papi di Medici came at the head of the peasants. The Signori appeared on the balcony of the palace, and summoned the people to a parley. About three hundred and fifty voices gave the Signoria full power to appoint a Balia, after the usual manner, to proceed to urgent measures. With the Pope it was easy to come to an agreement by means of his confidant, Giovanni Vitelleschi, then Bishop of Recanati, the same whom Rinaldo had withheld from advancing. The revolution had succeeded without bloodshed. The speedily chosen extraordinary commission, more numerous than any before, conjointly with the colleges, recalled with one voice, Cosimo and his companions from banishment, into which they sent Rinaldo degli Albizzi, and with him more than seventy of his most distinguished partizans. ‘Oh, Pope Eugenius,’ said the knight to him, who now sought to console him with words, as he had before put him off with words, ‘I am not surprised at the destiny which befalls me, but I blame myself for having trusted to the promises of one who could not help himself; for he who is powerless in his own affairs cannot help others.’ Rinaldo degli Albizzi never saw his home again.
Cosimo de’ Medici had set out from Venice, September 26, accompanied by his brother, on the news of the first favourable events in Florence. On October 1 they learned the victory of their party; on the 5th they reached the territory of the Republic—on the same date, and at the same spot in the Pistojan mountains, where they had quitted it. ‘I have noted this,’ he observes in his ‘Ricordi’ above mentioned, ‘because at our expulsion several good and devoted persons said not a year would pass before we should again be in Florence. On the way several burghers met us, and in Pistoja the whole population flocked out of the gates to see us so armed. We did not enter the city. On the 6th we dined at our villa at Careggi, where a number of people had assembled. The Signori informed us that we should not enter Florence till they had sent us word. This happened after sunset, and we set out with a numerous escort. As it was expected that we would repair to our house, the whole street was filled with men and women. Lorenzo and I, accompanied by a servant, rode, however, along the wall, and so we passed the Santissima Annunziata and the back of the cathedral, the palace of the Podestà and that of the executors, to the palace of the Signoria, almost without being observed, for every one was in the Via Larga and at our house. The Signori had arranged it so in order to avoid excitement. They received us kindly, and I thanked them as was fitting, and at their wish we remained with them. We heard that, before our arrival, Messer Rinaldo and Ormanno his son, Ridolfo Peruzzi, and several other citizens, had been banished. The city was quiet, but, nevertheless, for security, the square and palace were guarded by a number of armed men.’
Florence had now a master. On January 1, 1435, Cosimo de’ Medici entered upon office as Gonfaloniere.
In an early work, unfortunately incomplete, and unknown till a few years ago, which relates the history of Florence from the return of Cosimo de’ Medici to the League of Cambray, Francesco Guicciardini[71] thus condenses his views on the government of the Albizzi: ‘After various disorders, a firm order of government was at last introduced by Parliament in 1393,[72] when Maso degli Albizzi held the office of Gonfaloniere. He, in order to avenge his uncle Piero, expelled almost all the Alberti, and the government remained in the hands of clever and sensible men, who conducted it in great harmony and safety till towards the year 1420. One cannot be astonished at this, for the people were so tired of the preceding disturbances that, when an orderly state of things began, every one adapted himself gladly to it. At this time it was plainly shown how great the power of our city is when unity prevails in her. For twelve years she maintained the war against Gian Galeazzo with infinite expense, and with Italian or foreign armies, for they often summoned a duke of Bavaria, a count of Armagnac, or a King Rupert over the Alps, to their aid. Scarcely was this war at an end, and, as was thought, the city exhausted and without means for some time, when she began the undertaking against Pisa which cost heavy sums in buying as well as in the siege. Then followed the war with King Ladislaus, in which she not only defended herself bravely, but also gained Cortona, though certainly at a heavy price. In short, the city attained such important success, preserved her freedom under the guidance of capable and honest men, warded off powerful enemies and enlarged her territory so considerably, that it was rightly said to be the wisest, most glorious, and successful government which Florence had ever had. The years from 1420 to 1434 were occupied with the war against Duke Filippo Maria, and the division of the city into two parties. At the head of one stood Niccolò da Uzzano, a man respected by all as wise and a lover of freedom; at the head of the other, Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, and then his son Cosimo. Disunion and various excitements were introduced by the year 1433, after Niccolò had departed this life—first, Cosimo’s exile, then his return and the fall of his opponents; and as both changes, that of 1433 as well as of 1434, were brought about by the Signoria which entered on office on September 1 (it was usually elected on the day of the decapitation of St. John, August 29), it was decreed that the drawing of the lots should no longer take place on this day, but on the preceding, as has happened since, with the exception of a few years at the time of Fra Girolamo Savonarola.’
When the government of the Albizzi came to an end, the domain of the Republic had, with the exception of some smaller territories and villages in the mountainous regions of the Casentino and the valley of the Tiber, attained pretty nearly the same extent which she preserved up to the union of the Sienese State with that of Florence, and the consequent formation of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The enlargement of this territory had proceeded of course gradually, but constantly. Dante Alighieri says once it would have been far better for Florence had the inhabitants of Campi, Figline, and Certaldo remained her neighbours, instead of becoming her fellow-citizens, and corrupting the pure Latin blood of her old families. Two centuries after the writer of the ‘Divina Commedia,’ the most famous statesman of modern Italy expressed pretty nearly the same opinions. ‘Venice and Florence’—such are Niccolò Machiavelli’s words in his reflections on the first ten books of Titus Livius—‘were far weaker when the first had attained the supremacy over Lombardy the latter over Tuscany, than when Venice was content with the sea and Florence with six miles of territory.’ The increase of subjects by the absorption of other communities is certainly