years to Provence, where his father was born. Agnolo Acciaiuoli had quitted his house, and betaken himself to the Milanese ambassador, with whom he was very intimate, and who offered to intercede with Piero de’ Medici for him. Had he waited for the result, says Vespasiano da Bisticci, referring to Piero’s own words, no harm would have happened to him, for the latter did not bear resentment against him as against the others. But, full of anxiety, he hastened in the night to Certosa, the castle of his ancestors, from whence he went to Barletta, which was assigned him as his place of banishment. The real originator of the plot, Diotisalvi Neroni, was condemned to exile, with all his family; and the Neroni never again attained to power in Florence. The Archbishop left the city voluntarily, and went to Rome. The exiles were to bring their country into further grave troubles before they were forgotten by most, if not by the Medici, in the rapid change of circumstances. Luca Pitti met with a punishment of another kind. He remained in Florence, but seldom has the ostracism of public opinion been more harshly exercised towards a criminal. All turned their backs upon him; if he let himself be seen, he was received with insults and accusations of violence and covetousness. The workmen who were devoted to him in the days of his power, deserted him; his immense buildings, the palace as well as the villa, stood for generations unfinished, till they fell into other hands—the palace to the grand-ducal line of the Medici, the villa to the Usimbardi family, and then to the dukes of Urbino. Presents were demanded back again, as though they had been loans. He died a despised man—when is not known.[134]
CHAPTER III.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS. FRANCE, VENICE, ROMAGNA. WAR AGAINST COLLEONE.
Like every unsuccessful conspiracy, this also contributed to strengthen the power of those whom it was intended to ruin. In the proclamations of the Republic to foreign powers it was particularly emphasised, as we can well understand, that the freedom of state and city had been saved from great danger, and the rescue was of course acknowledged with praise and thanksgiving. ‘Already,’ wrote King Ferrante, on September 28, to Lorenzo de’ Medici,[135] ‘we loved you on account of your excellent qualities and the services done by your grandfather and father. But as we have lately heard with what prudence and manly courage you behaved in the late revolutions, and how courageously you placed yourself in the foremost ranks, our affection to you has grown remarkably. We wish, then, the illustrious Piero all happiness with so worthy a son, and congratulate the Florentine people on so eminent a protector of their freedom, and ourselves on a friend whose excellent gifts increase visibly every day. Perhaps it would be our wish to incite you to praiseworthy actions, but your noble and active nature does not need encouragement, not to mention that you have the example of your grandfather and your father constantly before your eyes.’ The Republic had informed the French king of these events on September 28; the answer came from Bourges only on January 14 in the following year, but it expressed Louis XI.’s friendly feelings.[136] It was very important to him to remain in good understanding with Florence. He was long in friendly relations with the house of Medici, and during his residence at Mont Luçon in May 1465 granted to Piero and his legitimate heirs the privilege of bearing the lilies in their coat of arms.[137] The blameless and well-deserved reputation, says the King, which the deceased Cosimo de’ Medici had gained during his life by his actions and in all his transactions, which were conducted with prudence and virtue, gives his children and relations a claim to honourable consideration.
The influence exercised by Louis XI. on the development of the Italian affairs of his time makes it necessary to give a retrospect of the policy and situation of this monarch, under whom the French kingdom began to assume that form which was completed by Richelieu. Louis XI. had in 1461, on the death of his father, whom he succeeded at the age of thirty-eight, found the country freed indeed from foreign foes, after a hundred years’ struggle, but loosely held together. For half the provinces of his kingdom recognised the King indeed as their supreme lord, but were independent of him with regard to their administration. They pursued a policy of their own, concluded alliances of peace and war, while, as in the case of the most powerful of these great feudatories, Charles Duke of Burgundy, the union of French districts with foreign territories belonging nominally to the German empire, constituted a power which, if they won over their neighbours to their interests, might enter the lists with royal France. Louis, as Dauphin, long at variance with his father and the government, had relied upon Duke Philip the Good. Under him the dukedom, comprising the greater part of Belgium of the present day, the Netherlands, with Burgundy, Artois, Picardy, and Franche Comté, rose to the height of its prosperity and power. Scarcely had Louis ascended the throne, however, than he took measures against the great feudatories which kindled the war known under the name of the War of the Public Good (Guerre du bien public), in which Burgundy was also involved. This war was indeed terminated in 1465 by the treaties of Conflans and St. Maur, but only to break out afresh in another shape two years later, when Charles the Bold had succeeded his father on the ducal throne. Thus fully occupied at home and threatened in his own capital, Louis had closely connected his foreign affairs with his internal policy. At the commencement of his reign he had declared the pragmatic sanction of his father, which placed limits on the authority of the Holy See in his country, to be abrogated; nevertheless, when Pius II. refused to comply with his wishes in political matters, he permitted a contradiction on the part of his parliament which practically destroyed that authority. In 1462 he had allowed John of Anjou to be defeated in the war against King Ferrante, and thus made enemies of this family, to whom Provence belonged, while he likewise estranged Duke Charles of Orleans by allying himself closely with Francesco Sforza, whose states, as we have seen, were claimed by the former on the ground of his mother’s hereditary rights. The Duke of Milan had at least shown himself grateful by sending him, during his war with the allied princes, the auxiliary troop which Galeazzo Maria was commanding when his father’s death summoned him home.
The year 1467 did not begin peacefully. It was very well known in Florence that the exiles, untaught by the failure of those who had made a similar attempt under far more favourable circumstances, after the fall of the Albizzi, had, for the greater part, quitted the places of exile assigned them, and retired to the Venetian territory. Here they tried every means of returning home with foreign assistance. Some applied even to the Venetian Signoria, and others to the General-in-Chief, Bartolommeo Colleone.
Venice had no honourable excuse for breaking with the Florentines. Outwardly the two states were in harmony. In the beginning of January 1467, both had joined the defensive alliance concluded at Rome under the protection of Pope Paul II. which was to secure peace in Italy. Florence had accepted the conditions, stipulating that ‘the French King, whose authority essentially aided the preservation of peace and the safety of the different states, should be permitted to join the alliance at his pleasure, with authority next to that of the Pope.’[138] This stipulation, however, did not appear to satisfy the Republic when, before long, the political sky was clouded, so that in the following March, Francesco Nori, a confidant of the Medici, was sent to Louis XI. to propose an offensive and defensive alliance, irrespective of their engagements with the other Italian powers.[139] The hostile disposition of Venice was unmistakable, although an open breach of the peace was avoided. The old grudge on account of the views on Milan, frustrated by the Medici, came again into the foreground. It was proposed to employ the hatred of the exiles in order to obtain in Florence a government with obligations towards Venice, and therefore dependent on her, and to overturn the power in Milan already shaken by Francesco Sforza’s death. Bartolommeo Colleone was to be the instrument.
Whoever stands on the Piazza near the church of St. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice will be reminded of long-vanished times by an equestrian statue in bronze, almost more than by the surrounding buildings. A slight, graceful pedestal supports a war-horse in a quiet but powerful attitude, whose strong limbs do not prevent a mannerised treatment of the neck and head. Upon this, on a high saddle, and holding the richly-adorned bridle, sits the somewhat thick-set figure of a knight, clothed in mail from head to foot, and showing beneath the helmet a bold, marked countenance, which, slightly turned to the right, seems to challenge an enemy. Thus has a Florentine artist, Andrea del Verrocchio, depicted Bartolommeo Colleone, whose magnificence and wealth may be admired in his chapel built in