It is a lonely spot on the southern side of the chain of hills which, separating the valley of the Arno and Elsa from the sea-shore, bears the old Etruscan town on its ridge. The retired situation had long attracted many a prowler, and made the desolate region unsafe. One evening a hasty messenger from Piero came to his wife with the command that she was to repair without delay with the youth to Volterra, as it had been announced in Florence from San Gemignano that the exiles meditated a coup-de-main to carry off both mother and son, whom they needed as hostages. Giuliano had set off for Florence that same day; Madonna Lucrezia, ill as she was, was carried to Volterra, fifteen miles distant, in a litter by night, by the arrangement of the officials of the place and vicinity, and here she was in safety. After having rested here, where she was kindly received, she returned to her family.[154]
CHAPTER IV.
PIERO DE’ MEDICI’S LATER LIFE. LORENZO’S MARRIAGE.
After the Colleonic war the Republic had peace for a time. For though she took an auxiliary part in the contest for Rimini, which broke out in 1469, her affairs were little influenced by it, and her territory not even touched. Sigismondo Malatesta, who had just been in negotiation with the condottiere of Bergamo, but had held aloof from the strife and entered the Papal service, died on October 9, 1468. When we review the variety of events that followed close upon one another in this man’s life, and then consider that he only reached the age of fifty-one, we shall form some idea of the restless character of the epoch. According to the last stipulation, Pope Paul II. expected the reversion of Rimini, as Sigismondo had died without legitimate heirs, but his natural son Roberto, then only six and twenty, succeeded in taking possession of the city, and formed numerous allies, when the Pope prepared to expel him by force. When Alessandro Sforza undertook the siege of Rimini with the Papal army, Naples, Florence, Milan, and Urbino, came to the assistance of Malatesta, and on August 30, 1469, Sforza suffered a severe defeat, whereas the Pope’s allies, the Venetians, did not appear till after the event. Paul II. wished at first to continue the contest, but resolved the following year to come to terms, a decision confirmed by his conviction that Venice thought more of extending her own power in Romagna than of supporting him, and also by the progress of the Turks, which caused serious anxiety, not only to Venice, whose possessions in the Levant were threatened, but to all Italian powers. Paul’s successor had, at a critical moment, no reason to regret that Roberto Malatesta remained in Rimini.
It was a fortunate thing for Florence that peace was concluded, for the expenses had long been enormous. The allies seemed to think that the Florentine purse was inexhaustible. When Galeazzo Maria arrived in July 1467 from the camp, he carried an open empty purse at his belt: they were obliged to pay him a large sum, says a contemporary, to enable him to return to the camp.[155] At the same time the sum of 1,200,000 gold florins was raised, partly by a property tax, partly by additional imposts, to which the clergy and those otherwise exempted from taxation were forced to contribute, while the half of their salaries was deducted from all officials outside the city. The heavy expenses of the war did not, however, hinder the expenditure of large sums for other purposes, as, for example, in February 1468, even before the peace was ratified, 37,000 gold florins were paid for Sarzana and the neighbouring castle, which the Genoese Fregosi sold to the Republic, a bargain which caused violent disputes afterwards. There was no lack of complaints of the great expenses. Even before the war numerous failures had taken place, and created a serious panic in the commercial world. The war had crippled industry and commerce. The government could not blind itself to the prevailing discontent, and if they sought to amuse the crowd by festivals in honour of foreign princes, and in other ways, they only increased the expenses of the city. The Duke of Calabria, who had his winter quarters in the Pisan territory, was twice in Florence in the autumn of 1467, where great honour was shown to the son of the most powerful of the allies. In the following May, after the peace, he resided in Pisa, and informed Lorenzo de’ Medici, through Luigi Pulci,[156] that he thought of spending the festival of St. John at Florence, and recommended him to see that it should be brilliantly celebrated.
Pleasure-making and expensive pursuits were certainly ill-adapted to the frame of mind which prevailed in Florence in the latter times of the war, and to the general condition of affairs. ‘The whole city,’ wrote Niccolò Roberti, the Ferrarese ambassador, to Duke Borso, on January 12, 1468,[157] ‘is discontented and in the worst humour. Not only enemies, but even most friends, agree in the opinion, that if peace be not soon concluded, all must emigrate, or something new be resolved on, for it is no longer possible to bear the burdens. Few people work, and shops are daily closed. The one consolation is, that peace cannot be far distant. Three days ago a meeting of the council took place, and it was determined to collect money for the equipment of twenty galleys, as it is said the Duke of Milan and King Ferrante intend to put a powerful fleet to sea, and attack Venice in the gulf, if she does not agree to peace. It is certainly whispered by some that if the money were to be had, Piero de’ Medici would take it for himself.’ So little satisfactory was the state of affairs, and so great the discontent. When peace was concluded after long uncertainty, a contagious illness tormented the citizens. ‘The pestilence is in many houses here,’—thus writes the ambassador from Ferrara on August 12—‘and although, on account of the imperfection of the statistical reports, the number of deaths cannot be ascertained, they are estimated at from six or eight daily. Piero de’ Medici shuts himself up, and, it is said, will go to Careggi next week.’ Public festivals were rather out of place.
Lorenzo was then nineteen years old. As his father was hindered by ill-health from appearing in public, or taking an active share in civic festivities, the gifted young man, who had shown in the Pitti conspiracy how ripe was his understanding, and how he could combine forethought with prompt action, naturally was brought prominently before the public. In festivities he took the foremost place, as became the position of his family and his own inclinations. On February 7, 1469, a festival took place at Florence, which forms a brilliant page, not only in the history of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s life, but also in the history of Italian poetry of the time closely connected with it. Niccolò Machiavelli, in describing this tournament, accuses Lorenzo of having sought to amuse the people in order to avert their attention from his politics. Savonarola had expressed the same opinion long before. But it is unfair to ascribe the splendid tourneys of Lorenzo, the spirited amusements then common to high-born and vivacious youths, to indirect political motives. When in 1467 Braccio Martelli, the son of a distinguished family allied by friendship with the Medici, celebrated his marriage, there was a tournament, in which Lorenzo de’ Medici took part. Among the young ladies present was Lucrezia Donati. The name of the ancient and ambitious race from which she sprang was mentioned in the first ranks of those who in the days of Guelphs and Ghibellines, and afterwards in those of the White and Black factions, filled the city with sanguinary quarrels. Dante Alighieri, who allied himself in marriage to that family without making peace with them, has bestowed on Piccarda, a daughter of the Donati—of whom he makes her brother Forese say, he knows not whether her beauty or her goodness is her greatest ornament—a crown whose glory far outshines historical fame.[158] In the introduction to one of his youthful poems, which will be mentioned afterwards, Lorenzo has described the object of his early love, whose name, never mentioned by him, has been made known by his friends and admirers. The story of the rise of his love is a mixture of truth and fiction, as he connects it with the death of a young girl who was beloved by Lorenzo’s brother, a circumstance which belonged, however, to a later time. We know nothing of Lucrezia Donati but what is said of her by the young poet—who at this tournament begged for a wreath of violets which she held in her hand, and promised to give a similar entertainment in her honour—and what his friends say of her, one of whom puts a verse into her mouth, in the pompous style of the stilted poetry of the fifteenth century which Lorenzo mainly contributed to do away with; while another seeks to persuade her to return the young man’s love.
Nearly two years passed before Lorenzo could fulfil his promise at the wedding of Braccio Martelli. The times were not favourable for festivities. At length the Piazza Sta. Croce witnessed the brilliant spectacle. The Piazza differed from the present one in the appearance of the surrounding buildings, but its form was the same,