morals; when their public and private excesses too often rendered those in high places a common nuisance; when justice and vengeance were convertible terms, the dagger or the poisoned draught their ready instruments. As we write these sentences similar outrages are revived. One looked upon as the most enlightened and most practical of Italian liberals is suddenly called to administer the temporal affairs of Rome at a crisis of singular difficulty. His private life is unchallenged, his public policy untried. As he enters the anticipated scene of his future labours—the first constitutional assembly ever attempted in a city which had long ruled the world—he falls pierced to the heart by the poignard of a dastardly miscreant. A crime for centuries disused becomes again national, consecrated by pæans of the Roman populace, who tramp the streets chanting—
"Blessings on the hand
That laid the tyrant low."187
When the dismal tidings reached Leghorn, the mob hurry to the piazza, prompt, like the old democracy of Florence, to overturn existing powers on the chance of new masters. The governor of the city, and guardian of its peace, accepts and celebrates the cowardly murder, by announcing to them from his balcony that "Pellegrino Rossi, a man hated by all Italy for his principles, has fallen by a son of the ancient Roman republic. May God save his soul, and the liberty of Italy!"
But to return from the melodramatic horrors of modern Italian politics. Confessions by subordinate agents traced the origin of this disgraceful plot of the Pazzi to the Roman court, and Sixtus, so far from repelling the charge, adopted the attitude of a partisan, by excommunicating Lorenzo and all Florence. The manifesto by which he sought to justify this measure affords no sufficient defence, nor any satisfactory contradiction of his privacy to the designs of the Pazzi; indeed, when hard names are substituted for facts, and mixed up with transparent evasions or detected falsehoods, the cause which they defend naturally becomes suspected.
The official documents by which the Pontiff must be judged are accessible to English readers in the Appendix to Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo.188 Giovanni Sanzi, whose ample details were unknown to that accomplished biographer, confirms generally his account of the conspiracy, but mentions a report that when imparted to his Holiness he refused his consent, and dissuaded its leaders from their design. This, if proved, would still leave him under scandal as an accessory after the fact. We learn from the same chronicle that Duke Federigo, when asked to share the plot, scouted it as utterly revolting to his honour, and calculated to overwhelm its authors with eternal infamy, adding that, during his own long struggle with Sigismondo Malatesta, similar expedients had been repeatedly suggested to him, but that by God's grace he had been enabled to resist them all: at the same time he expressed his readiness to take the field against the Medici, and try the fortune of war in open campaign. Lorenzo having subsequently sent to demand why he concealed the conspiracy thus brought to his knowledge, he denied the necessity of offending a good friend by imparting to an enemy an attempt which he disapproved and abhorred, adding, that he would soon be in Tuscany to settle all differences in honourable warfare.
Alinari
THE BIRTH OF VENUS
Supposed portrait of Simonetta Cattaneo—mistress of Giuliano de’ Medici.
Detail from the picture by Sandro Botticelli in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Sanzi has thus rendered Lorenzo's spirited address to his fellow citizens, when struck by excommunication and menaced with war:—
"Hear me! fair Florence' worthy denizens,
Thus called to choose betwixt my house and peace.
If 'tis your will our race to sacrifice,
Behold me ready, manacled and bound;
The fatal doom to suffer lead me forth!
Oh! that my blood the Pontiff might appease,
And sate the vengeance of yon bloody Count.
Oh! that, as metal by the fire refined,
You'd in the furnace cast me, from yourselves
To parry discipline not less severe.
But well I warn you that such woe to us
For you were still more fatal, and our foes,
My doom once sealed, your freedom straight would curb."
The appeal was not vainly made. The Lateran thunders fell harmless on a people who, rallying round their favourite leader, appealed to a general council, and meanwhile compelled their clergy to disregard the censures hurled at them. Spiritual weapons being thus foiled, the Pontiff had recourse to temporal arms.
The war which ensued, though limited in its field, included many parties. Sixtus was supported by the Dukes of Calabria and Urbino, the latter acting as generalissimo. The Medici, strengthened at home and abroad by the failure of a conspiracy equally atrocious and unprovoked, had for allies France and Venice, the Dukes of Milan and Ferrara, with the Marquis of Mantua. Sismondi justly observes that the Pope was prepared to take advantage of an explosion which he had premeditated, whilst the Florentines were surprised at a moment of confidence and repose. The ecclesiastical troops were accordingly first in the field, and having united with those of Naples, entered Tuscany by the Val di Chiana early in July. But on the do-little system which then constituted warfare, the Dukes of Calabria and Urbino, though met by no effectual opposition, lingered away the summer, countermarching in plains where malaria was ever rife, and signalising themselves by forays upon townships incapable of defence. Leaving on the left Siena, their faithful and effective ally, they reduced Radda on the 24th of August; but instead of then pushing forward to the Arno, they consumed the autumn, attacking in detail many surrounding places, of which Monte Sansovino alone offered a serious resistance.
The exact sciences, which were encouraged at the court of Urbino, took there, as elsewhere, the tendency most easy in an age of prevailing superstition. Maestro Paolo, a noted German adept, was accordingly retained by the Duke, and taught him astrology along with the kindred branches of geometry and arithmetic. Yet Cortesio tells us that, although he always had about him a number of soothsayers, and, in deference to the notions current among his soldiery and subjects, pretended to rely upon their prognostics, he utterly despised all kinds of divination. The only notice of the subject I have discovered among his letters is contained in one addressed to Ant—— Nar——, which may have been written during the siege of Monte Sansovino, or possibly from the leaguer of Colle, eleven months later. The reader will judge how far it ought to be received with the gloss suggested by Cortesio.
"I observe in your former longer letters that you wish to draw auguries of futurity, which you announce to be pregnant with events of the highest moment, saying that now is the time to gird ourselves for great things; indeed, such words seem to point at some loftier issue. It would, therefore, be agreeable to us that you should again acquaint us by letter, whether that augury really infers any imminent result. For, if perchance you allude only to this siege, we acknowledge to have undertaken a difficult business, and that the town is by nature or art amply provided; yet do we hope, through the grace of the eternal God, to effect that which we have taken in hand. But if you refer to something else, it will be not less gratifying to have from you some explanation, and to know if it rest on your own or another's opinion. Farewell."189
The leaguer was protracted by an incident mentioned by Sanzi, who dwells at considerable length on a portion of his hero's life scarcely touched by other biographers. The army suffering from scarcity and sickness, natural results of its prolonged stay in a narrow and unhealthy country, the dispirited troops sighed for winter quarters. It happened that, during a skirmish, two of the Orsini, relations, but banded under opposite banners, met and interchanged mutual wishes for a truce. These aspirations, reported to the Duke of Urbino, were promptly and publicly refused. The garrison, misled by this apparent anxiety to continue hostilities, proposed a suspension of arms, the very measure most fatal to their safety. This was accepted for ten days, during which the besiegers obtained rest and forage, and, when thus recruited from their languor, quickly reduced the place: it surrendered on the 8th of December, whereupon the army fell back on Bonconvento to pass