But Ferrante seemed unconvinced; the talks dragged on; and Lorenzo grew more and more depressed, walking gloomily round the gardens of the Duchess of Calabria’s seaside villa. ‘He seemed to be two men, not one,’ an official in his suite commented.
During the day he appeared perfectly easy, graceful, cheerful and confident, but at night he grieved bitterly about his own ill fortune and that of Florence, saying repeatedly that he did not care a fig for his own life but that it distressed him beyond measure that he could not save his country from the dangers which beset her.
While doing his best to convince Ferrante by his arguments, Lorenzo succeeded in impressing the Neapolitans by his generosity. He had raised sixty thousand florins for his journey by mortgaging Cafaggiolo and his lands in the Mugello; and immediately upon his arrival he had bought the freedom of a hundred galley slaves to each of whom he had presented ten florins and a suit of smart clothes. He followed this up by providing handsome dowries for several poor girls and by donating generous sums to numerous charities. Valori said that he remembered hearing from Paolo Antonio Soderini the total amount that Lorenzo spent during his visit to Naples, but he dared not write so huge a figure down.
Yet still Ferrante declined to come to terms. Eventually, after nearly ten weeks in Naples, Lorenzo was driven to bring matters to a head by declaring that he was unable to wait any longer, that urgent matters required his immediate return to Florence. After hurried farewells, he rode out of the city and headed north. With equal haste, King Ferrante drew up a peace treaty and sent it after him.
The war was finally over. The terms of the peace were not very favourable to Florence. She had to agree to the payment of an indemnity to the Duke of Calabria and, at the Pope’s insistence, to the release of the still imprisoned members of the Pazzi family; she had also to agree to various places in southern Tuscany remaining in alien hands. But at least peace had been secured; the Pope’s ambitions had been thwarted; and Florence and Naples were friends and allies once more.
XII
THE NEEDLE OF THE ITALIAN COMPASS
‘If Florence was to have a tyrant, she could never have found a better or more delightful one’
IN MARCH 1480 Lorenzo returned to Florence to be greeted by even greater enthusiasm than had welcomed his grandfather on his return from exile in 1434. During the war repeated efforts had been made to ruin him. The Riario family had continued to plot his destruction, and Girolamo Riario had twice attempted to have him assassinated. Now, though there were complaints about the large indemnity that had to be paid to the Duke of Calabria, his position in Florence was virtually unassailable. And he made the most of his opportunity to strengthen it.
Up till then, as the Milanese ambassador put it, he had been ‘determined to follow his grandfather’s example and use, as much as possible, constitutional methods’ in preserving his ascendancy. Indeed, he was still determined to do nothing that would antagonize the Florentines’ susceptibilities. But his long absence in Naples had placed the Medicean regime under dangerous strain, and he considered it essential to provide it with a firmer base, to carry it to a further stage in its development Less than a month after his return from Naples, the need to overcome the financial problems created by the war was given as an excuse to create a new Balìa. The Balìa immediately created a Council of Seventy whose members were to remain in office for five years. This new Council was to take over from the Accoppiatori the right to elect the Signoria, which was not in future to be permitted to initiate any important bills. The Council of Seventy was also empowered to elect from among its own members two new government agencies, the Otto di Pratica, which was to be responsible for foreign policy, and the Dodici Procuratori which was to have control of home affairs and finance. The authority of both the Signoria and the Cento was thus severely limited; and the Council of Seventy became, in effect, the government of Florence.
It was a government that even now Lorenzo did not fully control. Poliziano referred to him as Florence’s caput; others would have liked to bestow upon him his grandfather’s title of Pater Patriae. But the Council of Seventy, jealously guarding its independent authority, was not always willing to carry out his wishes. As he was to have cause to explain to some foreign envoys who failed to understand why he could not commit the State to a certain policy, he was ‘not Signore of Florence but merely a citizen’. He had more authority than he deserved, he admitted, but even he ‘had to be patient and to conform to the will of the majority’. Of course it often suited him for men to suppose that his influence was far less effective than it was. This enabled him not only to avoid granting inconvenient or expensive favours to friends – as his grandfather had done when asked to contribute to Pope Calixtus III’s crusade – but also to disprove the charges of such enemies of his regime as Alamanno di Filippo Rinuccini that he was a dictator. In fact, his influence was extensive, persuasive and usually decisive. When he made it known to a council or an official what he wanted done, his wishes were normally carried out; when he suggested that a man should be elected to a certain office, the required election generally took place. He may never have held any official title as Capo della Repubblica, but when, after his death, an official document styled him vir primarius nostrae civitatis, no one could deny that he was, indeed, the first citizen of Florence. His enemies, of course, had no hesitation in labelling him a tyrant; but, as Francesco Guicciardini admitted, ‘if Florence was to have a tyrant she could never have found a better or more delightful one’. This was a view which was certainly shared by most people in the city, particularly the poorer people. To them it did not matter whether he was a tyrant or not. Under his rule they had food, they had exciting public holidays and they had justice – or most of them had justice: ‘On the fifteenth day of October 1480,’ wrote Landucci in his diary of one poor fellow to whom justice was denied,
the said hermit [who was alleged to have attempted the assassination of Lorenzo] died in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova because he was quite torn to pieces by various tortures. They said the soles were stripped from his feet, which were then put over the fire, and held over the logs till the fat ran. Then they stood him up and made him walk over coarse-crusted salt, so that he died of this. It was never really established whether he had sinned or not. Some said yes, and some said no.
Yet if Lorenzo’s position in Florence was now secure, the fortunes of the Medici bank were fast declining. Lorenzo had none of his grandfather’s taste or talent for business; he gave far too much scope to his branch managers and relied far too heavily upon the often ill-judged advice of his temporizing, ingratiating general manager, Francesco Sassetti. When other advisers warned him against Sassetti’s policies he would brush their counsel aside while confessing that he ‘did not understand such matters’. Mismanagement and excessive loans to King Edward IV during the Wars of the Roses put an end to the London branch; the Bruges branch also collapsed; so did the branch in Milan, where the premises which Francesco Sforza had given to Cosimo were sold to Lodovico il Moro. The branches in Lyons, Rome and Naples were all in difficulties, the result partly of managerial incompetence, partly of that general collapse in Florentine banking which was within twelve years to lead to its virtual eclipse.