Charles greeted him disdainfully, demanding an enormous loan and the right to occupy the fortresses of Sarzana, Pietrasanta, Sarzanello and Librafratta, as well as the towns of Pisa and Leghorn, until what he called his ‘enterprise’ was successfully concluded. To the obvious astonishment of the French staff, who later told Philippe de Commines ‘with smiles and laughter’ how absurdly anxious he was to give way on every point, Piero immediately acceded to Charles’s terms and, on 8 November, returned to Florence to tell the Signoria what he had done.
Early the next morning, a sword at his side and surrounded by an armed guard, he went to the Palazzo della Signoria to make his report. Already aware of the terms of his capitulation, the Priori had the main gate slammed in his face, professing outrage at so abject a surrender yet thankful to have found so convenient a scapegoat for their own helplessness. They sent a message saying that he might enter the palace through a side door, provided the guard remained in the piazza. When Piero did not move, a group of Priori and officials came out of the building to remonstrate with him, but failing to persuade him to dismiss his guard, they returned inside the building, slamming the gate shut once more. Soon afterwards the Vacca began to toll, and crowds of people hurried towards the square. Piero stood there, sword in hand now, as the crowds shouted insults at him, hissed at him and threw stones. He did not seem afraid but he was certainly hesitant, not sure what to do until some of his companions persuaded him to go back to the Medici Palace. His brother, Giovanni, who had been vainly trying to rally support for the family by riding up and down shouting ‘Palle! Palte! Palle!’, met him in the Via Larga, and together they returned to the palace where Luca Landucci later saw Giovanni kneeling at a window in prayer.
At nightfall Piero, with his wife, their two young children and his cousin Giulio fled the city by the Porta San Gallo and made for Venice by way of Bologna, taking with them as many of the most valuable small items from the family collections as they could carry. Giovanni disguised himself as a Dominican monk in order to convey some of the treasures of the Medici library from the palace to San Marco; then he, too, fled from Florence. Following their departure, the Signoria decreed that the family should be banished from the State for ever, and that a reward of four thousand florins should be offered for Piero’s head and two thousand florins for Giovanni’s. Their cousins, the sons of Pierfrancesco, hastily changed their name to Popolano and took down the Medici arms from the walls of their palace.
Apartments at the Medici Palace had been prepared for the French King on the orders of Piero; but as soon as it became known that the Medici had flown from Florence, the French nobleman placed in charge of the apartments ‘fell to rifling the palace upon pretence that the Medici bank at Lyons owed him a considerable sum of money’, so Philippe de Commines reported. ‘And among other things he seized upon a whole unicorn’s horn [highly prized both for detecting poison and as an aphrodisiac] besides two great pieces of another; and other people followed his example. The best of the Medici furniture had been conveyed to another house in the city, but the mob plundered it. The Signoria got some of Piero’s richest jewels, twenty thousand ducats in ready money from his bank in the city, several fine agate vases, besides an incredible number of cameos admirably well cut, three thousand medals of gold and silver, weighing almost forty pounds’ and many pictures and statues.1
While the plunderers were at work, the French army was marching into Pisa, which Charles VIII immediately declared free from the tyranny of the Republic. To make some sort of protest against the French action and to obtain what modification they could in the terms agreed to by Piero de’ Medici, a delegation of four ambassadors left Florence to wait upon King Charles at Pisa. One of the ambassadors was Savonarola who, far from delivering any kind of protest, greeted the French King as an instrument of the divine will. ‘And so at last, O King, thou hast come,’ he is reported to have said to him.
Thou hast come as the Minister of God, the Minister of Justice. We receive thee with joyful hearts and a glad countenance… We hope that by thee Jehovah will abase the pride of the proud, will exalt the humility of the humble, will crush vice, exalt virtue, make straight all that is crooked, renew the old and reform all that is deformed. Come then, glad, secure, triumphant, since He who sent you forth triumphed upon the Cross for our salvation.
Savonarola went on to beg mercy for God’s chosen city of Florence and to ask the King to pardon those who had attempted to resist his advance; for they had offended in all innocence, not realizing that Charles was ‘sent by God’. Impressed by these assurances, Charles agreed to treat Florence with leniency. He remained determined, however, to enter the city with an enormous, intimidating army.
XV
THE EXCOMMUNICANT
‘Someone has his seat in Hell already’
KING CHARLES VIII entered Florence through the Porte San Freliano, on 17 November 1494, as though he were a conquering hero. He was wearing gilt armour, a cloak of cloth-of-gold and a crown, and he carried his lance at rest as commanders then did when entering a vanquished city. He rode under a splendid canopy held over his head by four knights, his generals on either side of him. Behind him followed the hundred-strong, magnificently clothed royal bodyguard; then came two hundred knights on foot. These were followed by the King’s Swiss guards, the men armed with steel halberds, the officers in helmets surmounted by thick plumes. Five thousand Gascon infantry and five thousand Swiss infantry marched in front of three thousand cavalry in engraved armour with brocade mantles and velvet banners embroidered with gold. Behind these came four thousand Breton archers and two thousand crossbowmen. The artillery was drawn by horses not by oxen or mules, a sight no Florentine had ever seen before.
The cuirassiers presented a hideous appearance, with their horses looking like monsters because their ears and tails were cut quite short. Then came the archers, extraordinary tall men from Scotland and other northern countries, and they looked more like wild beasts than men.
As the sun was setting Charles arrived in the Piazza del Duomo and dismounted from his immense black war-horse. The people in the streets had been cheering up till then, persuaded to follow Savonarola’s lead in welcoming him as a liberator; but the cheers subsided as they noticed with a shock of surprise how very small he was, how jerky his movements. It was a brief interruption, though, observers said. Soon the acclamations rose again as loud as ever. And while his soldiers billeted themselves upon those apprehensive citizens of Florence – whose houses had been marked with chalk by the French quartermasters – Charles, after attending Mass, rode off to the Medici Palace with shouts of ‘Viva Francia!’ ringing in his ears.
The alarm felt by their unwilling hosts at sight of those northern soldiers proved unjustified. During the eleven days that the twelve thousand troops of the French army remained in Florence there were only a few disturbances and no more than ten men killed. In general it was a surprisingly quiet time; and it was not until afterwards, when the army had moved off, declining to pay for most of the cost of their occupation of the city, that any widespread resentment was felt.
It was also a dispute over money which caused the one serious quarrel between Charles himself and the Signoria. He had agreed with them that they should grant him the use of the fortresses which his troops had occupied, that he should also for the moment retain Pisa, which would be handed back when his ‘enterprise’ was successfully concluded, and that he should be paid 150,000 ducats towards the cost of the expedition. But when he met the city’s representatives on 25 November and a herald read out the terms of the treaty, he heard that the sum inserted into the document was only 120,000 ducats. Standing up, he angrily interrupted the herald. The figure of 150,000 must be restored, otherwise he would order his trumpeters to call out his men who would thereupon sack the city without mercy. Infuriated by such a threat from the unprepossessing youth whom he had known when Charles was a puny child, Piero di Gino Capponi, once Florentine ambassador in France, snatched the treaty out of the herald’s hands and tore it up, scattering the pieces on the floor. Defiantly, and in a voice which Guicciardini described as ‘quivering with agitation’, he shouted the words which were to become a Florentine proverb: ‘If you sound your trumpets, we will ring our bells.’