The same could not be said for Piero de’ Medici, the ostensible ruler of the Florentine republic. During the first week in November, the French army attacked the fortress of Fivizzano on the Tuscan border, at the outer rim of the Florentine defensive network. As he had done at Mordano, Charles made another example. Piero’s declared neutrality quickly turned to a fervent embrace of the French cause in Italy, and without bothering to tell the Signoria or consult with anyone, he made a beeline for the French camp.
For weeks Charles had been sending emissaries to Florence with a series of demands, which most Florentines considered inconsistent with their independence and their basic human dignity. Florence was critical to Charles’s designs because of her strategic location. He was sure that none of the states to the north represented a danger to him. They were his allies, but Florence, in the center of Italy, was a question mark. It was vital for Charles to secure her cooperation, one way or another, to protect his rear flank as he marched south to Naples. He could not allow Florence to remain neutral. Either she was with him or against him, either she cooperated or she would be destroyed. Many of Charles’s advisers, well aware of the magnificent riches the city harbored, were actively urging the latter course.
Piero de’ Medici met Charles at the fort of Sarzana, just seven miles north of the city walls. The French sneered openly at his cowardice and the absurd eagerness with which he hastily gave in to Charles on every point. He ceded the two Tuscan ports of Pisa and Livorno, the mighty trading city’s only outlets to the sea. He ceded the entire peripheral ring of Tuscan fortresses, to be occupied by Charles until his “little enterprise” was complete. He agreed to pay the enormous sum of 200,000 ducats to help finance the invasion of Naples. In short, he gave the city away. All he got in return was a lukewarm endorsement from Charles, a noncommittal recognition that he, Piero, was the legitimate ruler of the city.
In Piero’s absence, Capponi moved quickly. He assembled a council of all those who had recently held the highest public offices and of those who had been nominated to do so. It was a coming together of Florence’s political elite. This Council of One Hundred unanimously passed a motion to end the Medici tyranny and return to a popular, republican form of government. It was at this time, too, that Capponi began the clandestine distribution of arms to the populace at large. When the Medici prince returned to Florence, they would be ready for him.
News of Piero’s abject betrayal preceded him into the city. Indignation rose in the throats of French and anti-French factions alike. Again, and louder and more insistent than ever, shouts of “Popolo e libertá!” filled the air.
Niccolo had little time for participation in the sporadic street violence that was breaking out with increasing frequency, because now things were coming to a head. Piero had returned to Florence the night before and was due at the Signoria to make his report. Niccolo had deliberately gone out of his way to station himself at a corner along the route between the Via Larga, where the Medici palace stood, and the Signoria. He wanted to see the coward in what could well be his final hour.
A small contingent of guards in a phalanx proceeded on foot through the Piazza del Duomo with the usual display of pomp and circumstance. It was greeted with shouts of scorn and derision. Piero, looking splendid at the center of the wedge, was oblivious to the cries of the vulgar mob and responded with only a disdainful sneer. He was above it all. He had just averted disaster by concluding an honorable treaty with the barbarian invaders, and he fully expected the city to prostrate itself before him on that account. As his father, Lorenzo the Magnificent, had done so many times, he had saved the city of Florence. Almond-eyed, long-haired Piero had selected a most spectacular outfit for this day; it too was calculated to remind the city of her debt to his father, Lorenzo. It was Lorenzo’s “tournament dress,” consisting of a white silk cape bordered in scarlet. Under the cape, he wore a magnificent black velvet surcoat, heavily encrusted with pearls. His hat, too, was worked in pearls, although Piero seemed to remember that the pearls looked bigger and were more thickly encrusted when his father wore the thing.
As the Medici party passed, Niccolo fell into step behind them. He could not stifle his laughter when his eyes chanced on the motto emblazoned on the back of Piero’s cape. The hedonistic watchword of Lorenzo the Magnificent seemed oddly out of place on the shoulders of his son, given the circumstances, even if they were done in rubies and gold thread—Le temps Revient—“Good times are here again.”
Piero’s arrogance seemed to swell visibly when he and his group of bodyguards entered the Piazza della Signoria. The formidable building itself loomed dark and unforgiving against the grey sky. As they approached, the dense wedge of soldiers divided to allow Piero to enter the building first. As his foot touched the bottom step, bells suddenly began to ring. A cacophony was unleashed. Tiny clinking bells and pealing bells and the huge, ancient groaning bells of the cathedral all exploded together in sound much to Piero’s amazement, while simultaneously, from within, the gates of the communal palace were slammed in his face.
Piero gallantly drew his sword and then just stood there, dumbfounded. From the windows of the Signoria, they hissed insults down at him. They insulted his manhood. They insulted his mother. The first stone took his hat off, and a hail of others quickly followed. The guards made an attempt to shield Piero as best they could while a steady, drumming chorus of “Popolo e libertá!” was rising all around them. Under a rain of abusive language and hostile missiles, they pulled back, but they were confronted by an angry mob behind them. They fought their way to the church of Orsanmichele, where they found shelter for a few minutes, until reinforcements could be sent for. It was only with great difficulty that Piero, baffled by the ingratitude of his people, made his way back to the Medici palace relatively unscathed.
In later years, when drunk, Niccolo was not above boasting that he had thrown the first stone, the one that took the tyrant’s hat off. But just as the melee was getting underway, he was forced to cease and desist. Duty called, and he remembered that he had an important message for Capponi. Making his way around the communal palace, he was admitted by a side door.
As he expected it would be, the Council of One Hundred was in session, and Niccolo waited patiently in Capponi’s chambers. He could hear the noisy proceedings through the walls. Voices were being raised, not in heated debate, but in unanimous proclamation. Capponi was carrying the day.
Upon being made aware of Niccolo’s arrival, the nimble little man absented himself from the council for a few brief minutes. He conferred with his young protégée only long enough to learn what he had to know and instantly returned inside. A motion was set forth to send an embassy to the French king to make clear the position of the city of Florence and to repudiate the promises of the cowardly Piero de’ Medici. At Capponi’s insistence, with his assurances, and over the profound misgivings of many dissenters, it was finally agreed that that embassy should be headed by Girolamo Savonarola.
In a flurry of excitement and emotion, many other decrees were issued that day, including the banishment of Piero de’ Medici, who, along with his family, was forbidden ever to approach within a hundred miles of Florence, upon pain of death. To make matters perfectly clear, a reward of four thousand florins was posted for his head.
At nightfall, like thieves or common criminals, Piero and his family fled the city. His brother Giovanni, the flatulent cardinal, remained behind for that night only. Disguised as a monk, Giovanni worked feverishly to squirrel away whatever he could of his father’s priceless treasures, his works of art and his library. He hid them in churches and in the houses of friends. Satisfied that he had salvaged what he could, Giovanni too fled, to join his brother in Bologna.
For the first time in over sixty years, Florence was out from under the yoke of Medici rule. The two cousins of Piero, defrauded of their inheritance by Lorenzo the Magnificent, however, remained in Florence. They tore the Medici balls from the walls of their houses and changed
their last name to Popolano—“of the People.”
It is one of the great ironies of history that Florence prided herself, above all other cities, on the attainments of her humanistic culture and learning. Yet, in a century when that culture was at its peak, Florence, the very seat of humanistic endeavor, chose as her representative, not a man of learning, not a scholar or a philosopher, but a prophet. Like the saintly Pope Leo who, a thousand years before, stood alone between Attila the Hun and the annihilation of Christendom, Girolamo Savonarola went forth on behalf of his city to meet the new scourge of God. The phantasmagoric quality of the Tuscan countryside where the meeting was to take place—its ragged hills shrouded in the mists and drizzle of early November—did little to dispel the anxiety and mystery that hung in the air.
Both sides had cause for concern, for what was about to take place was in a realm beyond the merely rational, beyond the size of armies and the comparative weight of firepower. The Italians had little idea what their inscrutable ambassador would actually say and do. For their part, many of the French felt the same way about their voluble king.
A wide circle had been cleared in front of the royal tents, and when the Florentine embassy arrived, Savonarola dismounted and stood in its center. Like a lightning rod, he attracted the tension and the emotion of the crowd. All eyes were on him as he stood ramrod stiff and awaited the pleasure of the son of the Spider. Soon, the twisted Charles scuttled out of his tent and stood before the preacher. For a moment, neither spoke. Then Savonarola lifted his hands, and, in a sacerdotal voice, intoned the words, “And so at last, O King, thou hast come!”
Charles burst into tears. He fell to his knees in the mud and kissed the hem of the holy man’s garment. The first round went to the Florentines.
Savonarola raised the groveling king to his feet and addressed him. The voice and the power to cow an audience of thousands was directed entirely at one man, and at extremely close range. “You have come as a minister of God, the minister of justice. We receive you with joyful hearts and a glad countenance. We know that through you, Jehovah will abase the pride of the proud, that He will exalt the humility of the humble, that He will crush vice and exalt virtue, make straight all that is crooked, renew the old, and reform what has become deformed. Come then, glad, secure, triumphant! We welcome you in the name of He who died on the Cross!”
Charles was ecstatic, and he wept copiously at the words he heard. Savonarola had just confirmed the divine nature of his mission. The most holy of prophets had approved and welcomed him with open arms.
Savonarola continued in a voice that was not plaintive, but hortatory. He was as much as issuing instructions when he told the French king that Florence had entrusted herself to the mercy of God and that Charles, as God’s chosen instrument, could do little but accept that sacred trust and agree to extend that mercy. Savonarola apologized for those who had resisted the mighty king’s advance, saying that they were the black of heart, who did not realize Charles was sent by God to do His work.
When the interview concluded, Charles, still weeping, withdrew to the solitude of his tent to contemplate, once again, the miracle of his own divine election, now verified by the most holy of men on earth.
It was then that the bickering over details fell to the more mortal and hardheaded ambassadors. The French generals were furious as their dreams of plunder evaporated before their eyes. Hoping to salvage something of their greedy plans, they insisted, quite correctly, that it was and had always been Charles’s intention to march into Florence with the entire army. As strange as it may seem, that was exactly what the Florentines wanted, and they quickly conceded. The details—including the exact cost of Charles’s “mercy”—were to be worked out later, after the triumphant entry into the city.
The king had trembled before Savonarola! Capponi, who was in the embassy sent to Charles, was elated and returned to Florence anxious, but confident. To finalize plans for the grand march into the city and to coordinate the Florentine end of the reception with the French arrival, he left one of his assistants behind, the only one with any direct knowledge of the composition of the French army—Niccolo Machiavelli.
Niccolo’s duties consisted in working closely with a bizarre coterie of individuals, not soldiers or ambassadors, but designers, choreographers, and directors, whose sole charge it was to arrange the parades, triumphs, and other spectacles that serve to dramatize the power of a huge invading army under a divinely anointed king. As he had suspected, everything was being arranged for effect. But he and Capponi had reasoned that the way that military might is displayed on parade is far different from the way it is deployed on the field of battle. The king’s costume designers and theatrical men, with their flair for the dramatic, had indeed concocted an edifying spectacle, one guaranteed to strike terror in the hearts of the average Florentine citizen. But a military planner would have done things very differently.
Before hastening back to Florence with assurances for Capponi that all was proceeding according to plan, Niccolo was conducted on a grand tour of the French army, and details of costuming and formation were pointed out to him. The theatre men were proud of what they had accomplished, the parade to end all parades. Niccolo made only one suggestion which they embraced eagerly, immediately seeing the wisdom of it.
“Those grimy men with the cannons, can’t you get them dressed up in something more respectable?”
“Oh, the bombardiers,” gushed one of his escorts, “Oh, they are dreadful, they are surly, mean men. They absolutely refuse, and in the most vulgar way, to do anything even marginally respectable. Yet, Charles cherishes them, and they do as they please.”
Niccolo shook his head. “The way I see it, they’re a black spot in the parade. I mean, you look at them and you think you’ve got an army of beggars and ruffians. They’re greasy, they’re uncouth. Suppose some fetching Florentine concludes they are the flower of French manhood? Just suppose. And how do you think they’re going to conduct themselves in the city, in a manner consistent with inspiring fear and respect in the Italians?” He made little clicking sounds with his mouth, indicating his sad disapproval.
The heads of the French theatre men bobbed in agreement. “Yes, yes, something had to be done about them.” They commended Niccolo on his taste and discrimination. They murmured: “There’s a future for you in the theatre, young man, there is, oh, yes, there is.”
Charles’s entry into Florence on November 17 was more spectacular and frightening than even Niccolo had cared to imagine. For one thing, the consummate showmen of the French king had decided to stage the triumphal march at night, by torchlight. The effect was eerie. The gleaming surfaces of innumerable blades and armor everywhere caught the glint of red-orange torchlight and flashed like phantom daggers in the blackness. The wet, sweaty faces of the enemy too, glowed with the same satanic light. They looked like legions of ruddy demons marching straight from the jaws of hell.
They entered at the Porta San Frediano and marched down the Via Larga to the Piazza del Duomo, where Charles was scheduled to hear mass at the conclusion of the spectacle. Infantrymen with their heralds passed, six thousand Swiss, six thousand French. Columns of French cavalry and light horse followed. The manes and ears of the huge warhorses were cropped short, so they looked like monsters—hideous, diabolical, and unnatural. When their strutting, iron-shod hooves struck the paving stones, sparks flew out.
Companies of German pikemen passed with their erect lances as tall as trees. Then came Niccolo’s favorites, the Scots and the English and Breton bowmen. After that, the royal bodyguard, whose shiny silk capes seemed wrapped around them like sheets of fire in the torchlight. They threw off fantastic shadows that loomed and cavorted off the walls over their heads.
Finally came King Charles, under a canopy of white and blue silk. He wore gilded armor, a cloak of cloth-of-gold, and a magnificent crown on his head. So bedecked with burnished gold was he, so swathed in its fiery glow, that his diminutive stature and his monstr
osity were not even detectable to the untrained eye. One detail was not lost on the Florentines, however, despite the distortions of the torchlight and the phantasms it conjured in the night. Charles carried his lance upraised, at rest. It was the traditional pose of a conqueror entering a defeated city.
While the sounds of company upon company of horses and men marching in lockstep were intimidating indeed, the noise that brought up the rear of the procession was even more frightening. To put fear into the hearts of the Florentines, Charles, the conqueror, had brought his artillery with him. Thirty-nine bronze cannons rattled past with a horrible din. The gun carriages upon which they were mounted had wheels rimmed with iron hoops and studded with iron spikes for traction in soft ground. On the irregular, polished stones of a city street, those wheels found little purchase, and so the carriages jumped and skidded, kicking up showers of sparks. The carriages were drawn by huge, high-strung black chargers, who were almost invisible against the darkness. What the frightened onlookers saw then were ghostly gleaming cylinders of bright metal, careening through the night, seemingly propelled by some demonic force, threatening death and destruction from their wild, lurching muzzles.
While most of Florence was awed by the sight of these fearsome, shining weapons and by the deafening roar as they clattered past, Niccolo Machiavelli was grinning broadly. He had stationed himself on a low wall, where a number of bright torches had been placed. They threw a small pool of light onto the street in which the phantom army enjoyed a moment of illumination before plunging again into darkness. The horses drawing the gun carriages moved at a good clip, so that those attending them and manning the guns had to jog alongside to keep up the pace. As they passed rapidly in review through Niccolo’s spotlight, he noted how exquisitely costumed they were—velvet and fur, plumes and braids. He could see their faces plainly. They were not the grizzled, unshaven faces of the veteran bombardiers, but the downy cheeks of young boys. They cut fine figures, loping gracefully along. The theatre men had done their jobs well.
Machiavelli: The Novel Page 26
