The House Of Medici

by Christopher Hibbert

  A few years later Michelozzo began work on yet another Medici villa. This was at Fiesole where Cosimo’s son, Giovanni, chose to reconstruct the castle-like villa known as Belcanto.20 The land around it was steep and stony, useless for farming, as Cosimo disapprovingly observed, cross with his son for spending so much money merely to enjoy a view. But, as Giovanni protested, that was the whole point of Fiesole. His villa there would be built for pleasure alone: on summer evenings he and his family and friends would be able to sit upon the shaded terrace looking down upon the roofs of Florence.

  But this was not Cosimo’s idea of a pleasant outlook. As he told Giovanni, he far preferred looking out from the windows at Cafaggiolo where all the surrounding land belonged to him. Besides, he was growing old, too old to think about new houses. When work on the Villa Medici at Fiesole was finished in 1463 he was seventy-four. For thirty difficult years he had been controlling the foreign policy of the Republic and the strain had weighed heavily upon him.

  VI

  WAR AND PEACE

  ‘Rencine? Rencine? Where is Rencine?’

  COSIMO’S SUPREME importance as arbiter of Florence’s foreign policy had never been in doubt. Official correspondence was conducted through the Signoria; but no important decision was ever reached without reference to the Medici Palace. Foreign ambassadors were frequently to be seen passing through the gateway; Florentine ambassadors invariably called upon Cosimo before taking up their appointments.

  For years his main preoccupation had been Milan. Patiently, doggedly, he had done all he could to persuade the Florentines that their standard policy of hostility to the Duchy was misguided and inexpedient, that they would be far better off with the Milanese as their friends even at the cost of antagonizing their traditional allies, the Venetians. At the beginning of the century Venice had enormously increased her possessions by conquering Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Belluno and Feltre, and, after defeating the Turkish fleet, had extended the frontiers of the Most Serene Republic far down the Dalmatian coast. In those years Florence had been thankful to have so powerful and rich an ally in her festering quarrel with Milan whose Duke, Filippo Maria Visconti, had been encouraged to make war on Florence by friends of the exiled Albizzi.

  This Visconti was widely believed to be mad and was certainly unbalanced. He had been known on summer days to strip the rich clothes from his grotesquely fat and dirty body and to roll about naked in his garden. So ugly that he refused to have his portrait painted, so weak on his deformed legs that he could not rise from his chair without leaning on a page; so nervous that he had been known to scream at the sight of a naked sword; so frightened of thunder that he had a sound-proof room built in his palace; so fond of practical jokes that he would suddenly produce a snake from his sleeve when talking to an unsuspecting courtier, he was also wilful, secretive and inordinately suspicious. Nevertheless, he was undeniably an astute politician who, during the thirty-five years of his rule, succeeded in recovering much of the territory in Lombardy which his father had conquered but which had been lost while he was still a boy. His attempts to extend the Duchy southwards into Tuscany were not, however, so successful, despite assurances from the Albizzi and other Florentine exiles that he had merely to appear in force in the territories of the Republic for the people to take up arms against their oppressors, the Medici. His invading forces were defeated in 1437 at the battle of Barga; they were thwarted again in 1438. And in June 1440 one of his most talented condottieri, Niccolò Piccinino, was routed by an army of Florentine mercenaries in a savage battle near Anghiari on the Arno. After this defeat, Piccinino and the remnants of his army marched quickly out of Tuscany, followed by the Albizzi whose hopes of returning to power were finally dashed. Rinaldo degli Albizzi rode dispiritedly off on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, while the Florentines took possession of large tracts of lands in the mountainous district of the Cesentino, formerly the domain of an anachronistic feudal lord who had misguidedly joined forces with the Milanese.

  At the time of his setback at Anghiari, Duke Filippo Maria Visconti was forty-eight. He had been married twice, first to the rich widow of one of his father’s condottieri whom he charged with adultery and had executed, then to a younger woman whom he had locked up after a dog had howled on their wedding night. By neither wife did he have a child; but a mistress bore him a daughter whom he called Bianca. This Bianca had many suitors but none more persistent than Francesco Sforza.

  Francesco Sforza, too, was illegitimate. His father, an illiterate peasant from the Romagna whose name was Giacomo Attendolo, had been kidnapped by a gang of adventurers. After the death of their leader he himself had taken command of them, had adopted the name of Sforza and, before being drowned in the Pescara River while trying to save the life of a young page, had led his men into battle in the service of both Naples and the Pope. At the age of twenty-two, in 1424, Francesco had succeeded his father in command of what was by then one of the best trained bands of mercenaries in Italy, and had subsequently shown exceptional military skill in fighting for the Visconti, the Venetians, the Pope and anyone else prepared to pay the high price he demanded for his services. He was an extremely strong, amiable, down-to-earth man, blunt of speech, with a big, honest face and the simple tastes of a man accustomed to the rough life of a camp. Pope Pius II later wrote of him:

  He was very tall and bore himself with great dignity. His expression was serious, his way of speaking quiet, his manner gracious, his character in general such as became a prince. He appeared the only man of our time whom Fortune loved. He had great physical and intellectual gifts. He married a lady of great beauty, rank and virtue by whom he had a family of very handsome children [eight in all, as well as eleven illegitimate children]. He was rarely ill. There was nothing he greatly desired which he did not obtain.

  To the annoyance of his occasional employer, the Duke of Milan, he had already carved out a small empire for himself in the Marches; but his ambitions were far from satisfied by that. By marrying Bianca he might, upon her father’s death, succeed to the great Duchy of Milan.

  Visconti did not much care for the idea of having this peasant’s bastard as a son-in-law; but Sforza was not only the best soldier in Italy but a political force of consequence. So in November 1441 the Duke at last agreed to the marriage, giving his daughter Pontremoli and Cremona to present to her bridegroom as a dowry and making some rather indeterminate promises about the succession to the Duchy of Milan.

  Visconti promises being notoriously unreliable, it came as no surprise when, upon Duke Filippo Maria’s death six years later, it was learned that he had nominated Alfonso, the Aragonese King of Naples, as his heir. Italy was now plunged into uproar. The Duke of Orleans also put forward a claim to the Duchy of Milan as a son of Valentina Visconti. At the same time the German Emperor asserted his ancient rights to Milan; while Venice announced that she would brook no interference in her own claims in Lombardy. As Francesco Sforza prepared to march to take possession of what he considered to be his rightful inheritance, the Milanese – attempting to settle the problem to their own satisfaction – declared themselves masters of their city and re-established their old republic.

  In Florence, Cosimo watched the crisis develop with an alert and anxious eye. He had met Francesco Sforza several years before, and had been deeply impressed by his manner and the force of his personality. The friendship then begun had since become more intimate and had been much strengthened by the generous loans which Sforza, in constant financial difficulties, had little difficulty in raising from the Medici bank. As well as lending him money and ensuring that he received additional subsidies from Florentine taxpayers, Cosimo exercised all the political and diplomatic influence he could bring to bear on his behalf. And it was, in fact, largely through Cosimo’s endeavours that Sforza, after three years of warfare and diplomatic negotiations, triumphantly entered Milan as Duke in March 1450.

  Cosimo’s unremitting support of Sforza had aroused much angry criticism in Florence, pa
rticularly from two of the city’s most prominent citizens, Neri Capponi, who had played an important part in the defeat of Piccinino at Anghiari, and Giannozzo Manetti, the distinguished diplomat. Protests became even more outspoken when, to the extreme annoyance of Naples and Venice, Cosimo recognized Sforza as Lord of Milan before any other state had done so. It was outrageous, so opponents of the Medicean regime maintained, that Florentines should be taxed for the sake of an erstwhile condottiere, now a self-proclaimed duke, the declared enemy of a sister republic which was a traditional ally. Was not Cosimo’s anxiety to back Sforza dictated by fear of losing the huge sums of money he had lent him, and by his expectations of having a more profitable and stable relationship with a despot than he could hope to have with a republic?

  Cosimo argued that Venice could no longer be considered a reliable ally: her interests in the Levant clashed with those of Florence; her territorial possessions in the eastern Mediterranean made her an enemy of Turkey with whose empire Florence enjoyed a mutually profitable trade; her shipping was a tiresome rival of Florence’s growing fleet. On the other hand, Milan in the firm grasp of the grateful Sforza would prove an enormously valuable ally both against the encroachments of Venice and in Florence’s still unfulfilled ambition to gain possession of Lucca. Above all, an alliance of Florence with Sforza was the one sure way of bringing peace to Italy, and without peace the commerce of the city could never hope to thrive. Cosimo’s arguments were strongly and ably supported by Nicodemo Tranchedini da Pontremoli, Sforza’s clever and persuasive ambassador in Florence who was to remain there for seventeen years.

  It was some time, however, before these arguments gained much favour. But when the Venetians reacted against Cosimo’s policy by allying themselves with the King of Naples and threatening an invasion of Tuscany, Cosimo saw his opportunity to overcome the Florentines’ prejudices. Making one of his rare appearances at the Palazzo della Signoria, where Venetian ambassadors had gone to protest and issue warnings against the proposed alliance with Milan, he intervened personally in the debate to condemn their government as aggressors. He was not a gifted orator; but his words were clear, strong and effective. In August Florence’s formal alliance with Milan was signed.

  Its repercussions were widespread and immediate: the Venetians urged the German Emperor to break up the new alliance; the Eastern Emperor was induced to withdraw the privileges of all Florentine merchants who were simultaneously expelled from Naples and Venice; Venetian agents were paid to intensify anti-Medicean feeling in Florence. Cosimo countered by closing down the Venetian branch of his firm and opening a new branch in Milan. At the same time, through those of his managers involved in the eastern trade, he managed to obtain concessions from the Turks in order to compensate Florentine merchants for the privileges withdrawn by the Greeks; and he made diplomatic overtures to Florence’s traditional friend, France, so as to offset the advantages which Venice and Naples might have gained by approaching the German Emperor.

  The negotiations at the French court required exceptional skill, for neither Cosimo nor Sforza wanted to precipitate French intervention in Italy, which both recognized to be almost inevitable once France and England had settled their differences. Rather did they hope to ingratiate themselves in Paris by making indeterminate offers of assistance should the French King, Charles VII, decide to insist upon Angevin claims to the Kingdom of Naples. The delicate discussions were left to Cosimo’s charming and capable friend, Agnolo Acciaiuoli, who by cajolery, flattery, and that grandiloquent rhetoric so relished by connoisseurs of Renaissance diplomacy made a most favourable impression upon the conceited, ambitious and erratic King of France. In April 1452, at Montil-les-Tours, a treaty was signed: France undertook to come to the help of Florence and Milan should they be attacked; Sforza was recognized as Duke of Milan; and, in return, Charles VII was assured that there would be no interference from either Florence or Milan if he decided to move against Naples.

  Provoked by this treaty – and anxious to break up the new alliance while France was still preoccupied with England – Venice and Naples both declared war on Florence and Milan; and King Alfonso’s illegitimate son, Don Ferrante, marched on Tuscany. The Florentines listened to the news of his approach with the greatest alarm; crowds of citizens rushed to Cosimo’s palace, demanding to know what was to be done to save the city from attack; one frantic merchant burst into his room, shouting ‘Rencine has fallen! Rencine has fallen!’ Cosimo, affecting never to have heard of this small town inside the Tuscan border, coolly replied, ‘Rencine? Rencine? Where is Rencine?’

  He was not nearly as confident as he took pains to appear. Feeling in the city was running high against him. The alliance with Milan was proving not merely a dangerous experiment, but an excessively expensive one as well; for Florence was having to pay for Sforza’s defences as well as her own, and the oppressively burdensome taxes, so Sforza’s agent in Florence reported to Milan, were daily increasing the number of Cosimo’s enemies. Agnolo Acciaiuoli was sent hurrying back to France to enlist the help of Charles VII; but the French, with the English rampaging around Bordeaux, were for the moment reluctant to commit themselves to action on another front.

  Cosimo fell ill and took to his bed; demands for peace became insistent; several of his leading supporters took the precaution of keeping away from his palace. Then, to the immense relief of the Medicean party, there came good news from France: Acciaiuoli had succeeded in persuading René of Anjou to come to the help of the alliance in exchange for reciprocal support of driving Alfonso’s Aragonese brood out of Naples. The intervention of a rough, marauding French army, which alarmed its allies even more than its enemies, followed by the Turks’ capture of Constantinople in May 1453, brought hopes of peace in Italy at last. These hopes were realized at Lodi in April 1454. And four months later, as the Turkish menace grew ever more threatening, Florence, Milan, the Pope and Venice drew together in a Most Holy League formed to guarantee the status quo within Italy and to withstand aggression from without.

  Peace had come none too soon for Cosimo. ‘The citizens have raised a great clamour about the new taxes,’ the Venetian ambassador reported;

  and, as never before, have uttered abusive words against Cosimo…Two hundred respected families, who lived on the revenues of their possessions are in a bad way, their properties having been sold in order to enable them to pay their taxes. When this imposition was levied, Cosimo had to announce that no one need complain because he would advance the money required and would not reclaim it until it suited everyone concerned. In order to retain popular favour, he has had to distribute many bushels of corn every day amongst the poor who were crying out and grumbling because of the rise in prices.

  Cosimo’s patient and far-sighted policy was, however, at last rewarded with success. Venice had been checked and was now too concerned with the Turks to pose any further threat to Tuscany; Sforza, firm ally of Florence, was universally accepted as Duke of Milan. The treaty, of which Naples, too, was a signatory, offered the first real hope of a general peace that Italy had had for more than fifty years.

  Cosimo was too much of a realist, of course, to suppose that the kind of loose alliance of Italian states which had now been formed was likely to endure. But for Florence, at least, so long as Cosimo lived, there were to be no more costly, unprofitable wars.

  Nor was there to be any question of Florence joining the crusade against the Turks which the Pope preached with such fervour after the fall of Constantinople. As both the acknowledged arbiter of Italian policy and the papal banker, Cosimo was one of the first recipients of the Pope’s appeal. He was asked to supply two galleys, equipped and manned, which were to be launched against the Turks in return for indulgences for the Florentines’ immortal souls. Tactfully and guardedly, he replied to the request, making the excuse which he and his descendants were to find so useful:

  When you solemnly speak of our immortal life to come, who can be so unimaginative as not to be uplifted by your words,
not to glimpse the glory of his own immortality?…But with regard to your present proposition, most blessed Father…you write to me not as a private man who is satisfied with the mediocre dignity of a citizen, but as though I were a reigning prince…You well know how limited is the power of a private citizen in a free state under popular government.

  Other Italian states replied to the Pope’s appeal with similar evasions. Only the Venetians, who stood to profit in this life as well as in the next by the successful outcome of a Holy War, were more forthcoming. Undeterred, the Pope determined to sail under the banner of the Cross; but before he could put to sea he died of malaria. The Medici bank officially lamented his loss, and transferred their attentions to his successor.

  As a banker, Cosimo was quite as astute as his father; and under his direction the family business continued to expand. Noted for his brilliance as an organizer, for his astonishingly retentive memory, and for a tireless industry that sometimes kept him working all through the night, Cosimo was also well known for the unquestioning loyalty he demanded and obtained from his branch managers who, wisely chosen and closely supervised, were expected to remit to Florence regular and lengthy reports of their activities and who received, in return, a generous share of profits. Finding his father’s associates, the Bardi, too old-fashioned in their methods, he took in as partners two brilliant young men, Antonio di Messer Francesco Salutati, manager of the Rome branch, and Giovanni d’Amerigo Benci, manager at Geneva. And with their help the business grew more rapidly than ever until the trade mark of the Medici bank the bank’s motto, ‘Col Nome di Dio e di Bona Ventura’, and Medici representatives could be found in almost every important capital and commercial centre in Europe: London, Naples, Cologne, Geneva, Lyons, Bâle, Avignon, Bruges, Antwerp, Lübeck, Ancona, Bologna, Rome, Pisa and Venice. Some branches of the bank were quite small; others were no more than temporary establishments, catering for the trade of some passing fair or council. None of them had a large staff. In 1470 the average number of men employed at the various branches was between nine and ten, cashiers being paid about forty florins a year, apprentices twenty. Even so, many of the Medici establishments were amongst the largest commercial enterprises in their respective cities, and their managers, as well as being astute men of business, were also political agents of the Florentine Republic. The branch in Milan, for example, was a kind of ministry of finance housed in a palazzo made available to the bank by the Duke, Francesco Sforza, and greatly enlarged at Cosimo’s expense to the designs of Michelozzo. The branch in Rome, which followed the peregrinations of the Curia, enjoyed a comparable prestige and was even more profitable. As Cosimo’s father had cultivated Baldassare Cossa, the future Pope John XXIII, so Cosimo himself had cultivated Tommaso Parentucelli, the Tuscan doctor’s son who became Bishop of Bologna and finally Pope Nicholas V. Parentucelli, who as a young man had been forced by poverty to leave the University of Bologna and to accept work as tutor in Florence to the children of Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Palla Strozzi, had distinguished himself at the Council of Florence after which he had given invaluable advice to Cosimo on the development of the Medici library. A friendly, witty man of great learning, of whom his friend and fellow humanist, Aeneas Silvius de’ Piccolomini, used to say, ‘What he does not know is outside the range of human knowledge’, Parentucelli had seemed to Cosimo a man worth backing. He had appreciated his orderly mind, his discreet yet purposeful manner; and when asked for a loan he had had no hesitation in granting the Bishop all that was required. On the Bishop’s becoming Pope, these close links with the Medici bank had been maintained to their mutual advantage. Nicholas V’s friend Piccolomini, who was elected Pope in 1458 and chose the title Pius II, kept up the papal tradition of friendship with the Medici and continued to entrust them with the Curia’s financial affairs. When he came to Florence in 1469 he stayed as a matter of course at the Palazzo Medici, where he and Cosimo seem to have become quite intimate. When bidding him good-bye, Cosimo