The House Of Medici

by Christopher Hibbert

  Seeing little of his father, Cosimo seems never to have developed much affection for him. When he was told that Giovanni had been mortally wounded trying to prevent the Germans crossing the river near Mantua, he ‘did not weep much’, according to his tutor, but said merely, ‘In truth I had guessed it.’ He was seven years old then, a healthy, good-looking boy, tall for his age, with chestnut hair cut short as he was always to keep it. He was living in Venice, having left Florence in the uncertain times that had followed the arrival there of Alessandro and Ippolito as protégés of Clement VII. From Venice he went to Bologna, from Bologna to Giovanni’s villa of II Trebbio, and from there back to Bologna where his grandfather, Jacopo Salviati, was to supervise his disrupted education. After a time he left Bologna for Genoa, from there went back to Florence once more, and then for a time to Naples.

  This constant travelling was not good for him, so one of his tutors implied: it unsettled him, made it difficult for him to concentrate on his work, and led him to yearn to leave his books for the pleasures of the countryside and the excitement of the soldiers’ camp. It was his ambition, indeed, to become a soldier. At the age of fourteen, so Pope Clement was informed, he already ‘went about clad like a cavalier and seeming such in his actions’. He was also reported to be surrounded by officers formerly in his father’s service. Disturbed by these reports, the Pope sent orders for him to abandon his ‘foreign dress’ and to wear instead the ordinary Florentine lucco. He obeyed the command with a sulky ill grace.

  Yet Cosimo was neither an uneducated nor an uncouth young man. Graceful in his movements, reserved in his manner, he was shrewd and silent. If there were gaps in his knowledge, he was prepared to fill them; and once filled they were filled for ever, for his memory was astonishingly retentive. There were those who already noticed a certain secretiveness about him which was later to become notorious; there were those who were repelled by an undoubted coldness in his nature which was to leave him unmoved by cruelty; and there were those who had good cause to fear that he would make a stern, tyrannical ruler. The general opinion, however, as Benedetto Varchi put it, was that Cosimo,

  with the twelve thousand ducats granted him as his private income, would devote himself to enjoyment and employ himself in hunting, fowling and fishing (sports wherein he greatly delighted) whilst Guicciardini and a few others would govern and, as the saying goes, suck the State dry. But it is no good reckoning without your host; and Cosimo, who had been considered slow witted, though of sober judgement, now showed himself so admirably endowed with understanding that people went about telling each other that as well as having the State bestowed upon him, he had also wisdom given to him by God.

  Trusting no one, neither Cardinal Cibò nor Alessandro Vitelli nor Guicciardini, all of whom, he felt, wanted to make use of him for their own purposes, Cosimo was determined to be his own master. He listened to the advice of his gifted secretary, Francesco Campana, and to his mother who could tell him all he needed to know about the ruling families of Florence; yet he kept his feelings and opinions hidden even from them and made up his mind alone.

  His opponents were far less resolute. With the support of the lower classes who had gained nothing from their masters in the days of the recent Republic, of those who would have rallied to the help of any son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, of the reconstituted militia and of several of Florence’s most patrician families, Cosimo gradually overwhelmed his enemies. First, with Spanish help, he rid himself of danger from the Fuorusciti, exiles from Florence plotting his overthrow, whose forces were routed at Montemurio near Prato in July 1537. Throughout the city after this battle were heard cries of ‘Palle! Palle! Victory! Victory!’ reported a Sienese observer. ‘There is great rejoicing, and from two windows on the ground floor of the Signor Cosimo’s palace much bread hath been thrown and is still being thrown, and from two wooden pipes they are continually pouring out streams of wine.’

  The free entertainment was well advised, for the rejoicing was far less spontaneous than the Sienese supposed and far from universal. The exiles’ army had included young men from several of Florence’s most distinguished families and had been led by Piero Strozzi, son of the great Filippo. Piero had escaped but scores of others had been taken prisoner and, after being ignominiously paraded through the the streets of Florence, were savagely punished. Sixteen were condemned to death; many more died in prison; others were tracked down and assassinated in the foreign cities where they had sought refuge.

  Having dealt with the exiles and executed their captured leaders, four of whom were beheaded each morning on four consecutive days in the Piazza della Signoria, Cosimo turned his attention to the Spaniards whose garrisons he now wished to remove from the Tuscan fortresses. At first the Emperor declined to comply with Cosimo’s requests. He was prepared to recognize Cosimo as Duke of Florence, but he insisted that the Duchy must be considered an Imperial fief. He would not order the withdrawal of Spanish troops; nor would he consent to Cosimo’s marriage with Alessandro’s young widow, Margaret, who was given instead to Ottavio Farnese, grandson of Pope Paul III, Clement VII’s successor, since the Emperor considered it more important to oblige the Papacy than Florence. Yet Cosimo did manage to obtain for himself a politically useful bride in Eleonora, daughter of Don Pedro de Toledo, the extremely rich Spanish Viceroy at Naples.1 And not long after his marriage to Eleonora had taken place, the Emperor, who had fallen out with the Pope and had come to recognize that the Duke of Florence was in a position to render him important services, agreed to the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Tuscany.

  Free from foreign occupation, Cosimo had also by now freed himself from interference in his government by any of his ministers. Although the Signoria and the office of Gonfaloniere were abolished by decree, there were still councils and magistracies in existence; but the Duke, as president of all of them, was easily able to ensure that they came to no decisions of which he disapproved; and as time went by he troubled himself less and less even to consult them. Guicciardini and Vettori were both ‘put aside’; so was Cardinal Cibò and, according to Luigi Alberto Ferrai, ‘in so dexterous a way that he was alienated and offended as little as possible’.

  Cosimo was not, however, a tactful man by nature. On the contrary he was brusque to the point of asperity, often so ungracious as to appear gratuitously insulting; and in ridding himself of his opponents he displayed a harshness quite untempered by compunction or remorse. He had no qualms about throwing real or imagined enemies into the dreadful dungeons of Volterra, or about hiring assassins to dispose of troublesome dissidents and dangerous rivals. After surviving as an outlaw for ten years, during which he published his Apologia in celebration of tyrannicide as a selfless act of the greatest merit, Lorenzaccio was eventually caught in Venice, where he was stabbed to death with a poisoned dagger near the Ponte San Toma. Likewise, wishing to rid himself of the Dominicans of San Marco, Cosimo accused them of having made ‘public professions of dissent’, and had no hesitation in expelling them from their monastery. To their nervous protestations he curtly replied, ‘Tell me, my fathers, who built this monastery? Was it you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who put you in this monastery then?’

  ‘Our ancient Florentines and Cosimo the Elder of blessed memory.’

  ‘Right. Well, it’s the modern Florentines and Cosimo the Duke who are kicking you out.’

  Master of Florence, Cosimo, after a long and cruel war, became master of Siena too. The war began in 1554, but it was not until 1557 that the cession of the city to Cosimo, to be held by him and his descendants as a Spanish fief, was at last ratified. By then the Sienese, whose population had been reduced from 14,000 to 6,000, had undergone unspeakable sufferings; and their surrounding territory had been ravaged without mercy. Their traditional dislike of the Florentines was fixed for generations to come, while Cosimo’s enemies at home were able to point with derision and disgust to the folly of expending so many lives and such huge sums of money on acq
uiring lordship over a devastated territory yielding less than 50,000 ducats a year.

  Certainly Cosimo himself was far from satisfied with his new acquisition. He wanted much more than Siena. He wanted to be recognized as Grand Duke, a title for the assumption of which papal authority was required. So determined, indeed, was he to gratify this ambition that to achieve it he sought the necessary authority with a relentless persistence which on occasions seemed to assume the compulsion of a mania. And at last he had his way. Pope Pius V bestowed the title of Grand Duke upon him in 1569.

  But when, in December that year, all the bells in Florence rang, bonfires raged and cannon roared in celebration of the Duke’s new title, there was, so an observer noticed, ‘little real joy to be discerned in the faces of the people’. Two years later, however, when once again the bells were tolled and celebratory fires were lit, when the Cathedral and churches of Florence rang with heartfelt Te Deums, the rejoicing was spontaneous and sincere; it was universally agreed that his Excellency, the Grand Duke, now addressed as Altezza and Serenissimo, had good reason this time to take upon himself some personal credit. For at the battle of Lepanto where the Turkish fleet was once and for all swept from the eastern Mediterranean, Florentine galleys had played an important part. And it was Cosimo who – intent upon protecting his shores from the raids of Turkish marauders and from Barbary pirates, as well as making himself and Tuscany appear more formidable in the eyes of Spain – had been responsible for the creation of Florence’s victorious navy.

  ‘A man is not powerful,’ he had said years before to the Venetian ambassador, ‘unless he is as powerful by sea as he is by land.’ And in pursuit of this power he had ordered galleys to be built, discussed designs with naval architects, superintended the enlistment of sailors and the purchase of foreign slaves, written out instructions for voyages, made lists of necessary armaments. He had created a new order of military knights, the Knights of Santo Stefano – admittedly in later years a less crusading than piratical order – in which were enrolled his two illegitimate sons, Cosimo and Lorenzo, and Duke Alessandro’s illegitimate son, Giulio. He had established a new naval base on the island of Elba, which had been ceded to him by the Duke of Piombino, and had fortified the capital to which he had given the name Cosmopolis.2 ‘I have devoted all my attention to naval matters,’ he assured the Venetian ambassador without undue exaggeration. ‘I have galleys finished and others being built. And so I shall continue and keep all my ships fully equipped with everything that is needed.’

  He was true to his word. The first two galleys to be launched, La Saetta and La Pisana, set out on their maiden voyages in 1550; the San Giovanni soon followed them. By 1565 there were several more galleys available for the expedition to relieve the besieged Knights of St John on Malta; and by 1571, the year of Lepanto, Pope Pius V had good reason to be grateful for the Grand Duke’s now considerable fleet and for the huge sum of 60,000 scudi which his treasury contributed to the great Christian enterprise.3

  Cosimo, though prone to sea-sickness, took great pleasure in sailing with his fleet himself. He would set out from Lerici and to the ‘blowing of trumpets, the firing of guns and the shouts of the people’ he would be rowed up to Sestri or down the coast to Leghorn where he would disembark for a day’s fishing or fowling or hunting.

  For none of these pleasures did he ever lose his taste. Whenever he could spare the time he would leave Florence for his villa of Il Trebbio, or for Poggio a Caiano, Castello or Cafaggiolo, or for one or other of his smaller country houses, Cerreto, Lecceto or Montelupo; and in red breeches, high boots of Spanish leather, doeskin jerkin and black velvet jewelled cap, he would ride out with his huntsmen, falconers, pages, courtiers and couriers into the surrounding woods and valleys. They chased wild boars and roebuck, they galloped after greyhounds, coursing hares; they took out falcons and setters; they bagged pheasants and partridges. And ‘in the little stream of the Sieve, which flows into the valley of the Mugello,’ recorded Cabriana,

  the Duke would catch various fish, such as trout, and would divide his haul among his courtiers and watch them with great delight as they ate the fish which they had cooked in the neighbouring meadows, he himself lying on the grass.

  For his courtiers the days did not always pass so pleasantly. The Duke was an exacting master, critical of the slightest fault, insistent upon uniformity in all matters of procedure and dress, requiring, for example, all his pages unfailingly to wear red caps in winter, purple caps in summer. He was also as exasperatingly secretive in his private life as he was in his dealings with his ministers. His attendants never knew how many days they would be away from home or where they would be taken. As one of them reported, voicing a typical complaint, ‘We have never known one day what there would be to do the next, his Excellency being more than ever secret in the matter of whither he is riding.’ Another of his courtiers found his penchant for practical jokes quite as irritating as his secretiveness. ‘This morning,’ he grumbled, ‘the Duke went to see the nets spread for the birds, and took several and made one of them peck me, which it did really painfully. It was my right hand too. The others say it was a great favour; but to me it is great pain.’

  It would all have been more bearable had the Duke been less capriciously unpredictable; but his moodiness was, in fact, notorious. On occasion he seemed to welcome friendliness, even to tolerate familiarity; at other times he would rebuff the slightest hint of disrespect. Sometimes ‘he lays aside all authority and dignity and with the utmost intimacy makes jokes with everyone and appears to want everyone to use this freedom towards him’, a Venetian envoy recorded.

  But once the time for amusement is past, he recognizes no one and it is as if he had never known them. If anyone is bold enough to make the least sign of familiarity, he at once withdraws into his accustomed severity, so much so that it is said of him in Florence that he doffs and dons the Duke whenever he pleases.

  Similar complaints were made about his wife.

  The Duchess, Eleonora da Toledo, was quite as exacting as her husband. The letters of her attendants are replete with anxious requests for the immediate dispatch of some commodity which has not arrived on time or for the replacement of some unsatisfactory article – to ‘forward instantly the salted fish from Spain such as the Duchess likes, the present consignment being all stale and broken’, to ‘send without delay his Excellency’s cloak and doublet’, to ‘have made for his Excellency two pair of leather hose, but not miserably short and tight like the others’.

  Yet however demanding, capricious and arrogant her servants and attendants found her, Eleonora was a good wife to Cosimo, who loved her as much as it was in his nature to love anyone. Soon after their marriage they moved from the Medici Palace to the Palazzo Vecchio which was transformed into the ducal palace with apartments for the Duchess on the upper floors, for the Duke on the lower, and for his mother on the floor between. Neither the Duke nor the Duchess got on very well with his mother, who had never been easy to love and who became increasingly irritating and increasingly untidy as she grew older. On one occasion at least she and her son had a blazing row when he was ill in bed and her fussy interference exasperated him even more than his doctors’ incompetence. He lost his temper with her; she left the room in tears; and the next day they declined to speak to each other. With his wife, however, Cosimo seems always to have remained on excellent terms, allowing her without complaint to indulge her passion for gambling, and never showing irritation at her exasperating changes of mind. She, for her part, put up complaisantly with his secretiveness, his outbursts of ill temper and his long periods of gloomy silence. They seem to have had differences only over the upbringing of their children.

  There were five sons – Francesco, the heir; Giovanni, who became a cardinal at seventeen and died of a ‘malignant fever’ two years later; Ferdinando, who also became a cardinal and later Grand Duke of Tuscany; Garzia, who died at the age of seventeen, a fortnight after Giovanni; and Pietro, who was born in
1554. There were also three girls, Maria, Isabella and Lucrezia. All the girls were brought up strictly in the Spanish way, being rarely allowed outside the palace except to go to Mass, seeing few men other than priests, doctors and tutors. Both Maria and Lucrezia died when young, Maria when she was seventeen, Lucrezia at sixteen, less than a year after her marriage to Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. Isabella, who was married to Paolo Giordano Orsini and went to live in the Medici Palace, survived only to be murdered by her husband. Cosimo did not live to hear of this tragedy; but on learning of the death of Maria, who succumbed to malaria while they were staying at the castle at Leghorn, he went out onto the bastion alone so that no one should see him give way to his grief. ‘Her constitution was like mine,’ he said forlornly. ‘She ought to have been allowed more fresh air.’ On his return to Florence he continued to mourn for her, and spent hours by himself in his room where her portrait hung on the wall.

  But he was never, even in less distressing times, a man who seemed to take much pleasure in life, except in hunting. He was rarely seen to smile; he had a poor appetite, contenting himself with the plainest food and in his later years with one simple meal a day; he had no taste for wine; he usually wore a black velvet robe indoors and used to say he would have preferred to wear a plain Florentine lucco. His apartments in the Palazzo Vecchio were richly decorated, but he chose to sleep in a sombre room whose walls were hung with dark green and blue gold-stamped leather. He would have been just as satisfied, so it was felt, with rooms of monastic simplicity such as those used by his secretaries who had to make do with ‘three desks, two brass lamps, two benches and four large stone inkstands’.