III.
Piero de’ Medici set out for the French camp from Pietra Santa on the 30th of October. Although the winter was afterwards so mild, the autumn had been severe, and the roads were marvellously deep with snow. All round Sarzana there extends a barren country, desolate, and full of little hills. At last a long ride of thirty miles brought the tired horsemen in sight of the French camp. The tents were pitched all round the frontier-fortress, a strong place in bad repair, which had cost the Republic fifty thousand florins not many years ago. Sarzana was guarded by Sarzanello, a fort surrounded by great towers built on a steep hill above the town. When Piero arrived the French were beginning to bombard Sarzanello with that strange, improved artillery of theirs which caused such panic in Italy. The young man, alone in the midst of an enemy he had done his best to ruin, assailed by visions of death and prison, was exhausted with fatigue, with restrained terror, and with the novelty of his position. The French lords led him at once to the tent of Charles. Contrary to his expectations, the King—a young man of his own age—received him kindly, even benignly. They were not going to kill him after all. In the exquisite relaxation of his dread, Piero sank upon his knees before the King, stammered an excuse, and hung his handsome head. “I will do everything your Majesty may require!”
Where was now that devotion to Arragon, which (as he told Bibbiena with so proud a swagger) traho ad immolandum? Where was that loyalty, “which I shall preserve in hell itself”? They had vanished to that dim limbo of generous resolutions where they would meet his fealty to the Republic, his love of country, and his self-sacrificing affection for his people. All these golden sentiments had completely vanished from the mind of Piero. The warm tent, after the long snowy ride, the kind reception, so different from his terrified previsions, the amiable friendliness of the French lords, who showed no humiliating surprise at his visit, all combined to fill him with a sense of genial relief. After all, Capponi was right: “Look at these French near, and there is nothing to be afraid of.” Piero, if he was afraid at all, was only filled with that pleasant awe which the reverential parvenu experiences when received on kindly terms in aristocratic society. He had not quite recovered yet from the honour that the French had shown him in sending St. Malo and the King’s herald to receive him. Perhaps on the rack Piero might have kept his word an hour or so. It vanished quite out of remembrance as soon as he felt the soft influence of royal converse.
And this was the King, the second Charlemagne, the marvel of nations, the terrible Flagellum Dei! Piero, accustomed to the kind voice, raised his eyes, and beheld a very small man of four-and-twenty, unusually youthful in aspect, with high shoulders, a sickly air, and extraordinarily thin long legs. He looked not quite grown up; and he was certainly very ugly, with his large head, long nose, wide mouth, and timid, delicate appearance. His ugliness was, however, redeemed by a pair of singularly beautiful and shining eyes, whose intelligent, kind, straightforward glance promised a liberal and honest nature. The King was, in fact, both liberal and honest; a simple, inconsequent, honourable creature, too nonchalant to make himself obeyed, and too incapable of dissimulation to win by art what he could not gain by force. He was, we learn from Commines, “the gentlest creature alive; of no great sense, but of so good a nature it were impossible to find a kinder creature; a youth but newly crept out of the shell.” This description does not promise a very terrible monarch, or an insidious diplomatist, but all the duplicity of Lodovico il Moro could not have gained a greater triumph than the careless good-nature of Charles achieved over the flattered Florentine.
The King sat like a quaint elfin child in his tent among his splendid counsellors. These polite and courtly people had rather a more decided smile than usual about their pleasant lips as they glanced towards Piero. The young Florentine was submerged, drowned, in his satisfaction with the King and with his own reception. He was on the best terms with his friend, the King of France. Charles, who did not quite understand the situation, asked a great deal more than ever he hoped to obtain from penitent Florence, thinking he would have to abate his demands (a few weeks in Italy had taught him how to bargain), especially when dealing with a mercantile person like Piero de’ Medici. He put forward in fact an extravagant requisition: the Florentine troops were all to be dismissed (the troops that Piero had ordered yesterday), the fortresses of Sarzana, of Sarzanello, Librafatto, Pisa, Leghorn, and Pietra Santa were to be delivered to the King; his army was to have free passage, and he was to receive a loan of 200,000 ducats. Now the French party of Florence were prepared to allow the King to lodge in Pisa, and to grant him a free passage, but more than this had never been dreamed of by Savonarola or Capponi. Piero, however, when he heard the King’s demand, did not abate a jot of it. Who was he to contradict the King? (“I go,” he had said; “I go head down in front of peril to bring you back a welcome message, or else to leave my bones in the camp of the enemy!”) He immediately agreed to grant the whole, yielding the entire force and estate of Florence into the power of France. “Those that negotiated with the said Peter,[Peter,]” says Commines, “have often told me, scoffing and jesting at him, that they wondered to see him so lightly condescend to so weighty a matter, granting more than they looked for.” And Guicciardini adds: “There was no Frenchman there that did not greatly marvel that Piero so easily consented to matters of so great importance, because without a doubt the King would have accepted very far inferior conditions.” But Piero, the hero of fidelity, the new Lorenzo, did not think of this. “I require the six fortresses, the dismissal of your army, free passage, and a loan of 200,000 ducats,” repeated the slow, stammering, timid voice of the King. “I agree,” said Piero.
There was a silence in the tent, half-amused, half-painful, a feeling as if they had overreached a little child.