Had it not been for the welcome that they met, the French could never have penetrated into Italy. They came ill-provided, without good generals, without money. “There’s not a penny in the treasury,” wrote Orleans to Ridolfi, in October, “and I have spent four thousand ducats of my own to pay the troops.” The Italian despots trusted that this lack of means would cause the French to retire before the winter, and Orleans was in secret treaty with them to this end. Milan, says this interested advocate, would be enough to satisfy the honour of France—Milan and a yearly homage paid by Naples to the Crown of France.[[114]] But these designs were frustrated by the enthusiasm with which the French were received in the invaded provinces. The women brought their jewels to pay the troops; the men threw open the gates of the cities; every difficulty was overridden, for, says Commines, touched with the grave exaltation of Italy, “God was Himself our leader: Dieu monstroit conduire l’entreprise.”
“At our first arrival,” he goes on, “the people honoured us as saints, supposing all faith and virtue to be in us; but this opinion endured not long.” The rude French soldiery—Gascons, Normans, Swiss, and German mercenaries—pathetically ignorant of the fancied aureole playing round their weatherbeaten faces, marched through Italy as through any other conquered country. At Rapallo they put the town to the sword; they took Fivizzano by a murderous assault; they shed much blood at Pontremoli; for they could not understand that they seemed the Elect of Heaven, and they sought by fierce reprisals to keep up a military prestige. But if in Lombardy, in Lunigiana, the rude passage of the troops had to some extent dispelled the illusions of the people—where the army had not yet arrived the cities with open gates awaited it in holy awe. Arragon retired from point to point without a battle fought. The subjects of Catarina Sforza threatened her with rebellion if she refused submission to the French; Bologna, against the will of Bentivoglio, insisted on making peace with Charles. And in the Duomo of Florence, where Savonarola preached of the Purifying Scourge of God, the people shouted, “Franza, Franza!” where they were only used to sob in bitter patience, “Misericordia.” And to these enthusiasts, impatient of Medicean luxury, it was no drawback that the King, their deliverer, was a mere ugly youth, “more a monster than a man,” as Guicciardini plainly states, quite uncultured, and knowing neither Greek nor Latin. “In fact,” as the Milanese Corio remarked, “an uninstructed person, though none the less able to address his soldiery in telling terms, so that for love of him they dash upon the enemy, shouting, ‘Alive or dead!’” In the autumn of 1494 this ugly, bright-eyed youth had inspired an equal devotion in the populace of Florence.
The people were led by the monk Savonarola; but many of the old Florentine families (the Nerli, Gualterotti, Sonderini, Capponi) were no less anxious than the people to banish their parvenu tyrant. Out of all the crowd of monks, enthusiasts, bankers, patricians, and politicians which made up the popular party, two silhouettes stand strongly forth. One is the preacher Savonarola—a man of middle height, of dark complexion, and sanguine, bilious temperament. At forty-two his face is lined with seams and wrinkles—a harsh, strong face with a sweet expression, like Samson’s honey in the lion’s mouth; eyes that flash and flame from under shaggy black eyebrows and shed their spiritual gleam over the heavy Roman nose and the large mouth with the loose, thick lips of the orator firmly closed and drawn into a painful smile; a kind, noble, spiritual, tragic face, with something mad in it, or something at the least that must pass for mad in this uninspired and transitory world.
This was the man who for a good four years was virtually the ruler of Florence; this was the man who, more than any other, helped on the cause of France in Italy. “A man of holy life,” says Commines, who knew him. And Guicciardini describes him: “Full of charity, of natural goodness, and religion—so clever in philosophy, one would think he himself had had the making of it; without a trace of lust or avarice; but if he had a vice it was simulation, the prompting of a proud ambition.” One more voice arrests us: “A treacherous friar, worthy the end of the wicked.” But it is Marino Sanuto who speaks, the political enemy of Savonarola and a personal stranger to his qualities.
Behind the strong profile of the friar we note another head, also worthy of remark. This is Piero Capponi, a man of old Florentine family, republican by descent. Sturdily built and square, with brilliant eyes, he has a certain air of a courser sniffing battle; brief and resolute in speech, vigorously mature in age, he seems the very embodiment of virile energy. He is rich, for an astrologer at his birth having foretold his death in battle, he was persuaded by his father to devote himself to commerce. The man worked at money-getting with the restless, dominant force he put into everything he did, and made his fortune in a sort of fury. Then he threw up his career, having enough, and entered public life at thirty years of age. A republican, his restless need of activity made him accept the Medicean service. He had been ambassador in France, and was as French as Savonarola. “See them near, like ghosts,” he used to say, “and there is nothing to be afraid of in these French.” Although at this time the right arm of the Republic, his patrician birth, his acquaintance with the magnificence of princes, made him recoil from the extremer measures of the monk. A man of the greatest spirit, the staunchest energy, the very width of his views and his natural love of change made him a danger to a peaceful but imperfect Government. Born to be a great captain, he loved, above all things, a difficult campaign; and he spent his life in fighting alternately his enemies and his friends, until at last the astrologer’s prediction, true in spite of human prudence, set a bridle on his martial soul.
These two men represent the two parties who chiefly desired the advent of the French—the enthusiasts, the poor, the children of Savonarola, and the powerful burghers, as rich and may be better born than Piero de’ Medici, who resented their tyrant’s views on the republic, who resented almost more his alliance with the detested Spanish autocrats of Naples. On the other side—the side of the Orsini, of Cardinal Bibbiena, of Bernardò del Nero, and the aristocratic party, there is but one man that can arrest us as Capponi or Savonarola must arrest us, and that is Piero de’ Medici himself.
Piero and the King of France were mortal enemies; the King of Naples had no more resolved ally than Medici, though the French inclinations of the city prevented him from showing the true colour of his opinions. He was, in fact, “immoderately bound up with Arragon, and determined to chance the same fortune,” as Guicciardini tells us; since in return for this alliance he had arranged that Ferdinand of Naples should support him in turning his old republic into a new monarchy. Naples in those days represented in Italy the kingdom as distinguished from the Signory; it was the natural pole-star of the aristocrat. And Piero was drawn to the south as much by sentiment as by inclination; his mother Clarice, his young wife Alfonsina, both came of the Roman family of Orsini.
In 1494 Piero de’ Medici was about four-and-twenty years of age. He was beautiful in person and very vigorous. He was clever at games and sports; he had a charming way of pronouncing his words, a winning voice, and a great facility in making impromptu[impromptu] verses. But this handsome, graceful personage was not popular in Florence. He was haughty and arrogant beyond expression, subject to furies of animal anger, proud, and cruel. He would have men waylaid at night in the street and beaten violently by private bravos. He was so absolute, that even in matters he did not pretend to understand, he would govern all according to his fancy. And this aristocrat of a free republic was as fiery, vain, careless, and impatient as he was presumptuous. While the people murmured “Franza” with white excited faces; while Savonarola was thundering his prophecies of the Flagellum Dei; while news of the massacres and the irresistible advance of France struck a religious terror into Tuscany—the young head of the state left the garrisons unprovided and unguarded; not a week’s provisions in Sarzana or Pietra Santa; not a handful of infantry in the fastnesses of the hills. While winds of rebellion, war, and outrage swept the city, he, the one man unmoved, was to be seen as usual playing pallone in the public streets, a light-minded aristocrat, full of a certain easy and handsome bravado, caring for no one’s safety, not even for his own.
But even Piero, as he knocked the tennis-ball against the palace front, must now and then have felt a certain twinge of anxiety. For every day brought news of the farther retreat of Arragon, and only success, and brilliant success, could justify the Arragonese alliance in the eyes of the Florentines. Already that aristocratic alliance had touched the mercantile republic in a sensitive point: in June the King of France had expelled the Florentine bankers and merchants out of his kingdom. This meant ruin to many honourable families, and decided the burghers to join the party of Savonarola, so weakening the Medicean faction that people whispered it was Capponi who had thus advised King Charles, in order to disgust the impoverished merchants with their tyrant. But the documents published in Desjardins contradict this supposition. It was from Lodovico il Moro, the determined enemy of Florence and of Piero, that King Charles accepted this happy suggestion.
The burghers were all for France, in order to regain their commerce. The people, under Savonarola, the Republican families under Capponi, desired nothing more than the advent of King Charles. The very cousins of Piero himself had become so French, that a year ago he had exiled them to their country villas, where they lived in comfortable durance, surrounded by the light of popular martyrdom. To resist all these varied forces, Piero, on his side, could count a few old friends of his father, such as Bernardò del Nero and his secretary Bibbiena, an ambitious priest, and his wife’s brother, Pagolo Orsini, captain of the forces of the republic.