And so that very night the Pisans, still in their gala-dresses, but with torn hair, faces of mourning, clasped hands and streaming eyes, thronged into the council-chamber of the astonished King. “It was lamentable,” writes an eye-witness, “to hear[eye-witness, “to hear] them tell the wrongs and grievances they endured.” It was as if, in the middle of their gala, one of them, with a significant irony, had raised the corner of the pale silk gala-hangings and had revealed the mouldering stone, the unsightly ruin underneath. As the Pisans exposed the real degradation of their slavery, the facile rash humanity of the French was touched to tears; and when Messer Simone Orlandi (an accomplished gentleman who could express himself in French) had finished his recital, it was not only the Pisans who, pale with indignation and with pity, turned to the King of France on the throne seated of Medici, and cried out to him, “Liberté, liberté, cher Sire!”
At this point an accomplished Legist, a Counsellor of the Parliament in Dauphiné, named Ribot, who also was a Master of Requests at Court, turned to the King and said: it was indeed a lamentable case, and that never, for sure, were any other men so hardly used as these. The King himself—touched to the heart, as were all these frank and simple Frenchmen, by the unsuspected misery beneath the gold brocades of this fantastic Italy, and not quite understanding (as Commines suggests) what it was the Pisans meant by this word Liberty—answered vaguely that he would be content they should enjoy it. This at least is the mild version of Commines, who was absent in Venice at the time; but Pierre Desrey, actually present at the scene, puts a stronger warrant in the mouth of Charles: “Il les assura de les conserver dans leurs franchises.”
That night the Florentines in Pisa—men in office, judges, merchants, and soldiers of the garrison—were driven at the sword’s point out of the rebellious city. The statue of Marzocco on the bridge was hurled in a thousand pieces into the muddy Arno; the standard of Florence was dragged and trampled in the mire; and bonfires until morning hailed the discomfiture of the King’s allies. On the morrow after noon Charles left the city. He had placed a garrison of three hundred French soldiers in the new citadel; he had appointed three commissioners to superintend affairs; but he had taken no steps to impose the least restraint of civil order upon this impassioned and suddenly enfranchised people. Fortunately the nobles of the town took the matter into their wiser hands. Twenty-four hours after the entry of the French, Pisa was a free Republic governed by a Gonfalonier, six Priors, and a Balia of Ten, with a new militia of its own, and, for the first time in eight and eighty years, a Pisan garrison in the ancient citadel.
III.
If we ask, What right had the King of France to set at liberty the subjects of his allies, lent to him in his need as a temporary gage? we find the question difficult to answer. To statesmen like Commines or Briçonnet there was something shocking and dishonourable in the liberation of Pisa by the King, something that the tenderest palliation for generous youth and inexperience could not attempt to justify.[justify.] On the other hand, to fresh enthusiastic spirits, such as Ligny or the King himself, there was a degree of inhumanity in leaving the Pisans to their obvious slavery which no code of political honour could extenuate.
These two parties, and these two counsels, marched with the King out of Pisa into Empoli, where he slept that Monday night—doubtless in the same bad inn that had so poorly housed the adventurous Medici just fifteen nights ago. When, on the Tuesday, the King arrived at Signa he heard that the city of Florence was in revolt. Florence and Pisa, unknown to one another, had each regained their liberty upon the selfsame day. For when the King of France came in sight of the group of domes and towers along the Arno, his young guest at Sarzana, so recently the lord of all this beauty, was escaping to Bologna across the mountains in disguise with a price upon his head.
Charles, the pupil of the Duke of Milan, was not well inclined to Florence; and he was not propitiated by the fact that Piero de’ Medici had been expelled the city on account of the great concessions he had made to France at the time of his fugitive visit to Sarzana. A month ago the King had declared that Piero alone was his enemy, and that the city was his friend; since the 30th of October he had changed his mind it was the pliant Medici who now appeared his friend, and his anger was against rebellious Florence.
Yet what had Florence done more audacious than that which Charles himself had sanctioned in the Pisans? Florence had expelled the Medici; Pisa the Florentines, almost at the selfsame hour. But the fact that the Florentines condemned the loan of the fortresses hardened the heart of the King, conscious that by the liberation of the Pisans he had justified the greatest of their fears. This was, in fact, the direst harm with which an enemy could threaten Florence; and Charles had done it despite his name of friend. It was only natural that he should nourish a grievance against the ally whom he had injured; and when on the 17th of November the French entered Florence, it was remarked that the King rode through the streets, lance on thigh, with the bearing of an offended conqueror. His mind was as haughty as his mien, and he was prepared to claim from the Republic the independence of Pisa and the restoration of Piero to the chief place in the government.
But the Florentines were no less resolute than Charles. Capponi made his famous threat, and the King, after ten days of vain parade of force, swore a solemn treaty with the Florentines upon the 25th of the month. By the terms of this convention it was arranged that Pisa and Leghorn were to be left in the hands of the King till his return from Naples, and then given back to Florence; the King was to decide between Genoa and Florence as to the final disposal of Sarzana and Pietro Santa; the King was to say no more till March concerning the restoration of the Medici, when the Signory, if he desired, would reconsider the matter, and meanwhile, by Royal request, the price was taken off the tyrants’ heads, and the wife and child of Piero were permitted to remain in Florence. The Signory agreed to pay the King, in three terms, the sum of 120,000 ducats towards the expense of the campaign; but, for us, the most important proviso of this treaty (which the student may consult in the first volume of Desjardin’s “Négociations”) is one that secured a complete amnesty for Pisa. Moreover Florence promised, in favour of the King, to rule that city in the future with a more liberal and a gentler hand.
It was not three weeks since Charles had promised to maintain the Pisans in their liberty, and those unhappy patriots who could not penetrate (Commines declares that no Italian ever could) the shifting confusion of the Court, did not know, and would have little cared to understand, that Beaucaire and Ligny had held the balance yesterday, but Gannay, Gié, and Briçonnet to-day. The only consolation that they could have found in this unstability of favour was the chance that their advocates might soon again succeed to power, and as a fact they had made a great point in securing the sympathy of Ligny (the King’s cousin) and Piennes—two young gentlemen of the King’s own age who were his inseparable companions, wore armour like his own and the Royal colours. These two gallants counted on their side the Seneschal of Beaucaire, one of the King’s two especial counsellors. But the other, Briçonnet, supported the Florentine party. The elder and more diplomatic statesmen, such as, Gié, Gannay, and Commines, were all on the side of Florence.