The ill-success of Bartolommeo Colleone’s undertaking put an end of course to all the exiles’ hopes of returning to their homes.
The biographer of Donato Acciaiuoli, Angiolo Segni, observes rightly, ‘The war excited by the exiles was soon ended. Bartolommeo’s army was not defeated in battle with the allies, but it was equally far from conquering, and the cause of the rebels was lost thereby. For those who ruled in Florence it was enough not to be defeated; not so with those in the field. Only by a victory could they expel their enemies, and regain their home.’ All the distinguished men of the losing side had been with Colleone—foremost of all Diotisalvi Neroni and Niccolò Soderini, who in Venice opposed his own brother, whom Florence had sent thither as her representative. Agnolo Acciaiuoli joined them at last. Persuaded at length by the representations of his friends, he had quitted Barletta and gone to Naples; King Ferrante, who, remembering old connections, wished him well, vainly sought to persuade him not to trust to the matter, nor to break the exile pronounced on him. He went to Rome, and from thence to Romagna. When he saw the organisation of Colleone’s troops, he is said to have anticipated the result at once. When peace was concluded, he was declared a rebel with all the others, his property confiscated, and a price put upon his head; he returned to Naples, where he lived on the support afforded him by the King, and passed his days mostly in pious exercises and the companionship of the Carthusian monks, whose order had stood in intimate connection with his family for more than a century. Niccolò Soderini went to Ravenna, where the Emperor Frederick III. made him a knight and Palatine on his second journey to Rome—cheap honours then, which could hardly have sweetened the exile in which he died, 1474. Niccolò, says Alamamo Rinuccini, was far more courageous than prudent; he did not know fear. Had his advice been followed when he wished directly to give battle, his party would not perhaps have had to submit, but Messer Luca, either cowardly or bribed, betrayed his party and himself. Diotisalvi Neroni, at first banished to the island of Sicily, saw sixteen years of exile pass away, and died in extreme old age at Rome, where his tombstone is to be seen in the Dominican church, Sta. Maria sopra Minerva, which contains many Florentine monuments.[153]
One event during the war shows how high the waves of party feeling rose. Lucrezia de’ Medici was at the Bagno a Morba with her son Giuliano, the bath in the district of Volterra employed, perhaps even in the times of the Romans, for rheumatic complaints. It is a lonely spot on the southern side of the chain of hills which, separating the valley of the Arno and Elsa from the sea-shore, bears the old Etruscan town on its ridge. The retired situation had long attracted many a prowler, and made the desolate region unsafe. One evening a hasty messenger from Piero came to his wife with the command that she was to repair without delay with the youth to Volterra, as it had been announced in Florence from San Gemignano that the exiles meditated a coup-de-main to carry off both mother and son, whom they needed as hostages. Giuliano had set off for Florence that same day; Madonna Lucrezia, ill as she was, was carried to Volterra, fifteen miles distant, in a litter by night, by the arrangement of the officials of the place and vicinity, and here she was in safety. After having rested here, where she was kindly received, she returned to her family.[154]
CHAPTER IV.
PIERO DE’ MEDICI’S LATER LIFE. LORENZO’S MARRIAGE.
After the Colleonic war the Republic had peace for a time. For though she took an auxiliary part in the contest for Rimini, which broke out in 1469, her affairs were little influenced by it, and her territory not even touched. Sigismondo Malatesta, who had just been in negotiation with the condottiere of Bergamo, but had held aloof from the strife and entered the Papal service, died on October 9, 1468. When we review the variety of events that followed close upon one another in this man’s life, and then consider that he only reached the age of fifty-one, we shall form some idea of the restless character of the epoch. According to the last stipulation, Pope Paul II. expected the reversion of Rimini, as Sigismondo had died without legitimate heirs, but his natural son Roberto, then only six and twenty, succeeded in taking possession of the city, and formed numerous allies, when the Pope prepared to expel him by force. When Alessandro Sforza undertook the siege of Rimini with the Papal army, Naples, Florence, Milan, and Urbino, came to the assistance of Malatesta, and on August 30, 1469, Sforza suffered a severe defeat, whereas the Pope’s allies, the Venetians, did not appear till after the event. Paul II. wished at first to continue the contest, but resolved the following year to come to terms, a decision confirmed by his conviction that Venice thought more of extending her own power in Romagna than of supporting him, and also by the progress of the Turks, which caused serious anxiety, not only to Venice, whose possessions in the Levant were threatened, but to all Italian powers. Paul’s successor had, at a critical moment, no reason to regret that Roberto Malatesta remained in Rimini.
It was a fortunate thing for Florence that peace was concluded, for the expenses had long been enormous. The allies seemed to think that the Florentine purse was inexhaustible. When Galeazzo Maria arrived in July 1467 from the camp, he carried an open empty purse at his belt: they were obliged to pay him a large sum, says a contemporary, to enable him to return to the camp.[155] At the same time the sum of 1,200,000 gold florins was raised, partly by a property tax, partly by additional imposts, to which the clergy and those otherwise exempted from taxation were forced to contribute, while the half of their salaries was deducted from all officials outside the city. The heavy expenses of the war did not, however, hinder the expenditure of large sums for other purposes, as, for example, in February 1468, even before the peace was ratified, 37,000 gold florins were paid for Sarzana and the neighbouring castle, which the Genoese Fregosi sold to the Republic, a bargain which caused violent disputes afterwards. There was no lack of complaints of the great expenses. Even before the war numerous failures had taken place, and created a serious panic in the commercial world. The war had crippled industry and commerce. The government could not blind itself to the prevailing discontent, and if they sought to amuse the crowd by festivals in honour of foreign princes, and in other ways, they only increased the expenses of the city. The Duke of Calabria, who had his winter quarters in the Pisan territory, was twice in Florence in the autumn of 1467, where great honour was shown to the son of the most powerful of the allies. In the following May, after the peace, he resided in Pisa, and informed Lorenzo de’ Medici, through Luigi Pulci,[156] that he thought of spending the festival of St. John at Florence, and recommended him to see that it should be brilliantly celebrated.
Pleasure-making and expensive pursuits were certainly ill-adapted to the frame of mind which prevailed in Florence in the latter times of the war, and to the general condition of affairs. ‘The whole city,’ wrote Niccolò Roberti, the Ferrarese ambassador, to Duke Borso, on January 12, 1468,[157] ‘is discontented and in the worst humour. Not only enemies, but even most friends, agree in the opinion, that if peace be not soon concluded, all must emigrate, or something new be resolved on, for it is no longer possible to bear the burdens. Few people work, and shops are daily closed. The one consolation is, that peace cannot be far distant. Three days ago a meeting of the council took place, and it was determined to collect money for the equipment of twenty galleys, as it is said the Duke of Milan and King Ferrante intend to put a powerful fleet to sea, and attack Venice in the gulf, if she does not agree to peace. It is certainly whispered by some that if the money were to be had, Piero de’ Medici would take it for himself.’ So little satisfactory was the state of affairs, and so great the discontent. When peace was concluded after long uncertainty, a contagious illness tormented the citizens. ‘The pestilence is in many houses here,’—thus writes the ambassador from Ferrara on August 12—‘and although, on account of the imperfection of the statistical reports, the number of deaths cannot be ascertained, they are estimated at from six or eight daily. Piero de’ Medici shuts himself up, and, it is said, will go to Careggi next week.’ Public festivals were rather out of place.