The old connections of the Fortebracci of Montone with Florence have been mentioned. In the first times of the rise of the Medici, Braccio Fortebraccio had been the favourite hero of the Florentine people, who, on his account, had deeply insulted Pope Martin V. His son Oddo had been killed in the Visconti wars in the spring of 1425 by the peasants of the Val di Lamone, who, seventy years before, had made short work of the wild freebooters of the so-called Great Company in their mountain passes. Another son of Braccio’s had remained, Carlo, still a child at his father’s death. Having grown up in military service in Piccinino’s troop, he had attained the reputation of a skilful captain, and lived in the pay of Venice, which always needed numerous troops for Italy, as well as for her possessions in the Levant. He was striking in appearance; at the age of fifty-five he seemed to have renounced all ordinary habits of life, wore a long beard, forbore to change his clothes, and slept without a tent under the open sky in the fields.[217] When his condotta came to an end, instead of beginning another he determined to carve out his fortune in his own home. His father and brother had once ruled over Perugia; he therefore relied upon the old attachment of a part of the citizens, and the love of novelty which was never extinguished in those half-free cities. In the spring of 1477 he set out with a considerable troop of mercenaries for Umbria. Such private enterprises of condottieri were nothing new in Italy; Jacopo Piccinino had attempted something similar twenty-two years before, but had been defeated and driven to the coasts of Maremma. Carlo Fortebraccio had, however, chosen an unfavourable moment, for peace prevailed in the whole of Central and Southern Italy, and the governments were on their guard on account of Milanese affairs. To the Florentines, in spite of their ancient friendly connections with the Fortebracci, the intended attack upon Perugia was most unwelcome, not so much on the Pope’s account, as because they were endeavouring to draw the town into their own league. They therefore hindered the condottiere by strong representations from making an attack on Umbria. They could not, however, prevent him from falling in old freebooter fashion upon the neighbouring territory of Siena. He set up as a pretext old demands of his father, who had been dead more than half a century, and, like Piccinino, began to plunder and raise black-mail in the Arbia valley.
The republic of Siena had always been a battle-field for factions which weakened it within and made it powerless abroad. The old jealousy of the Florentines had made it always easy for every power possessing the preponderance in Italy for the time being to plot against Florence from thence. Thus it happened in the present case, and not without the fault of Florence. The Sienese were taken by surprise by the attack of Carlo Fortebraccio. Long at peace with their neighbours, a peace which was not disturbed by occasional quarrels between places on their frontier in the Chiana valley, they had but a small armed power to oppose to the freebooters. They complained bitterly to the Pope and the King of Naples of the wrong done them, and sent ambassadors to Florence to beg the intervention of the Republic, whose connections with the mischief-maker were no secret. The Florentines, when called upon to put a stop to the favour shown to Carlo by their subjects on the frontiers and to keep honest neighbourliness, gave at first an equivocal answer. They had, they said, nothing to do with the matter, and if Fortebraccio should find support with the Sienese emigrants, it was not their doing. They did not escape the suspicion of having acted in this affair with the same want of sincerity as that shown the Venetians in the Colleonic troubles. Sixtus IV. resolved to be no longer a mere looker on.[218] He remembered that the father of this man had once said that he would bring Pope Martin to read twenty masses for one Bolognino. The Duke of Urbino, captain-general of the Church, caused Antonio di Montefeltro to march into the Sienese territory; everything was in movement in the patrimony, where men were enlisted both for and against the cause. ‘It seemed,’ says the chronicler of Viterbo, ‘as if men were weary of the long peace and took the field for little money.’ The attack on Fortebraccio was unsuccessful, so that the duke himself set out, marched into Perugia, and invested the castle of Montone, which yielded after thirty-three days’ siege. Neapolitan troops received commands to march through Romagna; in short, a general conflagration seemed about to break forth. This calamity was averted for the time by the departure of the leader of the disturbance, who, threatened by the danger of being cut off, and urged by Florentine representations, quitted the Sienese territory and re-entered the Venetian service. On his return to Romagna, he attempted again to take possession of Montone, but the Sienese razed the castle for fear he should again establish himself firmly there in the neighbourhood of their frontiers.[219]
The political results of this division were evident in the following year. The Florentines had only to thank themselves for it. Towards the end of June, the Chancellor, Bartolommeo Scala, had given Lorenzo de’ Medici information of the complaints of the Sienese ambassadors. In the following month the Pope had himself complained bitterly to the Signoria of the assistance given to the condottiere, and the wrong done to their neighbours.[220] What made the position worse for the Pope was the circumstance that the old Roman disturber of peace, Count Deifebo of Anguillara, served under Fortebraccio. Most unpleasant to the Florentines had been the Neapolitan intervention, which, indeed, could no longer leave them in doubt as to the position of affairs.
It is hard to recognise the caution and political sagacity hitherto displayed by Lorenzo in these proceedings. His biographer, Niccolò Valori, who is inclined enough to defend him where he cannot praise, does not venture to reconcile his behaviour towards the Pope with the claims either of policy or gratitude, and resorts to an ambiguous reflection. After having enumerated what Lorenzo owed to Sixtus IV. for the extraordinary furtherance of his private interests, whereby he and his relations, especially Giovanni Tornabuoni, had acquired great wealth, as well as in the affair of Volterra, &c., he continues,[221] ‘After the Pope had overwhelmed Lorenzo in public and private matters with proofs of the greatest favour, and dismissed him with the highest honours, he did not long remain in the good graces of his Holiness. Thus it happened that many began to doubt his constancy and wisdom. I believe all happened through the will of destiny, in order to bring his great qualities more clearly into view in the midst of untoward events.’[222]
THIRD BOOK
CONSPIRACY OF THE PAZZI
WAR WITH ROME AND NAPLES