This was a pretty clear token of how matters stood with regard to the powers of the supreme court. But this was not all; participation in the government was to be yet further restricted. In the summer of 1490 a measure was carried which concentrated the actual direction of affairs in the hands of a small body. The Council of Seventy was to remain as a council of State; but the elections to the Signoria were transferred, as under the old system, to accoppiatori, named by a committee of seventeen, of whom Lorenzo was one. The members of this committee were chosen arbitrarily, and only one of them belonged to the minor guilds. On them was dependent every branch of the administration, more especially finances and the national debt.
The new committee’s first measure concerned the coinage. In appearance it was sensible enough. The city and country were overwhelmed with small and base foreign coin; Sienese, Lucchese, Bolognese, &c. August 28, 1490, a decree was issued forbidding the circulation of foreign coins on and after September 8. As Alamanno Rinuccini remarked, it was not the first decree of the kind, and it was no more observed this time than heretofore. Indeed, it was practically impossible to distinguish the foreign quattrini from the Florentine, outwardly very like them. So on May 1, 1491, a radical reform was undertaken. The old native small coin, the so-called black quattrino, was called in, and replaced by a new coin containing two ounces of silver to the pound of copper, and reckoned as equivalent to five danari, while the old one was called in at the rate of four danari. The public treasuries were in future to receive only the new white quattrini. The people were pleased, hoping to get rid of the confusion. Their rejoicing did not last long. Instead of melting down the old money, it was stealthily brought into circulation again, and the old quattrino remained in use side by side with the new one. Out of this confusion arose endless difficulties; and the people found that in taxes, duties, purchases of salt, everything where produce went into the treasury, they were the chief sufferers. The consequence was general discontent, directed principally against the heads of the government, as their limited number made them the more conspicuous.[376]
The evil was great, but it had not yet reached its worst height. The increasingly demoralised condition of the administration of finance displayed itself in another way, which must have utterly ruined the credit of the State at the first serious political crisis. This was connected with the Medici finances. Lorenzo’s pecuniary difficulties had been in no wise removed by the precautionary measures of 1480. His manner of life, establishments, purchases, the provisions for his children, his by no means disinterested liberality, the bribes in money paid for his influence abroad, required large sums. To try to meet these requirements with the produce of his personal property (because he considered this more secure and honourable),[377] would have been chimerical. He had limited his banking-business and commercial speculations; and to draw upon them never entered his head. During his very last years he did a great deal of business in Rome. Innocent VIII. was financially still more dependent on him than on his own Genoese fellow-countrymen, and he allowed him corresponding advantages. In 1489 he sold him 30,000 hundredweight of alum at a very low price, in compensation for losses sustained in the days of his predecessor; and the alum trade passed almost entirely into Lorenzo’s private hands. The farm-rent paid by him for the works of Tolfa amounted to 100,000 florins. In May of the same year Lorenzo furnished the Pope with a loan to the same amount for one year; one-third of the sum in cash, the other two-thirds in silk and woollen stuffs. For the repayment, two-tenths, amounting to 60,000 florins, were referred to the Florentine clergy, the rest to the revenues of Città di Castello.[378] In 1490 Lorenzo redeemed from the Centurioni of Genoa a valuable tiara which had been pledged to them.[379] Cosimo Sassetti, one of the partners in the Medici bank at Lyons, was also a papal collector in 1490. In the case of smaller loans, princes sent valuables as pledges; the Marquis of Mantua gave a precious stone for the sum of 4,000 gold florins, and when at a marriage-feast he wanted to have it back, his brother-in-law, Ercole d’Este, offered the salt-office of Modena for security in its place. These transactions went on under Lorenzo’s eldest son and even later.[380] But the profits were uncertain, for all the parties concerned were not skilful and prudent. Even supposing that Lorenzo drew an income of 15,000 to 20,000 gold florins from the old family estate, and about 10,000 from the newly-acquired and gradually increasing one in the Pisan territory, still it was terribly insufficient for his outlay. He was driven to all kinds of shifts, at times even somewhat mean ones, such as must have been sometimes very unpleasant to him; as, for instance, in 1484, when he had to take a loan of 4,000 ducats from Lodovico Sforza, or sell for the same price the house given by Duke Francesco to his grandfather.[381] During the difficulties of 1478 he had been compelled to borrow from his cousins, the other Medici, 60,000 gold florins, for the repayment of which he gave security on his possessions in Mugello. There were Florentine business houses which paid him a yearly sum for lending them his name.
This mixing up of his private money-matters with those of the State brought about most unhappy consequences. In the war of 1478, the pay of the troops was furnished by the bank of the Bartolini, in which Lorenzo had a share. They deducted eight per cent., in return for which the commanders did not furnish the troops agreed upon, and the community had to make up the deficit. The wretched mismanagement of the military arrangements was all of a piece with this. Yet Lorenzo still thought himself entitled to venture on further operations of the same kind. The chief financial posts were held by his minions. From the treasurers (camarlinghi) of the offices of the national debt, of the customs, of salt, of judicial contracts, &c., he raised the needful sums, which they handed over to him without difficulty, first because they could refuse him nothing, and next because they thought their own responsibility covered and their personal security safe; for every newly appointed official had to recover the sum lent out by his predecessor; and as this process went on unchecked for years, it may easily be imagined what a deficit there was at last, after all the sham repayments one towards the other. The office of the national debt suffered most. The supreme provveditore, Antonio di Bernardo Miniati, had risen from the condition of an artisan by the favour of Lorenzo, who had actually made him a member of the Committee of Seventeen; and he proceeded quite arbitrarily, to oblige his patron and at once facilitate and hush up disgraceful embezzlement. During the revolution of 1494 the great book of the Monte was missing; nevertheless, there was an exposure of how many sums had gone to the numerous protégés and hangers-on of the Medici in and out of Florence. There was also another means by which to enrich them; and that was the furnishing of supplies, among which the supplying of cloth to the troops, in particular, brought great gain.[382] But all possible manœuvres and skill could not prevent the bad condition of this unprincipled finance from becoming known. How should they when, to mention only one instance, the Cardinalate of Giovanni de’ Medici cost the State an expenditure of 50,000 gold florins, independently of the sums which found their way secretly into Rome, and were reckoned at 200,000 more?[383] The State-creditors suffered most, from the reduction in the rate of interest caused by the drafts deposited in the Monte, and from the arrears of interest. These bills, together with the extraordinary additional taxes constantly repeated under various names, reduced the national debt. What offended the citizens most and damaged Lorenzo’s reputation with posterity more than anything else was the plundering of the before-mentioned Monte delle doti, the establishment intended for the dowries of maidens, and in which all citizens, great and small, were wont to make investments.[384] It was a sort of bank of deposit, somewhat on the plan of modern insurance-offices, and its usefulness was increased by the changes of fortune only too sudden in Florence. This establishment took its rise in 1424, when it was decreed that for the liquidation of the shares in the national debt dating from 1325 to 1336, and originally bringing in eighteen per cent. interest, the creditors should be at liberty to convert a quota of what was due to them into a dowry for their sons and daughters; from 1468 it was limited to daughters. The conditions were very liberal. Whosoever paid or gave security for the amount of 104 gold florins, and had it put down to one of his children, received at the end of fifteen years the sum of a thousand florins in cash, or could, if he pleased, let it remain at five per cent. interest. If the child in whose name the money stood died, half the sum to which he would have had a claim, according to the time that had elapsed, was paid back to the father, and the other half went to the bank. The so-called reform of the Monte delle doti, which, like all such establishments, certainly needed improvement in its administration, was one of the avowed objects of the change made in the constitution in 1480; but it opened a door to the misappropriation of its funds. In 1485 a decree was issued whereby only a fifth of the dowry, i.e. two hundred florins in the case above described, was to be paid in cash; the rest was to be entered in a register called libro non ito, the unpaid book, and to bear an interest of seven per cent. This was not all. Six years later, the rate of interest was lowered to three per cent.[385] This came very near to bankruptcy, and this bankruptcy touched the citizens to the quick, while it brought the State into discredit. Hitherto the dower paid through the Monte had in most cases been sufficient; now the necessary additions to it became serious, and quite unattainable for many families. So the number of marriages diminished; that the consent of the head of the State had to be secured before they could take place would sound incredible, did it not belong to the system of such party-government.[386] ‘For many years,’ says Rinuccini,[387] ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici was doing his best, by a series of laws and decrees, to ruin the great bank of the commonwealth, for the purpose of getting rid of its obligations for the payment of annuities and dowries, and obtaining arbitrary control over the State finances. For this work he selected in particular two helpers, Antonio di Bernardo and Ser Giovanni of Pratovecchio (chancellor of the Riformagioni), worthless fellows, who pointed out to him day by day the way to attain his object.’
Though the position of the Medici was secured for a time, their finances could not be set right. The banks of Lyons and Bruges, directed by Leonetti de’ Rossi, Francesco and Cosimo Sassetti, Tommaso Portinari, and others, only saved themselves by compounding with their creditors. Lorenzo’s correspondence shows what a vast deal of trouble these pecuniary embarrassments gave him, notwithstanding his levity in money-matters. As early as 1484 he had to write to de’ Rossi to insist on withdrawing the name of Medici from the Lyons firm before next Easter. Eighteen months after, he ordered the balance of the Bruges bank to be sent to him, in consequence of Portinari’s bad management. On one day, April 21, 1488, he despatched to the King of France, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon, the Seigneur du Bouchage, the Bishop of Valence, and others, no less than seventeen letters relating to the Lyons bank and Francesco Sassetti, after whose death in 1490 Lorenzo Spinelli took the direction of the Medici’s financial interests in France.[388] It was inevitable that there should be a vehement outcry against this disorder. Many foreigners who had placed their money in the banks sustained heavy losses, and on the violent overthrow of the Medici, when their palace was plundered at the entry of Charles VIII., the king’s quarter-master, the seigneur de Balassat, who had given the signal for the plundering, defended himself on the plea that the Medici bank of Lyons owed him large sums.[389] One of the sufferers by these shameful money-dealings was a man who had done much for Lorenzo, and who, on his side, was influenced in his relations with him and his business agents by a consideration of the advantages which Lorenzo’s political position might give him. This was Philippe de Commines, who, at one of the most critical moments of his life, was greatly injured by the pecuniary difficulties of the Medici and their unwillingness or inability to meet their obligations. After the death of Louis XI., Commines, who had been an instrument of the king’s tyranny and enriched by his confiscations, was first sent away from court for taking part in the intrigues of the Princes against the Regent, Anne de Beaujeu; then shut up in one of the iron cages at Loches; and, in the spring of 1488, sentenced by the Parliament to lose a fourth part of his property, and find security for ten thousand crowns. He found it impossible to realise his demands on the Medici bank and liquidate the sums which he had deposited there since 1478 through Louis’ confidant Du Bouchage, and part of which had been employed in 1486 to support the opposition against the Regent.[390] Even when Commines, set free from his worst embarrassments, was again on the way to political influence, these difficulties remained, and a letter from Lorenzo to him[391] gives a glimpse into the financial troubles of the Medici.
‘Illustrious Sir,’ so runs the letter, ‘I have received your lordship’s letter, and my mind is penetrated with grief at learning into what a state of irritation Cosimo Sassetti’s last statement of accounts has put you. My regret would be still greater could I imagine that you doubt the sentiments of my house towards you, whereas I am for many reasons so deeply indebted to you that I should deserve to be called the most ungrateful of men if I paid you now in any coin but such as I owe you for the numerous benefits received from you in good and evil days. When in my inmost mind I examine my obligations, I can assure your lordship that neither by me nor by any of mine shall anything be done which might indispose you towards me or give you an unfavourable opinion of me. If Cosimo Sassetti’s expressions with regard to your lordship’s interests should produce such an unhappy effect, I should be most deeply grieved, as it would be contrary to the true position of affairs and my earnest intentions. I do indeed confess, and your lordship knows it, that for some time past our Lyons house has suffered such heavy losses that it was impossible to conceal them from my present or former business friends, of whom your lordship is one, and not to complain of them as Cosimo has done. This may have made a bad impression on you; but you may rest assured that there is really no occasion for difference between us, for you can always dispose, not only of the sum in dispute between you and Cosimo, but of my whole means as if they were your own. I therefore beg your lordship to put faith in me, that this matter may be ended and leave no cloud between us. For your lordship’s friendship, whether in prosperity or adversity, is of more value to me than any sum of money.’
In spite of all these assurances, Commines’ demands were discharged in what he considered a very inadequate manner (apointement bien mègre).[392] Nothing but the high value which he set on the friendship of the Medici induced him to keep quiet. ‘I believe,’ wrote Lorenzo Spinelli to Lorenzo at the close of 1491,[393] ‘the Sieur d’Argenton will remain our friend. In order not to make him angry, I have always told him that if God gives us grace to do well in business and make up some of the losses we sustained in Leonetto’s time, you will give him his share. I am of opinion that this hope will induce him to further your interests, if he puts faith in my words.’ Spinelli was right. Commines’ humour was likewise influenced by the favourable turn which his affairs took after the agreement between the young king Charles VIII. and the Princes, in the beginning of September 1491. His last letter to Lorenzo,[394] dated January 13, 1492, and signed ‘more than entirely yours’ (plus que tout vostre), treats not of money-matters, but of Charles’ marriage with the heiress of Britanny, of the differences with Maximilian and England, and of the Duke of Lorraine’s attempt on Metz, which it had been hoped might be gained by treachery and surprise; a prelude to the treachery and surprise in which a French king succeeded but too well little more than a century later.