“During this scene in the cathedral, the Archbishop Salviati, with a strong band of conspirators, attempted, as had been concerted, to seize the palace of the signiory and the persons of the magistrates. After filling the outer apartments with his followers, the archbishop obtained by his rank an easy admission to the presence of the gonfaloniere and priors who were sitting. But instead of immediately attacking them he hesitated; and his manner betrayed so much confusion, that the suspicion of the gonfaloniere being excited, he rushed from the hall and assembled the guards and servants of the palace. The doors were secured, and the conspirators were furiously assaulted by the magistrates and their attendants with such motley weapons and instruments as the furniture of the palace afforded. Dispersed and intimidated, they made but a feeble resistance, and were all either slaughtered on the spot, hurled from the windows, or made prisoners. Jacopo de’ Pazzi, followed by a troop of soldiery, attempted to succour them, after an abortive effort to excite the citizens to revolt by crying liberty through the streets. But the magistrates held the palace until numerous citizens came to their aid, and Jacopo, seeing that the game was lost, fled into the country.
“The fate of most of the conspirators was not long delayed. The Archbishop Salviati was hanged from a window of the public palace, even in his prelatical robes. Francesco de’ Pazzi, who, exhausted by loss of blood from his self–inflicted wound, had been obliged to confine himself to his uncle’s house, was dragged from his bed, and suspended from the same place of execution. Jacopo himself, being discovered and arrested in the country by the peasantry, was brought into the city a few days afterwards, and similarly executed, with another of his nephews, whose knowledge of the conspiracy was his only crime, for he had refused to engage in it: and the whole of the devoted family of the Pazzi were condemned to exile, except Guglielmo, the brother–in–law of Lorenzo. The priests who had attacked Lorenzo, the condottiere Montesecco, and above seventy inferior persons besides, suffered death; and even Bernardo Bandini, though he escaped for a time to Constantinople, paid the forfeit of his crimes; for Lorenzo had sufficient interest with Mahomet II. to cause him to be seized and sent to Florence for execution. The young Cardinal Riario, rather an instrument than an accomplice in the conspiracy, was with difficulty saved by Lorenzo from being torn to pieces by the fury of the Florentine mob; but his attendants were mercilessly butchered by them.”
The conspiracy of the Pazzi strikingly displayed the absoluteness of the Medician dominion over the will and affections of the people of Florence. So far from shewing any disposition to join the Pazzi in revolt, the populace were filled with grief and fury at the murder of Giuliano, and at the peril in which Lorenzo had stood. They had flown to arms to defend the Medici: and they paraded Florence for whole days to commit every outrage upon the dead bodies of the conspirators which still defiled the streets. The cry of “Palle, Palle!” the armorial device of the Medici,[186] continually resounded through the city; and the memory of the tragedy wherein Giuliano had fallen, was always associated in the public mind with a deepened and affectionate interest for the safety of Lorenzo, and with an attachment to his person which lasted to his death.
We might perhaps search history in vain to find two families, whose fortunes, whose dispositions, and even whose tastes were so faithfully reflected in each other, as those of Pisistratus and Cosmo de’ Medici. If we consider the younger Medici as immediately succeeding to their grandfather (and the concession is not important, for in the interval no political changes occurred in Florence), the resemblance between their fortunes, so far as we have traced them, is perfect. The founders of either house, after similar reverses, established tyrannies in their native cities, and yet lived and died beloved and respected by their countrymen, and delivered their usurped sovereignty peaceably to their successors. These successors were in either case two brothers, who instead of running the usual course of jealousy and discord, exercised their joint power for years in harmony, and were at length separated by conspiracies which succeeded against the one, only to render more despotic the sway of the other. With respect to personal character, the resemblance between Pisistratus and Cosmo de’ Medici has been fully dwelt upon. That between the brothers their descendants is necessarily less completely made out, for we know very little of the political conduct of the two Athenians; but we may observe the same hereditary love of art and literature, the same absence of jealousy, and the same superiority of one brother over the other in the cultivation of learning. The resemblance of their histories, so far as we have traced that of the Medici, fails only in one respect: the death of Hipparchus was due to his own intemperance, the murder of Giuliano de’ Medici to the arbitrary measures of his brother.
