To conceal his true intent he wrote to the Senate, on the 28th of September, 1545, that he was in Piacenza to pay homage to the duke, and that he found nuncios coming there from all the Italian provinces. He therefore advised that the Republic should also send a representative. The Senate followed his advice, and charged him with the honourable office.
Although the galleys of which we have spoken had already been asked for by Pietro Strozzi, by Prince Adamo Centurione, and by Cardinal Sauli, for a nephew who had already paid a part of the price, yet the duke, knowing the use Gianluigi intended to make of them, gave him the preference. The purchase was effected on the 23rd of November, 1545. The galleys were named the Capitana, Vittoria, Santa Caterina and Padrona, and had on board, in addition to arms and equipments, three hundred persons condemned for life, one hundred and eighty-five for various terms of years, and one hundred and eighty Turkish and other slaves.
The price amounted to thirty-four thousand gold crowns, to be paid in several instalments; one third on delivery of the vessels, another on Lady day, 1546, and the last one year later. The deferred payments were secured upon the feud of Calestano, with the consent of Gianluigi’s brother Gerolamo, who was lord of that property.[36] The contracting parties were, on one side, Paolo Pietro Guidi, president of the ducal chamber, and Giovanni Battista Liberati, the duke’s treasurer; and the Count of Lavagna on the other. We must not omit, among the conditions of the sale, that three of the galleys were to remain for two years longer in the service of the Apostolic See, Count Fieschi receiving the Papal bonds held by Orazio Farnese.
The low price of the galleys is explained by this condition, in virtue of which they were bound to remain in the port of Civita Vecchia, and the count was obliged to provide for the maintenance and pay of the officers and crews without deriving any advantage from the ownership. Gianluigi assigned the command to Giulio Pojano, who had also commanded them under Orazio Farnese when the emperor undertook the war of Algiers.
We are not able to decide with certainty whether, after this purchase, the count went to Rome, as some affirm. We find however that Duke Pierluigi, having proclaimed a tournament in Piacenza to take place on the 21st of February, 1546, and requested that the ladies of his feudatories should also attend, the countess Eleanora, as well as many others, complied with the invitation and was presented by her husband to the duke, who now treated Gianluigi as his equal.
Duke Farnese announced another tournament for the autumn of the same year, to celebrate the marriage of Faustina Sforza with Muzio Visconti Sforza, marquis of Caravaggio. At this festival the flower of the Italian nobility was gathered together; and in the tournament of the 20th of October, 1546, Nicolò Pusterla and Count Fieschi obtained the highest honours.
It is not known what means the duke intended to employ for carrying out the contemplated revolution. Perhaps both Fieschi and Farnese were yet undecided. It is not impossible (we have strong testimony for the theory) that they waited, with the hope of enlisting on their side one who had even more audacity and strength than themselves, and who would have brought no mean forces into the alliance.
One of those reformers who makes centuries glorious was maturing a scheme of greater scope than that of Fieschi. Francesco Burlamacchi, born of a noble house in Lucca, had conceived the lofty design of revolutionizing, under popular auspices, the Tuscan cities oppressed by Cosimo; allying them to the still surviving republics of Lucca and Siena; embracing in the new nation Perugia, which since 1540 had maintained itself under popular government against the Papacy; taking away from the Apostolic See the temporal power, and restoring the church to the consecrated poverty of the Gospel.
He confided in the popular discontent at domestic and foreign tyranny, and not less in the reformed doctrines which were advocated by the most distinguished Italians, especially by those of Lucca. He proposed his scheme to his friends and sought partisans among the Florentine exiles, the faction of the Strozzi, and even among the German Lutherans who had at their head Phillip Landgrave of Hesse, and Frederick, duke of Saxony. Impatient of delay, he went in person to Venice, then the asylum of the Tuscan and Genoese exiles, and solicited their coöperation. He made an arrangement with Leone Strozzi, prior of Capua, by which the latter agreed to support the enterprize; but Strozzi thought it wiser to procrastinate until the result of the Germanic war should be known.
Burlamacchi, having been created commissary of ordnance at Montagna, resolved to undertake his daring enterprize without waiting longer for foreign aid. He intended to rouse the people to arms, march rapidly upon Pisa—whose fortress, commanded by Vincenzo del Poggio, would be opened to him without bloodshed—to capture Florence, and thence spread the generous fire of liberty over the Peninsula.