As long as the oligarchical government was successful, there was little prospect of its overthrow, but from 1421 its credit steadily declined. The reunion of the |War with Filippo Maria Visconti.| Milanese territories under Filippo Maria Visconti constituted a serious menace to Florence, and the imperative duty of self-defence compelled the republic to embark once more in a desperate struggle for existence. In 1424 the Florentine army, under Pandolfo Malatesta, was defeated with great loss in the battle of Zagonara. A despairing appeal was made to Venice for assistance, and the intervention of Carmagnola saved Florence from annihilation. But the spoils of victory were monopolised by Venice, and the aggrandisement of their ally was by no means popular with the Florentines. The power of the oligarchy had rested upon the success of their foreign policy, and alarming discontent was the inevitable result of an unsuccessful war. Two important measures were resorted to in the hope of restoring the prestige of the dominant faction. The heavy expenses of the war had called attention to the old grievance of arbitrary taxation, and in 1427 a reform was introduced to provide a more |The Catasto of 1427.| equitable basis of assessment. According to Machiavelli, the acceptance of the Catasto, as it was called, was due to the influence of Giovanni de’ Medici. Every citizen was to report to the gonfalonier of his district his whole income from every source; and concealment was to be punished by confiscation. From fixed capital the income was to be estimated at seven per cent. These reports were to be collected into four books, one for each quarter of the city; and henceforth the assessment of taxation was to be determined by them instead of depending upon a man’s political position and opinions. As wealth fluctuated rapidly in a mercantile community, a new catasto was to be made every three years. It was a notable sacrifice on the part of the ruling clique, and probably tended to weaken their unanimity, but it helped to pacify public opinion for a time. Rinaldo degli Albizzi now came forward with a new scheme for restoring the credit of his party. Ever since the days of |Attack upon Lucca, 1430.| Castruccio Castracani, the annexation of Lucca had been a darling object of Florentine ambition. Lucca was, at this time, ruled by one of its own citizens—Paolo Guinigi—who had sided with Milan in the recent war. Rinaldo proposed to treat this as a pretext for attacking Lucca. It was in vain that Niccolo da Uzzano pointed out the risks of the enterprise. Giovanni de’ Medici was dead, and his son Cosimo supported the proposal of Rinaldo. His conduct on this occasion has exposed him to the suspicion that he foresaw the failure of the enterprise, and was willing to ruin his opponent even at the expense of the state. War was declared in 1430, and Rinaldo degli Albizzi was appointed one of the commissioners to superintend the siege of Lucca. The enterprise was as unsuccessful as it was unjust, and its failure was ultimately fatal to the party in power. Rinaldo, unjustly accused of peculation, threw up his command in disgust. The duke of Milan was drawn into the war, and the two most famous condottieri of the day—Francesco Sforza and Niccolo Piccinino—were employed in his service. After suffering serious reverses in the field, the Florentines were glad to accept the mediation of the emperor Sigismund, and in 1433 peace was made, leaving things as they were before the war.

But no treaty could restore the previous conditions within the city. Niccolo da Uzzano had died in 1432, and his death |Expulsion of the Medici, 1433.| deprived his party of their strongest support, while it removed the moderating influence on their conduct. Cosimo de’ Medici was at once more ambitious and less cautious than his father, and he and Rinaldo degli Albizzi were now avowed rivals for ascendency. The latter, conscious of his growing weakness, determined to have recourse to violence. In September 1433, when the signoria was composed of Rinaldo’s adherents, Cosimo de’ Medici was summoned to appear before the magistrates, and was imprisoned while his fate was deliberated upon. For some time it was generally expected that he would be put to death. But the wealth which his father had collected stood him in good stead, and his judges were not proof against corruption. The majority decided for a milder sentence. Cosimo was banished for ten years to Padua, and his brother Lorenzo for five years to Venice. Most of their prominent adherents shared their exile, and the Medici were declared incapable of holding any office in Florence.

The victory of Albizzi seemed to be assured when Cosimo went into exile in October 1433. The ordinary machinery of a Florentine coup d’état had been set in motion. The people had been convened in the piazza, and had approved the appointment of a balia or revolutionary committee. But by a strange oversight on the part of so experienced a partisan, Rinaldo had failed to obtain for this committee the right of refilling the bags with the names of candidates for office. The result was that the weakness of his position was only slightly modified. His own party was divided and inclined to be mutinous because the catasto was not abolished. And the alienation of public opinion by military failures could only be removed by some conspicuous success. In 1434 Florence became involved in a war in Romagna between Filippo Maria Visconti and the Pope. Again her troops were defeated in the field, and her ally, Eugenius IV., driven from Rome by the Colonnas, was forced to seek a refuge within her walls. In this moment of depression the accident of lot resulted in the formation of a signoria in September 1434, which was favourable to the Medici. Rinaldo |Recall of the Medici, 1434.| in his turn was summoned before a hostile magistracy, and he came accompanied by eight hundred armed men. But he lost the favourable opportunity for overawing his opponents by consenting to an interview with Eugenius IV., who had offered his mediation. This delay proved fatal. The popolo minuto took up arms and surrounded the piazza; while the signoria called in armed peasants from the country. The parliament created a balia in the interests of the party, which had for the moment the upper hand. The Medici and Alberti families were recalled and declared eligible for office. Rinaldo degli Albizzi with his son and about seventy partisans were banished from Florence, and few of them ever returned to their native city. Cosimo de’ Medici, who was in Venice when the news of this sudden revolution reached him, re-entered Florence on October 6, 1434. For the next three centuries the history of Florence is bound up with the history of the house of Medici.

The ascendency which the dramatic events of 1433 and 1434 gave to Cosimo de’ Medici was not only retained |Character of Medicean Rule.| during his life, but became for a time a hereditary possession. Yet it is impossible to point to any great apparent change in the constitution. The old magistracies and councils continued to exist and to fulfil their former functions. Cosimo was extremely careful to avoid any outward signs of despotism. He continued to live in his former residence; and nothing in his dress or his manner of life distinguished him from his fellow-citizens. Like his defeated rival, he surrounded himself with a sort of body-guard of allied families, whose interests he skilfully identified with his own. To all appearance this was as much an oligarchy as the government which it had displaced. The difference is to be found in two points. On the one hand Cosimo was enabled, partly by his wealth, and partly by his extensive foreign connections, to exercise a far stronger control over his adherents and over the state than either Maso or Rinaldo degli Albizzi had ever been able to wield. And, on the other hand, the influential families who rose to power under Cosimo did not represent the domination of a class as the rule of the Albizzi had done. The Medici never forgot that they owed their original rise to their championship of democratic equality; and they were careful to avoid any unnecessary collision with the prejudices of the mob. Even a disguised despotism must aim at the obliteration of classes, and this can be clearly traced in the policy of Cosimo. He transferred several families from the lesser to the greater guilds, and thus obscured a distinction which had been at one time of supereminent importance. And he even procured the repeal of the disqualifications against the old nobility on which the foundations of the historic municipality had been built.

It is not difficult to trace the methods by which Cosimo maintained the power which had fallen into his hands. He had two primary objects to attain: he must prevent |Methods of Cosimo’s Government.| the more important offices from falling into the hands of malcontents, and he must diminish their number by bringing home to them the hardships and dangers of opposition and the rewards that were to be gained by loyalty. Cosimo boasted of the humanity of his rule, and he was always careful to intrust to his followers the initiation of harsh proposals. But his policy was really one of proscription. The Albizzi and their allies were treated with the greatest severity. Not only were they banished, but their place of exile was constantly changed, and they were hunted about Italy like wild beasts. It was no wonder that their patriotism gave way to a desire for revenge, and they joined the duke of Milan against their native city. But the battle of Anghiari in 1440 destroyed all hope of success, while their treason gave a pretext for more merciless treatment. The financial administration was employed to the same ends. The catasto of 1427 was abolished, and the system of arbitrary assessment was revived. This enabled Cosimo to reward his adherents and to punish malcontents. Giannozzo Mannetti, a harmless student, whose only offence was his popularity, was called upon to pay taxes to the amount of 135,000 florins, and could only avoid ruin by going into voluntary exile. It was a common saying that Cosimo employed the taxes, as northern princes used the dagger, to rid himself of his opponents.

For the regulation of offices Cosimo employed the revolutionary machinery which was in theory the ultimate enforcement of popular sovereignty. The balia which had recalled the Medici in 1434 had received from the parliament full power to reform the state. Every five years this power was renewed—in 1439, 1444, 1449, and 1454. The most important act of the balia was the appointment of ten accoppiatori to superintend the filling of the bags with the names of those who were eligible for office. This was in itself a fairly ample assurance that no opposition to the Medici could be anticipated from the magistracy; and to make it doubly sure, the names of the gonfalonier and priors were selected every two months by the accoppiatori. They were made, as the phrase went, not by lot, but by hand. But as time went on, this prolonged departure from normal procedure gave rise to grumbling; and as there were good reasons for avoiding at the moment any appearance of disunion in the city, Cosimo determined to yield. In 1455 the balia, which had been renewed the year before, was abolished, and the practice of drawing the names of the signoria was revived. The concession was more apparent than real; for the bags had only recently been refilled, and three years would elapse before a new squittinio would be necessary. For that time the ascendency of the Medici party was secure, and before it had elapsed measures might be taken to prolong it. But that the revival of liberty was of some moment is proved by the proposal in the signoria of January 1458 to restore the catasto. Cosimo’s partisans urged him to employ energetic measures to defeat a scheme which attacked their own pockets. But he was not unwilling to teach them how dependent they were upon his support, and he allowed the system of strict and impartial assessment to be revived.

There was one very obvious danger to which such a government as that of Cosimo de’ Medici was exposed. Jealousy and ill-will might arise among his intimate associates. It was his deliberate policy to place them in prominent positions, and they were perforce intrusted with the secrets of his administration. One or more of them might seek to use their experience for their own advancement and to free themselves from the control of their patron. This danger was partially realised in Cosimo’s later years, and serious difficulties arose from the same source in the time of his son. In 1458 it had become a grave question how far the revival of republican freedom should be allowed to go. The death of Alfonso of Naples removed one great motive for continuing the conciliatory policy of the last three years; and the appointment to the gonfaloniership of Luca Pitti, one of the oldest and closest of Cosimo’s adherents, gave the opportunity for decisive action. After careful precautions had been taken to control the avenues to the piazza and to impress the mob, a parliament was convened by the ringing the great bell of the Palazzo Publico. A balia |Coup d’état of 1458.| of 350 citizens, together with the existing signoria, was endowed with full authority. Accoppiatori were appointed to fill the bags, and a permanent committee, the Otto di Balia, received the control of the civic police. By a curious irony it was announced to the people that the priors should henceforth be called, not priori delle arti, but priori della Liberta. The name was chosen, says Machiavelli, to designate what had been lost.

But in this revolution to confirm the previous revolution Cosimo had carefully abstained from taking any active share. In the eyes of the mob the victorious politician |Luca Pitti.| was Luca Pitti, who seemed to himself, as to others, to overshadow his employer. Puffed up with ambition, he began to build the magnificent palace on the southern side of the Arno, which, afterwards the residence of the grand-dukes of Tuscany, and now the shrine of one of the greatest picture galleries in the world, has done more than any political achievement to preserve to posterity the name of its founder. Cosimo was probably convinced that little real danger was to be dreaded from Luca Pitti, and he made no attempt to alter or correct the popular impression. As long as his influence was really unimpaired he cared little who had the appearance and pomp of supremacy.

As a great banker, Cosimo de’ Medici was an important personage in many foreign courts, quite apart from his |Cosimo’s Foreign Policy.| political position in Florence. With very notable dexterity he played his two parts so as to make each improve the other. He employed his financial relations to strengthen his hold upon the strings of Florentine policy, and he utilised his political influence to increase his business and his profits. It is in foreign affairs far more than in domestic administration that he showed himself to be the real ruler of Florence. He inherited from the Albizzi a struggle against Filippo Maria Visconti and an alliance with Venice. As long as the duke of Milan threatened the independence of Florence, and especially when he espoused the cause of the exiled Albizzi, Cosimo could not safely depart from the traditional policy of Florence. But the death of Filippo Maria in 1447 and the establishment of a republic in Milan gave him more scope for originality. He had to choose between the aggrandisement of Venice in Lombardy, which must have been the inevitable result of the maintenance of the Milanese republic, and the erection of a military power in Milan which should hold Venice in check. Without any hesitation he decided for the latter alternative, and the later history of Italy was vitally influenced by his choice. The financial and other aid which he received from Florence was one of the most potent factors in enabling Francesco Sforza to obtain the lordship of Milan in 1450, and to conclude the treaty of Lodi with Venice in 1454.

Another hardly less momentous question for Italy arose after the death of Alfonso V. of Naples, when in 1460 the Angevin claim was revived in antagonism to Ferrante. Although Florence was closely allied with France by her Guelf traditions and her commercial interests, Cosimo was resolute in his support of Ferrante and in urging Francesco Sforza to do the same. Again his attitude helped to turn the scale in a struggle where, for a time, the balance was undecided. He just lived to hear of the retirement of John of Calabria, which secured the bastard house of Aragon from serious attack for the next thirty years. By his action in these two great crises Cosimo must be regarded as the real author of that triple alliance between Naples, Milan, and Florence, of which his grandson in later years made such a masterly use.