Authors: Miles J. Unger
As roads that had been turned to mud by the winter rains began to firm up in the spring sunshine, the mercenary armies once again unlimbered and prepared to fight it out over the rolling hills of Tuscany. The second season of the war began on a high note with a victory by Florentine forces near Lake Trasimene, where more than 1,500 years earlier Hannibal had decimated the Roman legions. But the army that had barely held together in the first season of the war now threatened to come apart at the seams. Following the successful battle, Mantuan soldiers under Federico Gonzaga and the Ferrarans under Ercole d’Este came to blows over the distribution of booty, creating such bad blood that the Ten was forced to reorganize the two contingents into separate armies. Both of Lorenzo’s principal allies remained distracted, Venice by the advance of the Ottomans in the Aegean, Milan by a simmering rebellion in Genoa. Desultory attempts to broker a peace agreement were scuttled by Sixtus, who remained opposed to any deal that would leave Lorenzo in power. Lorenzo even agreed to go to Rome and beg the pope’s forgiveness if it would bring a speedy end to hostilities, but this offer led to nothing.
In Florence the situation grew more desperate as summer approached. Rats and other vermin multiplied along the marshy banks of the Arno, spreading plague among the poorer neighborhoods of the city. “I hear the plague is committing more ravages in Florence than usual,” wrote a worried Clarice to her husband. “Your wife and children pray with all their might that you will take care of yourself, and if you can, with due precaution, come here [to Trebbio] and see the festival we should be greatly consoled.” The threat of epidemic was increased by the fact that many of those accustomed to spending the summer months in their country villas were driven back inside city walls by the fighting, making the overcrowded, overheated streets a breeding ground for pestilence. In the crowded tenements where the wool-workers lived it was the malnourished who were struck down first, but in a city where rich and poor lived and worked in close proximity no one was spared. “To make matters worse, the plague continues to spread,” Lorenzo reported to Girolamo Morelli, “and we have all been exposed: this morning a victim was buried in the cemetery of this church, and we, not knowing this, walked around and over the grave for more than an hour. But this is the least of our worries.”
In August 1479, Lorenzo fell ill with a high fever that neither of his personal physicians, Moses the Jew and Stefano della Torre, could cure. Fortunately, the illness was not the plague but the less lethal malarial fever. On September 18, when he again wrote to Morelli, he had still not recovered: “I have written you a long discourse and since I still have a little fever, it isn’t strange if I talk a little nonsense.”
With no end to the war in sight, morale in the city sank ever deeper. The majority of Florentines continued to back Lorenzo, but not without growing murmurs of discontent. “The citizens accused one another freely and without respect,” wrote Machiavelli: “they brought out the errors committed in the war; they showed the expenses made in vain, the taxes unjustly imposed. Such things were spoken of not only within the circles of private individuals but spiritedly in the public councils. And there was one so bold as to turn to Lorenzo de’ Medici and say to him: ‘This city is weary and wants no more war.’”
One event, while throwing the alliance into temporary turmoil, held out some hope for the future. On September 7, 1479, Lodovico Sforza secretly entered Milan to meet with his sister-in-law, the Duchess Bona, and to hammer out an agreement that would end months of near civil war. Bona agreed to step aside as regent in favor of Lodovico in return for a promise that he would ultimately honor his nephew GianGaleazzo’s claim to the ducal throne. Both got what they wanted most from the bargain: Bona security for her son, who would now enjoy the protection of his uncle; Lodovico effective rule over the duchy of Milan until his sickly nephew reached the age of maturity. The only one unhappy with the result was Bona’s chief minister, Cicco Simonetta, who upon hearing of the bargain his mistress had struck, lamented “You have taken a decision that will take my life from me and your state from you.” These words proved prophetic as Lodovico quickly disposed of his rival by chopping off his head.
Shortly after Lodovico—known as il Moro (the Moor) because of his swarthy complexion—took power, Lorenzo wrote an optimistic note to his ambassador in the city: “I cannot believe that the Lord Lodovico being all-powerful and an absolute ruler will consent to our undoing, because it would be against his interest. He is by nature kindly and has never received any injury from us either public or private…. Therefore as soon as you can it would be well to see His Lordship and demonstrate to him that on account of ancient friendship we expect nothing but good from him.”
In the meantime, however, the military situation had deteriorated. Early in September, Alfonso, the duke of Calabria, routed Florentine forces at Poggio Imperiale, driving them back to San Casciano, only eight miles from Florence. The war might have ended then and there had Alfonso pursued the defeated army to the city gates. Instead he decided to secure his lines by laying siege to the little town of Colle Val d’Elsa. This village, whose loyalty to Florence was directly proportional to her enmity toward her neighbor Siena, mounted a surprisingly stiff resistance. Alfonso finally succeeded in subduing Colle on November 12, but with winter approaching he proposed the usual seasonal truce—an offer the demoralized Florentines quickly accepted.
Taking stock of the situation, Lorenzo and the rest of the Ten could congratulate themselves on having narrowly averted disaster, but myriad and apparently insurmountable problems remained. Not the least of their worries was the prospect of famine, since much of the city’s food production had been put out of commission by the fighting. Adding to the threat of hunger was the related threat of the plague, a disease that thrived in circumstances of misery and deprivation. For Lorenzo this was a period of darkest gloom. The attempt to overthrow his government that had apparently miscarried so badly in April of 1478 might now well succeed unless through some bold stroke he could reverse course and instill new hope in his long-suffering people.
On December 7, 1479, a courier arrived at the
Palazzo della Signoria
bearing an urgent message for the Priors.
*
It came from Lorenzo and contained news that both startled and dismayed the leaders of the city. He had written the letter in the town of San Miniato, halfway along the road to Pisa, where he had gone in secret the day before. Addressing the leading members of the government, Lorenzo revealed his thoughts on the current crisis and laid out the bold steps he now proposed to bring the war to a speedy conclusion. “Most Illustrious My Lords,” he began,
If I have not already informed Your Illustrious Excellencies of the reason for my departure it is not out of presumption but because it seems to me that the troubled state of our city demands deeds, not words. Since it appears to me that the city longs for and demands peace, and seeing no one else willing to undertake it, it seemed better to place myself in some peril than to further endanger the city. And so I have decided that with the blessing of Your Illustrious Lordships I will travel openly to Naples. Because I am the one most persecuted by our enemies, I believe that by placing myself in their hands I can be the means necessary to restore peace to our city…. If His Majesty the King intends to take from us our liberties, it seems to me better to know it as soon as possible, and that only one should suffer and not the rest. And I am most glad to take that role myself for two reasons: first because since I am the chief target of our enemies’ hatred I can more easily discover the King’s intention, since it may well be that they seek nothing but to harm me; the other is that having received more honors and benefits from our city—not only more than I deserve but, perhaps, more than any other citizen in our day—I owe a greater debt than any other man to my country, even if I should have to sacrifice my life. It is thus with a good heart that I depart, knowing that perhaps it is God’s will that this war that began with the blood of my brother and myself should be brought to an end by my own hand. My greatest wish is that by my life or by my death, by my misfortune or my prosperity, I should make a contribution to the good of the city. I shall therefore follow the course I have set out, and if it succeeds as I wish and hope it shall, I shall have served my country and saved myself. Should, on the other hand, evil befall me, I will not mourn if it benefits our city, as it certainly must; for if our adversaries wish nothing but to seize me I shall already be in their hands, and if they want something else we shall soon know it. It is certain that our citizens will unite to protect their liberty, so that by the grace of God they will come to its defense as our fathers always did. I go full of hope, and with no other goal in mind than the good of the city, and I pray God to give me grace to perform what is the duty of every man towards his country. I commend myself humbly to Your Most Excellent Lordships.
—From San Miniato on the 7th day of December 1479.
Your Excellencies’ Servant,
Laurentius de Medicis.
From the moment Lorenzo set out, accompanied only by his secretary, Niccolò Michelozzi, and a couple of servants, his journey to Naples entered the realm of mythology. There is no doubt that Lorenzo carefully calibrated his words and choreographed events to create a sense of drama he knew would appeal to his compatriots. By stressing humility, self-sacrifice, and patriotism, he reversed the downward spiral of public opinion in which he was increasingly viewed as the cause of his people’s suffering, recasting himself through this single bold stroke as a martyr for Florence.
But in recognizing the calculating and theatrical element in the enterprise one should not lose sight of the courage it took to hazard all on a virtually solitary voyage into enemy territory. Guicciardini conveyed the judgment of many of his contemporaries when he said it was “regarded as too bold and rash a decision, for he put himself in the hands of a king by nature treacherous, unstable and bitterly opposed to him,” though, he concludes, “it was justified by his and the city’s need for peace.” As Lorenzo made his way to the port of Pisa, where he awaited the arrival of a galley from the king of Naples, all eyes were on him alone. His journey seems to belong in one of those mythical tales where two contending armies stand aside to let their champions determine the outcome in single combat. The armies, hunkered down in their winter camps, suddenly became irrelevant; whether the people of Italy would enjoy the fruits of peace or be forced to endure seasons of war without end would be decided in a meeting of two men, each with reason to distrust and resent the other.
What lay behind Lorenzo’s bold stroke? Above all it was a daring gambit whose success depended on Lorenzo’s understanding of the geopolitical situation and, perhaps more important, on his ability to size up the character of the men involved. By the second winter of the war it was clear to Lorenzo that something had to be done to change the direction of a conflict that was strangling the republic by slow degrees. Peace, he knew, could never come from the hands of Sixtus, whose hatred for him bordered on irrational obsession. And Federico da Montefeltro was merely a servant of the pope and would do his master’s bidding. That left Ferrante as the weak link in the alliance.
Perhaps most significantly for Lorenzo it shifted the contest away from areas where he had little experience or aptitude—such as in financial administration or military strategy—and onto ground where he felt more comfortable. Face-to-face with his rival he had every confidence he could persuade the king to see things his way. But Lorenzo was not relying solely on his charm to win the king over. As he contemplated a strategy that would draw the two principal allies apart, two factors were working in his favor. The first was that Naples and the Papal States were natural rivals; the more likely it seemed that Sixtus would prevail in central Italy, the more Ferrante had to fear from papal domination of the peninsula. If Florence became a puppet of Rome, Sixtus would bestride Italy like a colossus, reducing Ferrante to the status of a puny vassal. A second factor was the continuing advance of the Ottomans, who, having overrun the eastern shore of the Adriatic, were now but a few miles from the Italian mainland. Only by bringing the war to a swift conclusion and turning the united forces of the Italian powers against the Turks could the king hope to repel invasion.
Lorenzo had in fact been laying the groundwork for months. Late in November he had sent Filippo Strozzi on a secret mission to Naples.
*
Filippo recalled the journey in his memoirs:
The situation of affairs appeared serious to all, especially to Lorenzo de’ Medici, on whose account, as they said, war was made. The aforesaid Lorenzo sent me to Naples. On November 24 I set out, to say to the king’s majesty, he threw himself entirely into his arms, and would willingly agree to that which his majesty wished, whether the king should decide on high or low, within or without, provided he restored peace to the city and gave up the places he had taken. I found the king hunting at Arnone [at the mouth of the Volturno]. After I had delivered my message, he answered me that he had later news: Lorenzo would come in person, and so we must wait to see what will result from his visit.
Lorenzo was also being pressured by his allies to seek an end to hostilities. “I have received many friendly words from [Alfonso] the Duke of Calabria for many months,” Lorenzo revealed to Girolamo Morelli in September, “and much encouragement to throw myself into the king’s arms, he attempting to show me that only in this manner can I save myself and the state…. It is good that Lord Lodovico should know these things, and that if he wishes to save us, he must take up the matter with more energy and act with more decision.”