Magnifico (25 page)

Preserving the delicate balance between old and new families, great merchants and simple shopkeepers, required all of Lorenzo’s tact. A few days after his accession to power the Milanese ambassador offered Lorenzo these words of advice: “Among other things [he reported to Duke Galeazzo] I told Lorenzo that he must be able to show the leading citizens that he is of a different nature than his father, who wanted always to show his superiority…and to do it in such a way that others will not feel he has his foot on their throats.” Lorenzo had already expressed similar reservations about Piero’s methods, and announced his intention to “follow his grandfather’s example and use, as much as possible, constitutional methods.” But it was more a matter of style than substance. In the intimate world of Florentine politics success depended on one’s ability to cultivate friendships and soothe easily bruised egos. Piero, a man of many virtues, fell short in those vital interpersonal skills. Lorenzo’s future would depend on his ability to cajole, persuade, mollify, and sometimes play off one ambitious ego against another; it was a role that required an ability to judge the strengths and weaknesses of his rivals, qualities that Lorenzo had learned above all from his grandfather. His long apprenticeship as his father’s right-hand man had given him a keen appreciation of the subtleties of politics in Florence, and throughout that period,
principali
like Manno Temperani, Rodolfo Pandolfini, and Tommaso Soderini had an opportunity to take their measure of the youth and had determined he was someone they could work with.

Perhaps equally important, they had concluded they could not work with each other, preferring to give supreme power to an untested youth than to one of their rivals. Lorenzo was the beneficiary of the mutual jealousies and suspicions that divided the magnates. It was an inherently unstable situation in which coalitions, quickly formed and quickly broken, constantly threatened the fragile consensus that had lifted Lorenzo to power.

There is no single word to describe Lorenzo’s status. Fifteenth-century Florentines sometimes likened him to a “master of the shop,” a familiar term in a city of craftsmen and merchants. The phrase conveys something of the intimate, informal nature of a relationship between a paternalistic boss and his employees. Like any good master, Lorenzo was expected to run the city for the benefit of all and to know each of his underlings by name. Florentines expected to have a personal relationship with their leaders, and even the man at the top could not avoid being collared on the street by the least of his subjects and forced to listen while they filled his ears with a long list of complaints.

Some modern historians have likened the various heads of the Medici household to Mafia dons,
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ruling the city through terror and intimidation while pocketing profits from their corrupt enterprises. Others eulogize the Medici as altruistic statesmen and patrons of the arts, reluctantly shouldering the burdens of government for the sake of their country—less interested in power than in nurturing masterpieces of art and literature.
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Those seduced by the glories of Renaissance Florence often paint too uncritical a picture of the family whose name has become synonymous with enlightened artistic patronage (and even here their behavior was hardly disinterested), but the first analogy is clearly inadequate. Unlike the fictional Don Corleone or Tony Soprano, and resembling even less real-life thugs like John Gotti, the Medici were not bosses of a parasitic organization that leeched off the otherwise healthy body politic. Unofficial parties of the kind they set up were essential to the proper functioning of the government. Without the sinew provided by the Medici and their allies—or by the Albizzi and theirs before them—the government lacked the strength to enforce its legitimate will.

The origins of Florence’s weak constitutional government are to be found in the medieval city. The merchants who had established the commune in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had been so concerned about the potential for tyranny that they weakened government institutions to the point of debility—making it easy prey for exactly those would-be tyrants they had feared. Rotating men in and out of office before they had a chance to familiarize themselves with their duties made it difficult for them to seize power, but it also made it next to impossible to develop consistent policies or strategies. Foreign ambassadors and heads of state were driven to despair by a government that could not seem to make up its mind or follow through on a policy once adopted. Sacramoro was only one of many ambassadors who complained about the difficulties of dealing with the Florentine government. In the midst of the Rimini War, when the seriousness of the situation demanded swift action, the proposal to renew the contract of the
condottiere
Roberto di Sanseverino made its leisurely round from committee to committee with no one apparently willing or able to take responsibility. “Today the proposal went before the
Signoria
and the Colleges according to their constitution and the council of Twenty,” wrote Sacramoro in frustration, “then it was put before the Council of 100…tomorrow it will be attempted to place it before the Council of the People.”

Exasperating as all this was, Lorenzo, like his father and grandfather before him, could not extinguish these myriad bodies that allowed a majority of citizens at least a nominal role in their own government, and he resisted the advice of foreigners (including Sacramoro himself) to abolish them and set himself up as despot. To the citizens of Florence, inefficiency was the very essence of their liberty and they resisted any changes to the letter of their constitution, preferring instead the evasions and obfuscations that characterized the Medici regime.
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Lorenzo’s political honeymoon was brief. The sense of common purpose that had been so impressive on the night of December 2 quickly disintegrated under the pressure of events. Florence’s two key allies, Naples and Milan, continued to bicker and, like children in a messy divorce, the Florentines were pulled this way and that in a bitter contest of wills. By late December 1469, the rift was so serious that a conference of the three allies was hastily organized in Florence to try to resolve their differences. But far from bringing the two rivals closer together the conference merely served as a platform from which the ambassadors could hurl accusations at each other at closer range. The critical rupture came in late March. Responding to rumors that Ferrante was involved in secret negotiations with Venice, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, much to the consternation of Lorenzo and most Florentines, suddenly withdrew his delegates from the conference. It was for many Florentines merely the latest act of bad faith on the part of an ally who always showed himself ready to sacrifice his friends to expedience. (In the Colleonic War, for instance, Sforza had practically extorted money from the republic in return for his services, which were in any case so incompetently rendered that they would have been too expensive had they been given for free.) On April 11, 1470, the Neapolitans followed suit. Florentines formed themselves into two distinct and hostile political camps: war “hawks” favored the Neapolitans, who wished to pursue the Rimini War with vigor, and the “doves” favored Milan’s demands for an early peace. Lorenzo, who would have preferred to be guided by the collective wisdom of the
reggimento,
now found the leading men divided against themselves.

New to his position and still unsure of himself, he leaned heavily on his uncle Tomasso. While Sacramoro warned him that Soderini’s interests were not necessarily his own, Lorenzo had a hard time convincing himself that his uncle would pursue any policy at odds with the interests of the Medici family. Soderini had backed Lorenzo at the most critical moment and had earned his gratitude. From the beginning he was Lorenzo’s most trusted advisor and, according to many, the real power behind the throne. The consumate political insider, Soderini thrived in the chaos that resulted from the collapse of the triple alliance, using the atmosphere of crisis to shore up his own influence with Lorenzo and increase his leverage within the inner circle.
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But as he consolidated his position he aroused resentment among the other magnates, who were put off by his conspiratorial ways and tendency to gorge himself at the public trough.

Respected and even feared, Soderini was not well liked. Alessandra Strozzi once declared that Soderini walked about the city with “honey in his mouth and a knife in his belt,” and there is no evidence that the years had mellowed his passion for political skullduggery. Colleagues who had recently helped him smooth the way for Lorenzo, particularly Luigi Guicciardini and Antonio Ridolfi, now felt they had been shunted aside. Jealous of his unique standing with the new ruler of Florence, they now sought every means to bring him down. It did not take them long to find an opportunity. Soderini’s propensity to mingle private affairs with public funds, a practice common to all Florentine politicians but one in which Soderini was known to be particularly adept, opened him to the charge of corruption. In an effort to embarrass him in the eyes of Lorenzo and the wider public, his rivals in the government exposed some of the shady practices by which the republic’s treasure had found its way into his pockets. It was a scandal that might have finished the career of a lesser man, but Soderini was too shrewd a player to allow himself to be so easily sidelined. Returning the disputed money, he now struck back, pushing an ordinance through the
Otto di Guardia
(Florence’s security apparatus, which he had filled with his own partisans), banishing his chief opponents from Florence.

Having outmaneuvered his enemies, Soderini now set his sights on Lorenzo, the one man in Florence whose prestige rivaled his own. The confrontation between the two marks not only an important moment in the education of the young ruler of Florence, but is an episode that sheds much light on the backstairs intrigue that Florentine politicians had long ago mastered.
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Its resolution in Lorenzo’s favor, surprising to many who noted the wide discrepancy in the two combatants’ experience, reveals a natural instinct for the political game.

The confrontation came over the Florentine response to the rift that had opened up between Naples and Milan. After months of prevaricating in which no one, including the Milanese ambassador, could say which side Tommaso Soderini was on, he tipped his hand at a meeting held April 11, 1470, the very day the Neapolitan delegation was set to leave Florence. Arguing that Milan was to blame, he now proposed a new system of alliances built around the axis of Naples and Venice. In tilting toward Naples, Soderini was reflecting the general mood of Florentines, who were heartily sick of the duke’s high-handed ways. Even Lorenzo and Luigi Guicciardini, both strong adherents of Milan, concluded that Naples must be placated to prevent them from bolting the alliance.

But while Lorenzo was willing to feint in the direction of Naples in order to pressure the duke to return to the fold, he could not abandon his chief foreign ally. Only a few months earlier the duke had put his prestige on the line for Lorenzo and Giuliano, writing to the
Signoria
that he cherished them as brothers. For almost two decades the houses of the Medici and the Sforza had been intimately linked in the minds of Florentines and however much Lorenzo was irritated by the Galeazzo Maria’s feckless policies, he could not abandon him without undercutting one of the strongest props of his regime. In other words, while Soderini could afford to adapt to circumstances, Lorenzo was wedded, for good or ill, to the Milanese cause.

At first it seemed as if Soderini would be successful in shepherding Florence into the Neapolitan camp, particularly after the appointment his close friend, the staunchly partisan Otto Niccolini, as ambassador to the southern kingdom. Immediately upon taking up his appointment, Niccolini began writing a series of letters calculated to frighten the Florentine government into precipitous action. In a private letter to Soderini, dated April 25, the ambassador indicated (prematurely as it turned out) that Naples had already concluded a treaty with Venice. (It was a sign of Soderini’s growing influence that most of Niccolini’s correspondence now went directly to him, rather than to Lorenzo or through official channels.) With the geopolitical realignment already an accomplished fact, he said, Florence must jump on board to avoid being left out in the cold.

King Ferrante’s threat to leave Florence in the lurch for an understanding with Venice presented the government with an uncomfortable dilemma. While many wished to maintain the old triple league that had kept Italy relatively peaceful, they could not afford to be shut out of the new system of alliances. With Otto’s letters in hand, Soderini now called a
Pratica
for May 5.
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It was a typical bit of partisan sleight-of-hand of the kind so often practiced in Florentine politics: organized in haste and secrecy, most of the duke’s supporters were unaware it was taking place until after it was already over. It was a sign of how confident Soderini felt that Lorenzo was not informed of the meeting and almost missed it. By the time he arrived, Lorenzo confessed to Sforza, he “found the letter [with instructions for the ambassador] already completed, so that it was not possible to fix it, so hastily was it written and sent off by horse.” In public Soderini continued to claim that he was taking Ferrante’s side merely to save the triple alliance, but his private correspondence with Otto Niccolini reveals him to be very much the king’s man. “Let us abide by [the king’s] advice,” he wrote, “and follow where ever his Majesty shall lead us.”