The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici (40 page)

Thus assured of the excellent qualities of his prospective son-in-law, the Emperor declined to accept the exiles’ charges. Alessandro’s marriage to the fourteen-year-old Margaret accordingly took place, and the Duke returned to Florence in firmer control of the city than ever and evidently anxious to make the most of his good fortune. Within a few months, though, he was dead.

There had arrived in Florence a thin, plain, sad-faced young man of eccentric habits and unwholesome reputation, Lorenzaccio de’ Medici, son of Pierfrancesco and cousin of Giovanni delle Bande Nere. He had spent much of the past few years in Rome, but his habit of slashing off the heads of antique statues when drunk had led to his being asked to leave and to his coming to Florence where he had become a constant companion of his kinsman, Alessandro, who was just three yean older. Together they went out drinking and whoring; they indulged a mutual taste for disguising themselves as women; they galloped through the streets on the same horse, shouting insults at the passers-by; sometimes they shared the same bed. Alessandro was obviously fond of Lorenzaccio, though he seems not to have known what to make of him. Intrigued by his mysterious smile and subtle, ambivalent remarks, he nicknamed him ‘the philosopher’. But it was equally clear that Lorenzaccio did not really like Alessandro, that he resented his power and rank, that he fancied himself in the role of hero, in any role, in fact, that would bring him fame or even notoriety. The role in which he eventually decided to cast himself was that of tyrannicide.

He evolved a complicated plan. He had a good-looking cousin, Caterina Soderini Ginori, a rather supercilious woman who was celebrated for her virtuous demeanour and her affection for an elderly, boring husband. Lorenzaccio suggested to Alessandro that anyone who could get Caterina to bed was a seducer of uncommon distinction : if Alessandro wanted to try his luck he would arrange to bring her to him one night and leave them alone together. He suggested a Saturday evening, the night of Epiphany, a public holiday, when everyone in Florence would be out enjoying themselves, and when
no one would take much notice of either Caterina or Alessandro entering Lorenzaccio’s house. Alessandro eagerly agreed and on the appointed evening went to Lorenzaccio’s house. Having left his bodyguard outside the door, he unbuckled his sword, took off his clothes and lay waiting for Caterina on a bed. He was almost asleep when the door of the bedroom opened to admit not Caterina but Lorenzaccio and a hired murderer, Scoroncolo. Lorenzaccio approached the bed and, murmuring ‘Are you asleep?’, lunged with all his power at Alessandro’s naked stomach. As Lorenzaccio pushed his hand over Alessandro’s screaming mouth, Alessandro bit one of his fingers to the bone. Scoroncolo stabbed Alessandro through the throat. Spattered with his blood, his bleeding, savagely bitten hand encased in a glove, Lorenzaccio ran out into the street and galloped off to Bologna by way of Scarperia, leaving the citizens of Florence to make what use of the assassination they could when the body was found.

He had taken care to ensure that the body would not be found until he was safely across the frontier by taking the key of his room with him. He had also made it impossible for opponents of the government to take immediate advantage of the murder by keeping his plans dark from them. It was Benedetto Varchi’s belief that if a single man had come forward immediately to lead a revolution, the Medicean party might well have been overthrown. Realizing this, ‘Guicciardini, who without any doubt was the leader of the
Palleschi
, Cardinal Cibò and all Alessandro’s former courtiers trembled with fright… as the populace was most hostile and they themselves were without arms’ – the captain of the Duke’s guard, Alessandro Vitelli, together with several of his men, being away at Città di Castello.

Cardinal Cibò was first made aware of his danger when, on Sunday morning, Alessandro’s bodyguard asked how long they were expected to stand on duty outside Lorenzaccio’s house. Cibò told them to stay there until further notice, ordering them not to breathe a word to anyone about their reason for being there. Then, having made sure that Alessandro had not returned to his own house, he gave it out that the Duke had had a particularly exhausting night and was now in bed resting. It was not until evening that he had the door of Lorenzaccio’s bedroom broken open to reveal Alessandro’s body.
And it was not until the following day that the news of his murder became known to the opponents of the regime. By then it was too late for successful action. Vitelli had returned, and the
Palleschi
were in command of the situation. A group of would-be revolutionaries approached Francesco Vettori, the most prominent of those distinguished citizens supposed to be anti-Medicean. Vettori, however, while making some vague promises of support, recognized that the time for an uprising was now past. He immediately went to Guicciardini and threw in his lot with the
Palleschi
.

The
Palleschi
met on Monday morning to discuss the succession at the Palazzo della Signoria, now renamed the Palazzo Vecchio. Cardinal Cibò suggested that Alessandro’s illegitimate son, Giulio, then four years old, should be created Duke with himself as Regent. But this suggestion was rejected by the others who proposed calling upon Cosimo de’ Medici. Cosimo was the son of the great Giovanni delle Bande Nere and of Maria Salviati, granddaughter of Lorenzo il Magnifico, a young man, politically inexperienced and morally unexceptionable, in no way compromised by the evils of Alessandro’s rule. In fact, Guicciardini, who had hopes not only of using Cosimo to win the government for himself but also of arranging a marriage between him and one of his daughters, had already sent an invitation to the seventeen-year-old boy to come to Florence without delay from his villa of Il Trebbio in the Mugello.

When the Council was asked to approve this solution the following day, however, not all its members agreed to do so. One of them, Palla Rucellai, bravely announced that he ‘wanted neither Dukes nor Lords nor Princes in the Republic’, and, picking up a white bean to toss into the urn on the table, added, ‘Here is my vote and here is my head!’

Giucciardini riposted by declaring that he, ‘for one, would not endure that a mob of
ciompi
should ever again govern Florence’. He was not proposing that Cosimo should be created Duke but merely elected head of the Republic and subject to constitutional limitations as well as to what were to be known as ‘magnificent counsellors’. The discussion continued for hours and would have continued longer had not Vitelli, the captain of the guard, who had been promised
the lordship of Borgo San Sepolcro for his support of Cosimo’s nomination, intervened decisively. Tiring of the wrangle in the council chamber, he contrived a noisy scuffle between his soldiers under its windows. There were shouts that ‘Cosimo, son of the great Giovanni,
must
be Duke of Florence! Cosimo! Cosimo! Cosimo!’ And an authoritive voice cried out, ‘Hurry up. The soldiers can’t be held any longer!’

This settled the matter. Cosimo’s nomination was approved, and Guicciardini looked forward to the exercise of power in his name. Yet those who knew Cosimo took leave to doubt that Guicciardini would be able to control him in the manner he intended. As Benvenuto Cellini commented:

They have mounted a young man on a splendid horse – then told him you must not ride beyond certain boundaries. Now tell me who is going to restrain him when he wants to ride beyond them? You can’t impose laws on a man who is your master.

XX

‘
There is little joy to be discerned in the faces of the people
’

C
OSIMO HAD
been born in Florence, in the large and gloomy Palazzo Salviati, the family home of his mother, Maria, daughter of Giacomo Salviati who had married Leo X’s sister, Lucrezia. Leo X had stood as his godfather and had suggested that the baby should be christened Cosimo, ‘to revive’, so he had said, ‘the memory of the wisest, the bravest and most prudent man yet born to the house of Medici’.

The mother had been fond of her uncle, the Pope, to whom she bore a strong resemblance. Her eyes were big and dark, her face pudsy and her skin unnaturally pale, the result of drastic cosmetic treatment she had undergone in order to render herself more attractive to her husband, whose unconcealed preference for other women at first distressed and finally embittered her. She had rarely seen him, for he had so often been away at the wars and his visits home to Florence had never been prolonged. On one of these brief visits, so a characteristic story of him went, he had come clattering down the Corso on his charger and, looking up to the windows of the Palazzo Salviati, had caught sight of his son in the arms of a nurse. ‘Throw him down!’ he had called out. The nurse had naturally been reluctant to obey. ‘Throw him down,’ Giovanni had shouted again. ‘Throw him
down
. I order you to do so.’ The nurse had held out her arms, shut her eyes and let go. Giovanni had caught the boy and kissed him, and, delighted by the calm, uncomplaining way in which Cosimo
accepted both the fall and the embrace, had declared, ‘Aye, you’ll be a prince! It’s your destiny.’

Seeing little of his father, Cosimo seems never to have developed much affection for him. When he was told that Giovanni had been mortally wounded trying to prevent the Germans crossing the river near Mantua, he ‘did not weep much’, according to his tutor, but said merely, ‘In truth I had guessed it.’ He was seven years old then, a healthy, good-looking boy, tall for his age, with chestnut hair cut short as he was always to keep it. He was living in Venice, having left Florence in the uncertain times that had followed the arrival there of Alessandro and Ippolito as protégés of Clement VII. From Venice he went to Bologna, from Bologna to Giovanni’s villa of Il Trebbio, and from there back to Bologna where his grandfather, Jacopo Salviati, was to supervise his disrupted education. After a time he left Bologna for Genoa, from there went back to Florence once more, and then for a time to Naples.