Biagio Buonaccorsi describes life back at the office in his letter to Machiavelli, who is away on a diplomatic mission. Machiavelli was very popular with his subordinates, and their letters to him are full of good-natured profanity and “taking the piss.” Machiavelli and his Friends is an indispensible resource for these kind of letters, containing almost every letter written between him and his friends & family.

Notes: Caterina Sforza’s son has been serving as a condottiere (a mercenary captain) for Florence. The notoriously cheap Florentine government has sent Machiavelli to get him to renew his contract while conceding as little as possible in return. Caterina, for her part, wants a fair commission, but even more, she desires a formal alliance with Florence. Florence wants no part of such an alliance, as they would be bound to assist her should she be attacked.

Notes:

1499, 1st November. The Madonna [Lady] of Imola collected her property and sent it here to Florence, and she also sent her daughters here, because the Pope, with the authority of the King of France, wished to take her state from her and give it to his son, Cesare. On which account the lady decided to stay there and defend herself.
-Luca Landucci

The quote is from yesterday’s title page, but I wanted to reiterate for those who missed it. Caterina Sforza is The Lady of Imola (and Forli as well.) It is at Forli that Machiavelli is meeting with her today.

1499:
1st November. The Madonna [Lady] of Imola collected her property and sent it here to Florence, and she also sent her daughters here, because the Pope, with the authority of the King of France, wished to take her state from her and give it to his son, Cesare. On which account the lady decided to stay there and defend herself.
(From the diary of Luca Landucci)
I realize I’m repeating myself here, but this is important. (This is as close as I can come to outright telling you it’s going to be on the midterm.)

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Footnote: In 1494, Charles VIII of France quartered his men in Florence on his way to attack Naples. Piero de’ Medici (Lorenzo’s son) initially tried to block the king’s army, but was not supported by others in Florence, particularly Savonarola, as France was an important ally. But Piero went too far in his accession to the King’s demands: he accepted all of the King’s terms, giving up important fortresses to France and, most galling of all, allowed the King to give Pisa its independence from Florence. Machiavelli found the capitulation to be particularly bitter and humiliating. He complained that the French “took the city with chalk,” referring to the chalk marks the French made on the houses where soldiers were to be quartered. These concessions, especially the loss of Pisa, proved to be the undoing of the Medici, and they were exiled from the city. The end of the Medici’s long dominance over Florentine politics enabled new faces to enter government service, including Machiavelli, although not immediately (Machiavelli became Secretary to the Second Chancellery in 1498; Savonarola’s faction ruled in the interim.)

When the French arrived in the city, things got worse. As Luca Landucci describes: “The city is in a great dread of being pillaged. The French seemed to be becoming more and more masters of the place. The French soldiers went about robbing in the night, their guards parading the city. Everyone was so discouraged and intimidated.” Savonarola was able to convince the King to move on before things got too out of hand, but the damage had been done; the loss of Pisa would obsess Florence for the next decade, as we shall see.

Footnote: In 1494, Charles VIII of France quartered his men in Florence on his way to attack Naples. Piero de’ Medici (Lorenzo’s son) initially tried to block the king’s army, but was not supported by others in Florence, particularly Savonarola, as France was an important ally. But Piero went too far in his accession to the King’s demands: he accepted all of the King’s terms, giving up important fortresses to France and, most galling of all, allowed the King to give Pisa its independence from Florence. Machiavelli found the capitulation to be particularly bitter and humiliating. He complained that the French “took the city with chalk,” referring to the chalk marks the French made on the houses where soldiers were to be quartered. These concessions, especially the loss of Pisa, proved to be the undoing of the Medici, and they were exiled from the city. The end of the Medici’s long dominance over Florentine politics enabled new faces to enter government service, including Machiavelli, although not immediately (Machiavelli became Secretary to the Second Chancellery in 1498; Savonarola’s faction ruled in the interim.)

When the French arrived in the city, things got worse. As Luca Landucci describes: “The city is in a great dread of being pillaged. The French seemed to be becoming more and more masters of the place. The French soldiers went about robbing in the night, their guards parading the city. Everyone was so discouraged and intimidated.” Savonarola was able to convince the King to move on before things got too out of hand, but the damage had been done; the loss of Pisa would obsess Florence for the next decade, as we shall see.

Although Machiavelli was not impressed with Savonarola when he first wrote about him (the encounter depicted here) he changed his mind later on. The text I use here is adapted from his description of Savonarola in his Discourses on Livy, but the imagery comes from Machiavelli’s letter of 9 March 1498, a time when the preacher was fighting for his political life.

The Palazzo della Signoria—or Palazzo Vecchio as it is known today—looks much the same now as it did in 1499, with two notable exceptions: no clock (17th century), and Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes is in the spot where we are accustomed to seeing Michelangelo’s David. In 1499, Michelangelo had not yet started the David, but it was not far off: 1504.

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The diary of Luca Landucci is out of print and hard to find, but well worth a trip to the library if getting into microscopic detail of events in Renaissance Florence is your cup of tea. It’s of particular interest because Landucci writes relatively little about his personal life in his journal: but he writes a lot about current events and his reactions to them.  I use Luca to fill us in on key events—the entry of the French into Florence and their exit, and the death of Savonarola—that occur in the years between the Pazzi Conspiracy and our eponymous hero’s entry onto our stage.

There’s no evidence that Machiavelli witnessed any killings himself, but it seems unlikely that in a city the size of Florence he would have been able to avoid seeing either the street violence or its aftermath. At the time, Machiavelli lived just across the Ponte Vecchio, a two minute walk from the Palazzo Vecchio. Lauro Martines calls Machiavelli’s account of the events “fanciful,” which may be true, but it seems clear that the chaos following the failed assassination made a significant impression on him.

For more information on the Pazzi Conspiracy, read Machiavelli’s account in the Istorie Fiorentine. As I mentioned, Machiavelli’s account contains some inaccuracies, whether intentional or not is unclear. For a more modern take, Martines’ April Blood is good, as is Marcello Simonetta’s The Montefeltro Conspiracy, which uses exciting new evidence in an attempt to show that the Pazzi were not the prime movers of the conspiracy, but that the Duke of Urbino—Federico da Montefeltro—had an even greater hand in the planning.