The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici (21 page)

An inducement for the Medici to give a suitable entertainment at which the murders could be done was to be provided by the arrival in the district of Raffaele Riario, the Pope’s seventeen-year-old great-nephew, who was studying at the University of Pisa and who had just been made a cardinal. He was to be invited to come to stay at Jacopo de’ Pazzi’s villa at Montughi near Florence from where he was to make his presence known by letter to Lorenzo, who was then staying with his brother at the Medici villa at Fiesole. An opportunity
to kill both the Medici either by dagger or by poison would surely present itself, if not at Montughi then at Fiesole.

On receipt of the young cardinal’s letter, Lorenzo immediately invited him to Fiesole; and on the appointed day he rode over to Montughi with his son, Piero, and Poliziano, intending to accompany the cardinal and his suite back to Fiesole for a dinner party. Lorenzo apologized for his brother’s being unable to come with them: he had hurt his leg in an accident and had had to stay at home in bed, and would unfortunately not be able to come down to dinner. So the conspirators decided that they must change their plans, and wait until Giuliano was better again.

It was now arranged that the murders should take place in Florence. Cardinal Raffaele Riario had asked if he might see the treasures at the Medici Palace about which he had heard so much, and had suggested that the following Sunday would be a suitable day as he could combine his visit to the Palace with High Mass in the Cathedral. Lorenzo immediately agreed to this suggestion and made preparations for a banquet to be given in honour of his guest, issuing invitations to numerous distinguished Florentines as well as to the ambassadors of Milan, Venice, Naples and Ferrara. Meantime, his enemies laid their plans to kill him and his brother while they were at the banquet. But at the last moment the conspirators’ plans had to be changed once again: it was learned that Giuliano did not expect to be sufficiently recovered to attend the banquet after all. As well as from his injured leg he was now suffering from ‘an inflammation of the eyes’.

So many people had by now been apprised of the intended assassinations that it seemed to the Pazzi too dangerous to delay them any longer lest the secret leak out. Moreover, the troops whom Montesecco had arranged to have concentrated at various strategic points around the city would by dusk have arrived beneath the walls. If the Medici could not be killed together at the banquet, they would have to be dispatched in the Cathedral during Mass, an occasion which other assassins had found ideal. Giuliano could be stabbed by Francesco de’ Pazzi, assisted by Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli, an adventurer anxious to make some money quickly, having dissipated a fortune and being deeply in debt to the Pazzi with whom he had
formerly been associated in business. At the same time Lorenzo could be cut down by Montesecco. But this idea was abhorrent to Montesecco. Before he had met Lorenzo he had succeeded in persuading himself that to kill him was all in the way of a soldier’s duty; but since he had first spoken to him, he had been growing increasingly disgusted with his appointed task. Now he saw an opportunity to escape it altogether by protesting that his conscience would not allow him to ‘add sacrilege to murder’; he could not bring himself to kill a man in cold blood in a place where ‘God would see him’. Fortunately for the conspirators less scrupulous assassins immediately presented themselves in the persons of two lean, embittered priests, Antonio Maffei, a Volterran who hated Lorenzo for the part he had played in suppressing the recent uprising in his native town, and Stefano da Bagnone, tutor to Jacopo de’ Pazzi’s illegitimate daughter. Being priests they could not be expected to be as reliable with a dagger as Montesecco, but there were two of them and if they caught Lorenzo unawares they should between them be able to deliver a mortal blow before he could defend himself.

It was settled that the time to strike at both brothers would be at the sounding of the sanctuary bell, presumably when it was rung at the elevation of the Host. This moment would be ideal, not only because the sound of the bell and the celebrant’s gesture would provide unmistakable signals which all the assassins would hear and see, but also because the eyes of the victims, and of the congregation generally, would be downcast in reverence when the first blows were struck. As soon as the murders had been committed, Archbishop Salviati and Jacopo di Poggio Bracciolini, the ambitious, extravagant, impoverished son of the humanist who had been Cosimo’s friend, together with a large party of armed supporters were to march upon the Palazzo della Signoria, seize the government and kill any of the
Priori
who might attempt to resist them.

Towards eleven o’clock on that Sunday morning, 26 April 1478, young Raffaele Riario rode into Florence from Montughi and dismounted in the
cortile
of the Medici Palace. He was taken upstairs to the apartments on the first floor which had been set aside for his use and there he changed into his cardinal’s vestments. When he was
ready he went downstairs again where, at the foot of the staircase, he was met by Lorenzo who accompanied him to the Cathedral. On their way they were joined by Archbishop Salviati who did not, however, enter the building, excusing himself on the grounds that he had to go and see his mother who, so he said, was seriously ill. Lorenzo took the Cardinal up to the High Altar and left him there, walking across to a group of friends in the ambulatory. There were no chairs in the nave and the large congregation moved about freely.

Giuliano had not yet arrived, so Francesco de’ Pazzi and Baroncelli hurried back to the Medici Palace to fetch him. They discovered that he had decided not to go to Mass after all as his leg was still troubling him; but at length he was persuaded to change his mind, and he limped down the Via Larga towards the Cathedral. In the street Francesco de’ Pazzi threw his arm round him as though in playful affection, remarking that he seemed to have grown quite fat during his illness, squeezing his body to ensure that he wore no armour under his shirt. His fingers felt the unprotected flesh. He noticed also with relief that Giuliano wore no sword.

As they entered the Cathedral, Francesco de’ Pazzi and Baroncelli made for the northern side of the choir. Giuliano politely followed them. They stopped close to the door that leads out into the Via de’ Servi. Lorenzo was still standing in the ambulatory on the other side of the High Altar, beyond Ghiberti’s wooden screen which then separated it from the choir. His friend Poliziano was near him; so were four other friends, Filippo Strozzi, Antonio Ridolfi, Lorenzo Cavalcanti and Francesco Nori, formerly manager of the Medici bank in Lyons. The two priests, Maffei and Stefano, were immediately behind him.

At the sound of the sacristy bell, the priests snatched their daggers from their robes. Inexpertly, Maffei placed his hand on Lorenzo’s shoulder, as though to steady himself or to make sure of his aim. As Lorenzo turned, he felt the dagger’s point against his neck. Maffei lunged forward, and the tip of the dagger cut into the tensed flesh. Lorenzo leapt away, tearing off his cloak as he did so and wrapping it around his arm as a shield. He drew his sword, slashed at the two priests who, unnerved by his fast reaction, were beaten back without
difficulty. Then he vaulted over the altar rail and dashed headlong for the new sacristy.

Giuliano’s mutilated body was already on the floor. At the sound of the sacristy bell he had dutifully lowered his head, and Baroncelli, crying out, ‘Take that, traitor!’, had brought his dagger down in a ferocious blow that almost split his skull in two. Francesco de’ Pazzi thereupon stabbed him with such frenzy, plunging the blade time and again into the unresisting body, that he even drove the point of the dagger through his own thigh. Giuliano fell to his knees while his two assailants continued to rain savage blows upon him, slashing and stabbing until the corpse was rent by nineteen wounds.

As Giuliano’s blood poured over the floor, Baroncelli leapt over the body and made for the new sacristy, striking down Francesco Nori whom he killed with a single blow, and wounding Lorenzo Cavalcanti in the arm. But before he could reach the heavy bronze doors of the sacristy Lorenzo had dashed through them, and Poliziano with some other of his friends, had managed to get them shut. ‘Giuliano? Is he safe?’ Lorenzo kept asking; but no one answered him. While Antonio Ridolfi sucked the wound in Lorenzo’s neck, in case the priests’ daggers had been poisoned, another friend, Sigismondo della Stufa, who had escaped with them into the sacristy, clambered up the ladder into della Robbia’s choir loft to look down into the Cathedral.

The congregation was in uproar. People were shouting that the dome had fallen in. Lorenzo’s brother-in-law, Guglielmo de’ Pazzi was loudly proclaiming his innocence. Giuliano still lay where he had fallen. Raffaele Riario stood transfixed, as though in shocked dismay, by the High Altar. The two priests who had attacked Lorenzo, together with Giuliano’s assassins, had all apparently escaped. Lorenzo was bustled away by his friends to the Medici Palace.

Meanwhile Archbishop Salviati and the other conspirators had gone as planned to the Palazzo della Signoria with their armed supporters, most of them villainous-looking mercenaries from Perugia disguised as his suite. Salviati informed the
Gonfaloniere
, Cesare Petrucci, that he had an urgent message for him from the Pope. Petrucci, who was in the middle of dinner, gave orders for the
Archbishop and his attendants to be admitted. Salviati himself was shown into a reception room, while the Perugians were placed in nearby offices, the doors of which were closed behind them. The Archbishop’s other companions, including Jacopo di Poggio Bracciolini, were left outside in the corridor.

Having completed his dinner, Petrucci came out to receive Salviati who by now was so nervous he was trembling. The Archbishop delivered what he claimed to be the Pope’s message in a thick and mumbling voice, almost incoherently, changing colour alarmingly, and glancing round from time to time at the door. Petrucci, having listened to him for a few moments only, called out the guard, whereupon Salviati rushed from the room, shouting to his own men that the moment to strike had come. The response to his cries, however, were muffled shouts and hangings; for, on assuming office as
Gonfaloniere
, Petrucci had had the rooms of the Palazzo della Signoria fitted with special catches which could not be operated from the inside. The Perugians were, for the moment, effectively imprisoned.

As they hammered on the doors, Jacopo do Poggio Bracciolini rushed at the
Gonfaloniere
who caught him by the hair and threw him to the ground. Then, shouting for the
Priori
to follow him and for the
Vacca
to be tolled, the strong and energetic
Gonfaloniere
snatched up an iron cooking-spit as the nearest weapon to hand and rushed at the Archbishop and his companions who were quickly beaten to the ground. The notes of the great bell were by then booming through the city as the people poured into the Piazza. Members of the Pazzi family and small groups of their supporters rode up and down through the streets shouting, ‘
Libertà Libertà! Popolo e Libertà! Abasso
i
Medici! Abasso le pallet Libertà! Libertà!
’ But although some of the people in the crowd joined in these shouts, most of them responded insistently with,’
Vivano le palle! Vivano le palle! Palle! Palle! Palle!
’

A group of about fifty armed Medici supporters burst into the Palazzo della Signoria, and, joined by the palace guard, attacked the Perugians. Having killed them all, they rushed out into the Piazza again, bearing the dripping heads of their victims on the ends of lances and swords. News of Giuliano’s murder had by now reached the Palace where immediately a rope was tied round Jacopo di
Poggio’s neck, the other end was fixed to a transom and his body was hurled from a window. Archbishop Salviati was treated in the same way. So, too, was Francesco de’ Pazzi who, still bleeding profusely from the thigh, had been dragged from his hiding place in the family palace and stripped naked. Two of the Archbishop’s companions were strangled, and their bodies also hurled out. All five bodies were left dangling above the heads of the surging mob in the Piazza, twisting and swaying in the shadows beneath the machicolations of the northern wall. Poliziano, who was in the Piazza at the time, recorded the gruesome fact that as the Archbishop rolled and struggled at the end of his rope, his eyes goggling in his head, he fixed his teeth into Francesco de’ Pazzi’s naked body.

Following the fierce lead of the executioners in the Palazzo della Signoria, hundreds of people now ran through the streets, seeking out other conspirators or any unpopular citizen who could conveniently be charged with complicity in the plot. They swarmed beneath the windows of the Medici Palace, demanding to see Lorenzo who appeared before them, his neck in bandages, his brocade waistcoat covered with blood, to assure them that he was only slightly injured and to beg them not to wreak vengeance on those whom they merely suspected of murder. He urged them to save their energy to resist the enemies of the State who had engineered the conspiracy, and who would now undoubtedly attack the city that had thwarted it.

If the people cheered his words, they did not heed them. They attacked the conspirators, and those whom they chose to accuse of conspiracy, killing some, mutilating others, and dragging their remains through the streets. For several days the rioting continued, country people pouring into the city to see what pleasures or rewards were to be had, until some eighty people had been killed.

Few of those involved in the attempted
coup
escaped punishment. The young cardinal, Raffaele Riario, who had stood as though stunned by the High Altar during the uproar in the Cathedral until led to a safe place inside the old sacristy, was rescued by Lorenzo who sent some of his servants to bring him back to the Medici Palace. After the rioting was over, Lorenzo had him escorted in
disguise to Rome where, to the end of his days, so it was said, his face never lost the pallor which the ghastly events he had witnessed had imposed upon it. Raffaele Maffei, a brother of the priest who had tried to murder Lorenzo, and Averardo Salviati, a relative of the Archbishop, were also saved from the mob through Lorenzo’s intervention. But with the one exception of a certain Napoleone Francesi, whose complicity in the plot was in any case by no means clear, not one of the known conspirators escaped either public or private vengeance. Jacopo de’ Pazzi, so overcome by despair at the failure of the plot that he boxed his own ears and threw himself to the floor in despair and rage, managed to escape from the city to the village of Castagno; but the villagers recognized him and brought him back to Florence where, after being tortured, he was stripped naked and strung from a window of the Palazzo della Signoria next to the Archbishop. Later, he was buried in Santa Croce; but the people, blaming the subsequent heavy rains upon his evil spirit, dug up the body and threw it into a ditch in an apple orchard. From here also it was later removed, to be dragged through the streets by a mob shouting, ‘Make way for the great knight!’ It was then propped against the door of the Pazzi Palace where, to the accompaniment of obscene jokes and cries of ‘Open! Your master wishes to enter!’ its decomposing head was used as a knocker. Eventually, the putrid corpse was thrown into the Arno from which it was fished by a gang of children who strung it up on the branch of a willow tree, flogged it and tossed it back into the water again.