Lorenzo, during the last six years of his life, or, to speak more definitely, after the peace of Bagnolo, had become in Italian, as he was rapidly becoming in European, politics the master-spirit that inspired the moves on the diplomatic chess-board.  In the mind of the historical student whose attention is directed to this period, admiration and wonder go hand-in-hand as we contemplate the marvellous sagacity and prevision of the man, together with the skill wherewith he made Florence—­the weakest from a military point of view of the five greater Italian powers—­the one which exercised the most preponderating influence upon the affairs of the peninsula.  His supreme genius conceived and consummated the great scheme for ensuring the peace of Italy by a triple alliance of the three larger states—­Florence, Milan, and Naples—­against the other two, Venice and the papacy.

As showing how entirely it was dependent upon him, the alliance was operative only so long as he was alive to bind the antagonistic forces of Naples and Milan together by the link of his own personal influence.  He, in a word, was the subtle acid holding in chemical combination many mutually repellent substances.  When his influence was withdrawn by death, within a few months they had all fallen apart, the triple alliance was forgotten and Italy was doomed.  Even by those with whom he was nominally at war he was resorted to for advice.  He it was that kept Innocent VIII from taking up a position that would have rendered the papacy ridiculous in the eyes of Europe, when he sought to threaten Naples with consequences he was powerless to inflict.

Many writers have accused Lorenzo of cowardice, of pusillanimity, of want of political resolution on account of this very course of action, namely, that he assisted the enemies of Florence to extricate themselves from their dilemmas.  Such criticism fails entirely to understand both the aim and the scope of his policy.  He desired to keep Italy for the Italians.  His clear-sighted sagacity saw nothing but danger in the plans of Ludovico of Milan to invite the French King into Italy, or in those of Venice to encourage the Duke of Lorraine to press his claims upon Milan.  The intervention of either France or Spain in Italy was, in his idea, fraught only with dire disaster.  Fain would he have patched up the quarrel between Naples and the papacy by mutual concessions, because he foresaw what would happen if the colossal northern powers had their cupidity aroused regarding Italy, and learned how defenceless she really was.  Because he foresaw so clearly the horrors of the invasion of 1494 and 1527, he acted as he did, even toward those who were enemies of Florence.  His alarm appears in the letter, dated July, 1489, which he addressed to his ambassador in Rome:  “I dislike these Ultramontanes and barbarians beginning to interfere in Italy.  We are so disunited and so deceitful that I believe that nothing but shame and loss would be our lot; recent experience may serve to foretell the future.”  How true a prophet he was, the subsequent course of Italian history revealed!