Florence surrendered in the month of August 1530.  The terms were drawn up by Don Ferrante Gonzaga, who commanded the Imperial forces after the death of Filiberto, Prince of Orange, in concert with the Pope’s commissary-general, Baccio Valori.  Malatesta Baglioni, albeit he went about muttering that Florence “was no stable for mules” (alluding to the fact that all the Medici were bastards), approved of the articles, and showed by his conduct that he had long been plotting treason.  The act of capitulation was completed on the 12th, and accepted unwillingly by the Signory.  Valori, supported by Baglioni’s military force, reigned supreme in the city, and prepared to reinstate the exiled family of princes.  It said that Marco Dandolo of Venice, when news reached the Pregadi of the fall of Florence, exclaimed aloud:  “Baglioni has put upon his head the cap of the biggest traitor upon record.”

V

The city was saved from wreckage by a lucky quarrel between the Italian and Spanish troops in the Imperial camp.  But no sooner was Clement aware that Florence lay at his mercy, than he disregarded the articles of capitulation, and began to act as an autocratic despot.  Before confiding the government to his kinsmen, the Cardinal Ippolito and Alessandro Duke of Penna, he made Valori institute a series of criminal prosecutions against the patriots.  Battista della Palla and Raffaello Girolami were sent to prison and poisoned.  Five citizens were tortured and decapitated in one day of October.  Those who had managed to escape from Florence were sentenced to exile, outlawry, and confiscation of goods by hundreds.  Charles V. had finally to interfere and put a stop to the fury of the Pope’s revenges.  How cruel and exasperated the mind of Clement was, may be gathered from his treatment of Fra Benedetto da Foiano, who sustained the spirit of the burghers by his fiery preaching during the privations of the siege.  Foiano fell into the clutches of Malatesta Baglioni, who immediately sent him down to Rome.  By the Pope’s orders the wretched friar was flung into the worst dungeon in the Castle of S. Angelo, and there slowly starved to death by gradual diminution of his daily dole of bread and water.  Readers of Benvenuto Cellini’s Memoirs will remember the horror with which he speaks of this dungeon and of its dreadful reminiscences, when it fell to his lot to be imprisoned there.

Such being the mood of Clement, it is not wonderful that Michelangelo should have trembled for his own life and liberty.  As Varchi says, “He had been a member of the Nine, had fortified the hill and armed the bell-tower of S. Miniato.  What was more annoying, he was accused, though falsely, of proposing to raze the palace of the Medici, where in his boyhood Lorenzo and Piero de’ Medici had shown him honour as a guest at their own tables, and to name the space on which it stood the Place of Mules.”  For this reason he hid himself, as Condivi and Varchi