The year 1492 was a memorable year for Italy.  In this year Lorenzo’s death removed the keystone of the arch that had sustained the fabric of Italian federation.  In this year Roderigo Borgia was elected Pope.  In this year Columbus discovered America; Vasco de Gama soon after opened a new way to the Indies, and thus the commerce of the world passed from Italy to other nations.  In this year the conquest of Granada gave unity to the Spanish nation.  In this year France, through the lifelong craft of Louis XI., was for the first time united under a young hot-headed sovereign.  On every side of the political horizon storms threatened.  It was clear that a new chapter of European history had been opened.  Then Savonarola raised his voice, and cried that the crimes of Italy, the abominations of the Church, would speedily be punished.  Events led rapidly to the fulfilment of this prophecy.  Lorenzo’s successor, Piero de’ Medici, was a vain, irresolute, and hasty princeling, fond of display, proud of his skill in fencing and football-playing, with too much of the Orsini blood in his hot veins, with too little of the Medicean craft in his weak head.  The Italian despots felt they could not trust Piero, and this want of confidence was probably the first motive that impelled Lodovico Sforza to call Charles VIII. into Italy in 1494.

It will not be necessary to dwell upon this invasion of the French, except in so far as it affected Florence.  Charles passed rapidly through Lombardy, engaged his army in the passes of the Apennines, and debouched upon the coast where the Magra divided Tuscany from Liguria.  Here the fortresses of Sarzana and Pietra Santa, between the marble bulwark of Carrara and the Tuscan sea, stopped his further progress.  The keys were held by the Florentines.  To force these strong positions and to pass beyond them seemed impossible.  It might have been impossible if Piero de’ Medici had possessed a firmer will.  As it was, he rode off to the French camp, delivered up the forts to Charles, bound the King by no engagements, and returned not otherwise than proud of his folly to Florence.  A terrible reception awaited him.  The Florentines, in their fury, had risen and sacked the Medicean palace.  It was as much as Piero, with his brothers, could do to escape beyond the hills to Venice.  The despotism of the Medici, so carefully built up, so artfully sustained and strengthened, was overthrown in a single day.

XVIII

Before considering what happened in Florence after the expulsion of the Medici, it will be well to pause a moment and review the state in which Lorenzo had left his family.  Piero, his eldest son, recognised as chief of the republic after his father’s death, was married to Alfonsina Orsini, and was in his twenty-second year.  Giovanni, his second son, a youth of seventeen, had just been made cardinal.  This honour, of vast importance for the Casa Medici in the future,