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In the month of August 1529 the Prince of Orange assembled his forces at Terni, and thence advanced by easy stages into Tuscany.  As he approached, the Florentines laid waste their suburbs, and threw down their wreath of towers, in order that the enemy might have no harbourage or points of vantage for attack.  Their troops were concentrated within the city, where a new Gonfalonier, Francesco Carducci, furiously opposed to the Medici, and attached to the Piagnoni party, now ruled.  On September 4th the Prince of Orange appeared before the walls, and opened the memorable siege.  It lasted eight months, at the end of which time, betrayed by their generals, divided among themselves, and worn out with delays, the Florentines capitulated.  Florence was paid as compensation for the insult offered to the pontiff in the sack of Rome.

The long yoke of the Medici had undermined the character of the Florentines.  This, their last glorious struggle for liberty, was but a flash in the pan—­a final flare-up of the dying lamp.  The city was not satisfied with slavery; but it had no capacity for united action.  The Ottimati were egotistic and jealous of the people.  The Palleschi desired to restore the Medici at any price—­some of them frankly wishing for a principality, others trusting that the old quasi-republican government might still be reinstated.  The Red Republicans, styled Libertini and Arrabbiati, clung together in blind hatred of the Medicean party; but they had no further policy to guide them.  The Piagnoni, or Frateschi, stuck to the memory of Savonarola, and believed that angels would descend to guard the battlements when human help had failed.  These enthusiasts still formed the true nerve of the nation—­the class that might have saved the State, if salvation had been possible.  Even as it was, the energy of their fanaticism prolonged the siege until resistance seemed no longer physically possible.  The hero developed by the crisis was Francesco Ferrucci, a plebeian who had passed his youth in manual labour, and who now displayed rare military genius.  He fell fighting outside the walls of Florence.  Had he commanded the troops from the beginning, and remained inside the city, it is just possible that the fate of the war might have been less disastrous.  As it was, Malatesta Baglioni, the Commander-in-Chief, turned out an arrant scoundrel.  He held secret correspondence with Clement and the Prince of Orange.  It was he who finally sold Florence to her foes, ‘putting on his head,’ as the Doge of Venice said before the Senate, ’the cap of the biggest traitor upon record.’

XXVII