Читать книгу The Story of Siena and San Gimignano - Gardner Edmund G. - Страница 4

AFTER the expulsion of the Riformatori in March 1385, a new supreme magistracy was instituted to rule the Republic. It was composed of ten citizens – the “Signori Priori, Governatori della Città di Siena” – who held office for two months. Four of these priors were of the Nine, four of the Twelve, and two of the People. A new order – the Monte del Popolo– was formed to include those plebeians, or Popolani of the Greater Number, who had not shared in the government of the Riformatori; and it gradually rose in importance, reinforced in later years by families of nobles who became popolani and by others of the lower classes who had come to Siena from elsewhere.

A turbulent and unsettled period followed, of incessant plots against the new government and of disastrous wars. In November 1385, Siena joined in a league, offensive and defensive, with the Communes of Bologna, Florence, Pisa and Lucca, against the wandering companies of mercenaries. But presently that never-healed wound, the question of Montepulciano, opened again, and a prolonged war with Florence followed in consequence. Both Cortona and Montepulciano were lost to Siena. In 1389 the Sienese allied themselves for ten years with Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, who had dethroned his uncle Bernabò and was now manifestly intending to conquer all northern and central Italy. A Sienese poet, Simone di Ser Dino Forestani (“il Saviozzo”) hailed him as the coming deliverer of the Italian nation in a noted canzone, which Carducci has called the last cry of Ghibellinism. A number of the Malavolti and Tolomei, headed by Messer Orlando Malavolti, chose exile in the following years rather than see their country fall into servitude. Giovanni Galeazzo was created Duke of Milan by the Emperor Wenceslaus in 1395; and, when the end of the term of the alliance drew near, the Sienese found themselves so exhausted with war, famine and pestilence that in 1399 they formally surrendered the independence of their city, with its contado and district, to the Duke and his successors, swore obedience and fidelity to him in the persons of his ambassadors, and hailed their new yoke with wild festivities. The Duke died in 1402; he had just taken Bologna and intended, as soon as Florence fell into his hands, to be crowned King of Italy. His newly acquired dominions fell to pieces. In November 1403, the Salimbeni (who, in opposition to the Malavolti and Tolomei, had been among the foremost in introducing the ducal sovereignty into Siena) and the heads of the Dodicini, probably instigated by the Florentines, called the Sienese to arms to recover their liberty. The Noveschi and People opposed them. There was a struggle in the Campo, an attempt to capture the Palazzo; but Francesco Salimbeni was killed and the Dodicini expelled from the government. In the following year the liberation of Siena was peaceably effected. Peace was made with Florence in April, and, the ducal lieutenant having left the city, the Sienese annulled the suzerainty and all the authority that had been given to the Duke of Milan and his successors, and commanded that his arms, wherever they had been set up in the dominions of the Republic, should be completely obliterated. But Orlando Malavolti returned to his native city only to die. On his way to salute the Signoria he was treacherously murdered in the streets by the hirelings of those who had seized upon his possessions, which they hoped thus to keep in their hands.

In the meantime the form of the chief magistracy had undergone various alterations. Not only had the Dodicini been expelled, but the Riformatori had been readmitted. It now consisted of nine Priors, three of the Monte del Popolo, three of the Monte de’ Nove, and three of the Monte de’ Riformatori; with a tenth, the Captain of the People and Gonfaloniere of Justice, chosen from each Monte and from each terzo of the city in turn. But throughout the period that follows, and indeed down to the end of the Republic, we shall find the real authority vested in what was known as the Balìa. This originally simply meant the power or authority committed to certain citizens for some special purpose; but it gradually became converted into an ordinary magistracy, distinct from the Signoria or Concistoro. From 1455 – when it was specially instituted in this form to superintend a prolonged and dangerous war – until the fall of the Republic, the Collegio di Balìa had the supreme control of the State, with authority over the laws and government of Siena, although the outward appearances of supremacy were left to the Signoria, the members of which (the Signori) were still, nominally, the chief magistrates of the Republic.

The first three-quarters of the fifteenth century in the history of Siena are a medley of somewhat inglorious wars with incessant faction. We find Siena allied with Florence against King Ladislaus of Naples (the son of Charles of Durazzo), then at war with Florence again, then allied with Pope Calixtus III. against the great condottiere Jacopo Piccinino, in a war more famous for the stern penalty that the Republic knew how to exact from a treacherous general than for any action in the field.48 There were alarms and excursions from the fuorusciti in the contado; there were conspiracies within Siena itself, especially one most formidable in 1456 to subject the Republic to King Alfonso of Naples (who had substituted an Aragonese dynasty for the House of Anjou in that kingdom), in which certain families of the Monte de’ Nove – headed by Antonio Petrucci, Ghino di Pietro Bellanti and Marino Bargagli – were deeply involved. But, all the while, great personalities are moving across the Sienese stage.

San Bernardino Albizzeschi, born of a noble family in 1380, the year of St Catherine’s death, may be said to have carried on, in part, her work during the first half of this century. A zealous reformer of morals, for forty years this Franciscan friar wandered over Italy from city to city, preaching repentance, healing schisms, rebuking tyrants, stilling the bloody tumults of political factions, reconciling peoples and princes. “He converted and changed the minds and spirits of men marvellously,” writes a contemporary, Vespasiano da Bisticci, “a wondrous power he had in persuading men to lay aside their mortal hatreds.” He has left his mark upon almost every street of his native city, of which he refused the bishopric. In a place where he had wrought many conversions, a maker of dice represented to the saint that he and his fellow-craftsmen were being reduced to beggary, by reason of his denunciation of gambling. Bernardino bade him make tablets with the letters I.H.S. instead. This devotion to the Divine Name grew apace, above all in Ferrara and Siena; and when, worn out with his apostolic labours, Bernardino died in 1444 at Aquila, there was hardly a town through which he had passed that had not placed upon its gates and palaces, no less than on the private houses of its citizens, the sacred sign of the Name in which he had overcome the world.

A young nobleman stood listening in the Campo when Bernardino preached there in 1427. “He moved me so much,” he wrote in after years, “that I, too, very nearly entered his order.” This was Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who, born at Corsignano in 1405, was then a student in the city and a rising poet. Two imperial visits during this epoch have left their mark in Sienese art. Sigismund III. came to Siena in 1432, on his way to be crowned in Rome, and stayed some while in the city that then, as ever, professed unalterable loyalty to the Holy Roman Empire. Memorials of his visit are the curious graffito picture of him enthroned, on the pavement of the Duomo, and a most unedifying love story, De Duobus Amantibus, describing an intrigue between one of his barons and a lady of Siena – written a little later by this same Enea Silvio, who had left his native city to seek his fortune elsewhere, and was now poet laureate. Frederick III. came at the beginning of 1452 to meet his bride, Leonora of Portugal. A fresco in the library of the Duomo and a pillar outside the Porta Camollia still record the event; and “all the resources of that festive art in which the Italy of the Renaissance so excelled were displayed for the entertainment of the noble pair during their stay in Siena.”49 Our poet laureate was now the Emperor’s secretary and the Bishop of Siena itself. Six years later Enea Silvio Piccolomini was elected Pope in 1458, to succeed to Calixtus III., and took the title of Pius II. “Shall we raise a poet to the Chair of St Peter?” asked a rival cardinal, “and let the Church be governed on pagan principles?”

It will be better to speak of the character and deeds of Pope Pius II. when we stand before the frescoed story of his life in the Duomo. Suffice it now to say that there was great festivity and rejoicing when the news of his elevation reached Siena, but coupled with some mistrust. The Pope was suspected of being a partisan of the gentiluomini, who were still rigorously excluded from the Signoria, the Balìa, the Council of the People and all the chief offices of State. To please him, the Piccolomini were qualified to enter the government (messi nel Reggimento), by being distributed among the three ruling Monti; while Nanni Todeschini, the husband of the Pope’s sister Laodamia, together with his four sons, Antonio, Francesco, Andrea and Giacomo (to whom Pius had given the arms and name of Piccolomini), was similarly qualified for the Signoria and Council of the People, and received into the Monte del Popolo. The Pope, however, demanded that all the nobles should be made eligible to all posts in the government; he told the Sienese envoys that, unless his request were granted, he would withhold the favours that he had intended to confer upon his native city. In spite of the intervention of the Duke of Milan, the Sienese remained obstinate, until the Pope threatened to go to Florence without passing through Siena. Then the Balìa yielded in part, and Pius came to the city in February 1459. He had a magnificent reception from all orders in the State; but Malavolti tells us that on the part of the chief men of the Republic the rejoicing was more simulated than real, for that they bitterly resented his attempted insertion of the nobles into the popular government of the city. Nevertheless, during his stay Pius loaded the Sienese with favours, gave the Golden Rose to the Commune, and raised the See to the rank of an archbishopric. His attempts to allay the factions and to obtain the admission of the nobles were only partly successful; and what little share in the government had been granted to the latter was taken away from them (exception being still made for the Piccolomini), after his death in 1464. To this day Siena bears more of the stamp of Pius II. than of any other single man. Everywhere in her streets the arms of the Piccolomini are as much in evidence as the sacred monogram that San Bernardino had set up. The Loggia that Pius raised to his family, the palaces that his kinsfolk built, still stand, while the Library of the Duomo gleams still with the gorgeous frescoed pageant of his life. And away to the south, in the district of Montepulciano, the little village of Corsignano, where he had been born in 1405, and was transformed by him into a city, is still called from his name Pienza, and still bears the imprint of his genial and splendid spirit in the noble buildings, secular and religious alike, that his munificence reared.

A potentate of a very different character now for a while overshadows the Republic – Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, son of King Ferrante of Naples. The Duke meditated the acquisition of all Tuscany, and between 1468 and 1480 he made Siena the basis of his operations. The Republic joined the King and Pope Sixtus IV. in the war against Lorenzo de’ Medici, and had the one real battle of the campaign of 1479 depicted in fresco in the Palace of the Commune. Gorgeous pageants and dances greeted the visit of any member of the Royal House to Siena. The Duke “became the centre of the extravagant, pleasure-loving Sienese society; and the cruel, passionate Alfonso, who recognised no scruples in matters human and divine, became the popular godfather to the babies of the Republic.”50 There was a strong party within the city itself that would gladly have accepted him as their suzerain, and he still lingered at Buonconvento after the peace had been made with Florence. On June 23rd, 1480, the Noveschi and some of the Monte del Popolo, together with the mercenaries left by the Duke in charge of the city, occupied the Campo early in the morning, and expelled the Riformatori from the government. The Duke returned to Siena the next day, and was received with enthusiasm at the Porta Romana. There was a wild demonstration in the Campo, as the people, all armed, with frantic cheering and deafening uproar, brought him to the Palace. “When he got to the door of the Palace,” says Allegretto, “all the people rejoiced with such sounding of trumpets and of bells that rang a gloria, and with such firing of guns and shouting, that it was a jubilation.” In the place of the suppressed Monte of the Riformatori, a new Monte of the Aggregati was formed – composed partly of nobles, partly of those Noveschi who had been excluded from the government for the conspiracy of 1456, partly of popolani who had never held the priorate, and to these were added a few of the Riformatori at the Duke’s request. But the capture of Otranto by the Turks, in August, recalled the Duke to his father’s dominions, and in the following year the decision of King Ferrante (la iniqua sentenza, as Allegretto calls it), compelling the Sienese to surrender certain towns and castles to the Florentines, destroyed the last remnants of his popularity.

Seven years of tumult and faction followed the departure of the Duke of Calabria. The annulling of the new Monte of the Aggregati, the re-admission of the Riformatori and the Dodicini, were accompanied by a series of furious battles in the streets. In July 1482 there was a general rising of the people – Popolani, Dodicini, Riformatori – against the Noveschi, who, headed by the Bellanti, Petrucci, and Borghesi, assembled in arms in the Postierla. The Noveschi swept down the Via di Città, but were hurled back to the Postierla, and their leaders forced to take refuge in the palaces of the Pecci and Borghesi, which, after a fierce contest of more than three hours with crossbows and guns and long lances, surrendered, at the persuasion of the Cardinal Archbishop, Francesco Piccolomini (the nephew of Pius II.), and the arms were laid down for a while. It is on this occasion that the name of Pandolfo di Bartolommeo Petrucci first appears prominently as a leader of the Noveschi.

At the beginning of 1483 the Balìa was entirely composed of Popolani, and the Noveschi were deprived “for ever” of any share in the government. Luzio Bellanti, with a few daring spirits, occupied Montereggioni, and held it for some weeks against the Republic – which was made an excuse for arresting the leading Noveschi in Siena. The Papal Legate, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Cibo (afterwards Innocent VIII.), came from Rome as a peace-maker; and in March it was decided to reduce the four Monti to one, “di far di tutto il Reggimento un Monte,” which should be called the Monte del Popolo, and in which some Noveschi were to be admitted. But on April 1st a furious mob burst into the Palace, seized four of the imprisoned Noveschi – Agnolo Petrucci, Biagio Turchi, and two others – with a plebeian of their faction, and hurled them out of the windows, to be dashed to pieces on the pavement below. Disgusted and disillusioned, the Legate at once left the city. The Noveschi, headed by the Petrucci and Bellanti, together with others of other orders, at length retired from the territory of the Republic, and watched for the opportunity of recovering their state by force of arms; while, on August 7th, the Council of the People carried unanimously a resolution “that Siena should be given and presented to our Lady.”

The exiles had not long to wait. New factions broke out in the city, with plotting and counter-plotting, rioting and executions. Numbers of each order were banished. The Noveschi, supported by the King of Naples and the new Pope Innocent, collected troops under Giulio Orsini, and threatened the contado. Their first attempts were unsuccessful; but at length certain of the Riformatori and Dodicini, ousted from the administration and oppressed by the government, opened negotiations with the chosen representatives of the Noveschi – Niccolò Borghesi and Neri Placidi in Rome and Leonardo Bellanti in Pisa – probably with the knowledge of the Cardinal Francesco, who, throughout these turbulent and blood-stained years, had acted strenuously, though not always successfully, as peace-maker. The Noveschi and other exiles assembled at Staggia, and, with a small force of Florentine soldiers, arrived at the Porta Fontebranda before dawn on July 22nd, 1487. Pandolfo Petrucci is said to have been the first to scale the walls. Leaving a small guard to hold the gate and secure their retreat if unsuccessful, they pressed up to the Croce del Travaglio, and then rushed through the streets, shouting “People and Nine! Liberty and Peace!” After a brief resistance, the Captain of the People was forced to surrender the Palace, and there was practically no opposition elsewhere. Camillo Venturini – a young man of the Monte del Popolo – killed with a bill-hook a certain Messer Cristoforo di Guidoccio to avenge his father, Lorenzo di Antonio Venturini, who had been beheaded in the previous year, and the Captain of the People was likewise put to death. But otherwise there was little or no bloodshed, save by way of private vendetta in the first confusion. Bartolommeo Sozzini, one of the Dodicini who had worked the scheme at Pisa, where he held a chair, returned with a party of mounted crossbowmen to share in the new regime. The two most honoured citizens of Siena – the Cardinal Francesco and his brother Andrea Piccolomini – came in, a day or two later, and the revolution was complete.

The government was, of course, reformed in the interests of the conquerors, but the other factions were not entirely excluded. There were the inevitable tumults, conspiracies, executions and banishments, accompanied by various changes in the constitution, but all tending to the ultimate preponderance of the Monte de’ Nove, whose government was styled “the government devout and consecrated to the glorious Virgin Mary, the patroness and defender of our Republic.” On the last day of 1494, there was a solemn reconciliation between the Popolani and the Noveschi. The former assembled in the Spedale, the latter in the Vescovado, and then in the evening they went separately to the Duomo. The Noveschi occupied the gospel side of the altar and choir, the Popolani the epistle side, and the Cardinal in full pontifical vestments came out of the sacristy and took his seat between the two parties in front of the high altar. “This is the day which the Lord hath made,” began his illustrious and most reverend Lordship, “let us rejoice and be glad in it;” and he proceeded to deliver an impassioned oration in favour of concord, expressing his conviction that the peace and quiet of the city were at last secured. Then a notary stepped forward and read the articles of the peace, with a most fearful string of curses and excommunications against any who should offend against them or break any of them – “in such wise,” writes the diarist, “that I, Allegretto di Nanni Allegretti, who was present at these things, do not believe that there was ever made nor heard a more stupendous and a more horrible swearing than this.” It was already night, and beneath the flaming torches the notaries on either side inscribed the names of the citizens, who all swore upon the Crucifix of the Missal; and while they swore and while they solemnly kissed each other, the bells rang and the choir with the organ burst out into Te Deum Laudamus. “Now may it please God,” continues Allegretto, “that this be the peace and the quiet of all the citizens; but I doubt it.”51

In the following March, it was decided that the government of the city should be equally divided among three Monti; the Monte de’ Nove; the Monte del Popolo; the Monte of the Gentiluomini and Dodicini; and that those of the Riformatori who were admitted should be distributed among these three Monti. A number of exiles were recalled. Then the Signoria with all the Council went to the Duomo, to return thanks to God and to the Virgin Mary, the Te Deum Laudamus was sung, the bells rang a gloria, and they returned to the Palace. But the real authority was still vested in the Balìa. A special magistracy called the Consiglio dei tre segreti had been instituted in 1492, the three being chosen from the members of the Balìa, and wielding, up to a certain point, the authority of the Balìa. By means of this special Council – suppressed at intervals by the enemies of the Noveschi, but almost always soon re-established – the Monte de’ Nove swayed the State. The government was rapidly becoming an oligarchy, in the hands of certain families of Noveschi.

Writing of the factions of Siena, Machiavelli calls the Noveschi the “nobili.” They were in fact a kind of burgher nobility, risen out of families of merchants in the course of the previous century. We find their parallel in Florentine history in the ottimati, the nobili popolani, whose prepotency had been overthrown by the Medici more than half a century before. They were men of wealth and influence, munificent patrons of art and letters; several of them must rank among the most enlightened men of their day. Prominent among them, the heart and soul of the new regime, are the Petrucci, Salvetti, Borghesi, Bichi and Bellanti. The more violent spirits are Giacoppo and Pandolfo Petrucci, Luzio and Leonardo Bellanti; but the noblest is Niccolò di Bartolommeo Borghesi, an ardent patriot and a profound scholar, whom Professor Zdekauer regards as the most important personality in the story of Siena during the second half of the Quattrocento. Niccolò had taken a leading part in the return of the fuorusciti in 1487, and in the September of that year he was appointed professor for five years at the Studio to read “Opus Humanitatis ac moralem Phylosophiam,” and at the same time made Secretary of State “with the charge of writing the annals and the deeds of the Sienese from the foundation of the City itself.”52 But he showed more desire to make history than to write it, married his daughter Aurelia to Pandolfo Petrucci and plunged into the turmoil of the political conflict.

“Pandolfo Petrucci returned with other exiles to Siena,” writes Machiavelli in the famous chapter of his Discorsi dealing with conspiracies, “and the custody of the piazza was put into his charge, as a mechanical thing and one which the others refused; nevertheless those armed men in time gave him so great a reputation that, in a short while, he became prince of the city.” Pandolfo was born in 1452, and was therefore still under forty when the Noveschi returned. He was a man of little culture or education. At first he played the second part to his brother Giacoppo, but it was in the general alarm and confusion that accompanied the arrival in Italy of Charles VIII. of France that he found his opportunity. A force of 300 mercenaries, provvisionati, was brought to Siena in June 1494, to guard the city and maintain order, and Pandolfo was placed in command. This is evidently what Machiavelli meant. In October, Filippo Valori, one of the Florentine ambassadors to the King, wrote to Piero de’ Medici that His Majesty had been informed that the said Pandolfo was a daring and most dangerous person, persona animosa e scandalosa da precipitare. Nevertheless, when Niccolò Borghesi was sent from the Balìa to greet the King at Pisa, he was graciously received and returned with a letter making Pandolfo and Paolo Salvetti knights for the royal service. Charles entered Siena on December 2nd, with his bodyguard of 300 archers, 200 men-at-arms, and 100 mounted crossbowmen, “right graciously so that it seemed he were at home,” writes Allegretto – though his soldiery, especially the Swiss, committed numberless excesses in the contado. He marched onwards on the 4th, and there was much passing to and fro through Siena of soldiers and ambassadors in those months, stormy and disastrous for Italy, that followed. In the general dissolution of the Florentine dominion, Montepulciano rose in insurrection and declared that she would live and die with Siena. Even the women and children shouted “Lupa! Lupa!” The Sienese promptly dispatched Antonio Bichi as commissary with troops to the spot. The French King sent letters bidding both cities let Montepulciano alone, for he would judge the matter. The growing feeling of the Popolani and especially the Riformatori against the presence of the mercenaries – the outward sign of the prepotency of the Nove – came to a head, and, on the approach of the French army on its return march through Tuscany, the French ambassador forced the Balìa and Pandolfo to send them away. The King stayed a few days in Siena in June 1495, interviewed representatives of all factions, took the Republic under his perpetual protection, “saving the rights of the Empire,” and made a number of knights, including the infant son of Pandolfo. He left a captain with a French garrison behind him. Next month the Riformatori and Popolani rose, headed by Giovanni Severini and Giacomo Buoninsegni, drove Pietro Borghesi out of Siena, fought Niccolò Borghesi and Pandolfo Petrucci with their followers in the Campo. But on July 28th, before daybreak, Luzio Bellanti and Pietro Borghesi with all the dismissed mercenaries and the soldiers from Montepulciano burst into Siena by the Porta Tufi, drove an armed mob of Popolani and Riformatori in headlong flight down the Via di Città, occupied the Campo and all the strong places of the city. The Dodicini and the Gentiluomini made common cause with them, but the intervention of the French captain and Messer Andrea Piccolomini prevented a pitched battle in the Campo or a massacre in the streets. Pandolfo and others made a pretence of retiring to Buonconvento, but were recalled next day, and the French captain with his garrison was peaceably and honourably sent about his business.

The events of the next few years confirmed the power of Pandolfo. In revenge for the affair of Montepulciano and for the assistance that the Balìa had given to Piero de’ Medici, a Florentine army led by Piero Capponi approached Siena in January 1496, and even penetrated so far as the Palazzo de’ Diavoli. With them were Lodovico Luti and a number of other Sienese exiles. They were in secret understanding with the disaffected within the walls, who hoped to introduce them together with enough Florentine soldiers to change the government. But the Florentines were in stronger force than had been anticipated, and the conspirators shrank from betraying their country. “The city of Siena,” writes Machiavelli in the second book of the Discorsi, “has never changed state with the favour of the Florentines, save when these favours have been small and few. For when they have been many and strenuous, they have merely united that city for the defence of the existing government.” And so it happened now. “We were all disposed,” said Allegretto, “to defend ourselves from our most cordial enemies the Florentines. We wanted our exiled fellow citizens back, but in another way.” The Florentines retreated. Luzio Bellanti had deserved as much as Pandolfo from the Monte de’ Nove, but he now found himself ousted from the command of the provvisionati. Possibly he had been in the plot with the Florentines; at least he now plotted to admit them and the fuorusciti and to murder the two Petrucci, Neri Placidi, Antonio Bichi, Niccolò Borghesi and others of their faction. A peculiar feature of the conspiracy was that one of Luzio’s agents pretended to have visions of the Madonna who, he said, wished the Sienese to go in solemn procession to a church beyond the Porta Tufi – the idea being to leave the way clear for the entry of the exiles. The plot was discovered, and Luzio Bellanti in September fled with a price upon his head.

Pandolfo Petrucci was now practically without a rival, and, in all but the name, tyrant of Siena. Pandolfo Petrucci, wrote the Venetian diarist Sanudo, al presente in Siena è il tutto. In the following year, 1497, the Balìa largely increased the number of the mercenaries, who were still under his command, and the death of his brother Giacoppo left him alone at the head of his own family. In theory the Balìa was still equally divided between the three Monti; but it was entirely controlled by the Noveschi, and a number of hostile families were “admonished” and for ever excluded. The Balìa of forty-five – fifteen from each Monte – that was elected in November in this year, for five years, by successive reappointments continued in power till 1516, and in it Pandolfo sat to the end of his life. His strong personality, coupled with his lavishness and backed by the mercenaries, secured the compliance of the high and dazzled the low. While not openly interfering with the republican forms of government, and merely taking the comparatively humble title of “magnifico,” which every petty noble used in the aristocratic circles of Ferrara or Mantua, he kept in his own hands the whole thread of Sienese policy. Allied to France and never openly breaking with Florence, he plotted with Duke Lodovico Sforza of Milan until the latter’s fall, kept in touch with the exiled Medici, and maintained intimate relations with the petty tyrants of Umbria and the Patrimony. His chosen confidant was a Neopolitan of humble birth, who had once held a chair at the University of Siena, a certain Antonio da Venafro, exalted by Machiavelli as the typical secretary of a tyrant, “a serviceable villain” in the Shakespearian sense, who stuck at no crime for his patron’s sake nor hesitated to whisper bloodier suggestions into his ear.

Much use did Pandolfo make of secret assassinations. The exiled Lodovico Luti was murdered by his emissaries in 1499. Luzio Bellanti, earning a precarious living as a man of letters in Florence, lived in constant apprehension. “The liberty of my country,” he says at the end of a book on astrology which he published in 1498, “is ever in my mind. Even whilst I write, a messenger breaks in to warn me that assassins are at hand to slay me; everywhere I find snares prepared, so that my friends may call me Damocles or Dionysius. And although I am by now become callous, nevertheless the pen drops from my wearied hand.” A little later his apprehensions were verified; but in the meanwhile Leonardo Bellanti (Luzio’s brother) and Niccolò Borghesi (Pandolfo’s father-in-law) showed signs of resenting the Petruccian supremacy, and Antonio da Venafro urged his master to make away with Niccolò, who was dreaming republican dreams. An alleged conspiracy against Pandolfo’s own life was the pretext – but, some months before this, he had communicated to Lodovico Sforza, through his serviceable secretary, his intention of freeing himself from the Bellanti and the Borghesi. In June 1500, Niccolò Borghesi was set upon by six armed men in Pandolfo’s pay, as he was returning from Mass at the Duomo, and mortally wounded. He lingered on for a few weeks, spending what of life remained to him in finishing his life of St Catherine, in dictating a Latin epigram commending Siena to her protection. Then he died, freely forgiving Pandolfo for his death. On July 20th he was buried in the vaults of San Domenico.

Pandolfo professed the most sincere repentance, and sent a Franciscan friar to the murdered man’s son, Bernardino, to propose a conference at the convent of the Osservanza. Leonardo Bellanti, who had fled from Siena at the news of Niccolò’s death, wrote a vigorous letter to Bernardino urging him not to go. “The ground still runs with the blood of thy excellent father, the father of our common country,” he said; “I know not how thou canst even think of having to speak to him who with his own hands – nay, much more than with his own hands – so deliberately and abominably, with such cruelty, hath killed thy father, and but yesterday. Alas! Art thou not a rational man? Hast no spirit? Hast not blood? Hast no heart or stomach? For, certes, the vilest of men would not listen to his messengers, much less speak to this man who is devoid of any faith or love, but most abounding in good words and tears.”53 Nevertheless the Borghesi were reconciled to Pandolfo, and Leonardo himself soon returned to the city.

A new danger now threatened Siena and Pandolfo alike. Cesare Borgia, with the aid of his father, Pope Alexander VI., was building up a great state for himself in central Italy. He had conquered the Romagna, added Piombino to his dominions in September 1501, and was casting eyes upon Siena. In the spring of 1502 the Pope invited Pandolfo to meet him at Piombino; but the Magnifico, pleading excuses and delays, did not go. In August Pandolfo purchased the protection of King Louis XII. of France, with the moneys of the Republic. He sent ambassadors to congratulate Cesare on his conquests, but plotted against him with the petty tyrants who led his mercenaries and began to suspect that their own turns were coming. In the autumn took place the famous meeting of the conspirators at La Magione, to ally against Cesare – “for the salvation of all, and not to be, one by one, devoured by the dragon,” as their leading spirit, Giampaolo Baglioni of Perugia, put it. Pandolfo was represented by Antonio da Venafro and Guido Pecci, and hoped for Piombino as his share of the spoils. At the same time he tried to treat with the Borgia, using Antonio da Venafro as a go-between. “This man,” said Cesare to Machiavelli (who was with him as ambassador of Florence), “sends me every day either letters or special envoys to make me understand his great friendship towards me, but I know him.” It is needless to repeat the tale here of how Cesare – when his forces were temporarily defeated at Fossombrone – waited until the time was ripe, and then crushed the wretched conspirators at the famous tradimento of Sinigaglia. Pandolfo had kept out of the trap. Perugia surrendered on January 6th, 1503; Giampaolo Baglioni fled with his followers to join his Sienese ally.

Siena now “felt the Hydra’s fiery breath.” “This Signore,” wrote Machiavelli of Cesare to the Signoria of Florence from Gualdo on January 6th, “is leaving here to-morrow with his army and is going to Assisi, and thence he will advance upon Siena to make of that city a state to his own liking.” At Assisi the Sienese ambassadors met him. Cesare assured them that he had no quarrel with the Republic, but was at war only with his inimico capitale, Pandolfo. Let them send him away and there would be peace. Otherwise he would come with his army, “impelled by necessity and by a reasonable indignation against the man who, not content with tyrannising over one of the first cities of Italy, wished also by ruining others to be able to impose laws upon all his neighbours.” Machiavelli thought Pandolfo’s position fairly strong, seeing that he was “a man of much prudence in a state held by him with great reputation, and without having external or internal enemies of real importance, since he has either killed them or reconciled them, and with a large force of good troops, if Giampaolo has taken refuge with him, as they say, and not without money.” The Balìa sent to assure the Duke that he was mistaken about Pandolfo, who was no tyrant but had always conducted himself as “a most modest citizen,” and to remind him that Siena was under the protection of France. “The master of the shop, who is the King of France,” quoth Cesare with pleasing frankness to Machiavelli, “would not be content that I should take Siena for myself, nor am I so daring that I should think of such a thing. That community should trust me; I want nothing of theirs, but only to drive away Pandolfo. And I would have thy Government bear witness to and publish this intention of mine, which is only to assure myself of this tyrant. I believe that that community of Siena will believe me; but in case it should not, I shall march on and plant my artillery at the gates.” Pandolfo, he said, had been the cervello, the brain of the whole conspiracy against him. He confidently appealed to the Florentines for help in the business, “for as long as Pandolfo is in Siena, it will always be a refuge and a support for all your enemies.”54