without the city walls and traitors within its gates—­were too powerful for the resistance of burghers who had learned but yesterday to handle arms and to conduct a war on their own account.[2] Florence had to capitulate.  The venomous Palleschi, Francesco Guicciardini and Baccio Valori, by proscription, exile, and taxation, drained the strength and broke the spirit of the state.  Caesar and Christ’s Vicar, a new Herod and a new Pilate, embraced and made friends over the prostrate corpse of sold and slaughtered liberty.  Florence was paid as compensation for the insult offered to the Pontiff in the sack of Rome.

[1] Guicciardini, writing his Ricordi during the first months of the siege, remarks upon the power of faith (Op.  Ined. vol. i. p. 83.  Compare p. 134):  ‘Esemplo a’ di nostri ne e grandissimo questa ostinazione de’ Fiorentini, che essendosi contro a ogni ragione del mondo messi a aspettare la guerra del papa e imperadore, senza speranza di alcuno soccorso di altri, disuniti e con mille difficulta, hanno sostenuto in quelle mura gia sette mesi gli e serciti, e quali non si sarebbe creduto che avessino sostenuti sette di; e condotto le cose in luogo che se vincessino, nessuno piu se ne maraviglierebbe, dove prima da tutti erano giudicati perduti; e questa ostinazione ha causata in gran parte la fede di non potere perire, secondo le predicazioni di Fra Jeronimo da Ferrara.’

    [2] See above, p. 238, for what Giannotti says of the heroic
    Ferrucci.

The part played by Filippo Strozzi in this last drama of the liberties of Florence is feeble and discreditable, but at the same time historically instructive, since it shows to what a point the noblest of the Florentines had fallen.  All Pitti’s invectives against the Ottimati, bitter as they may be, are justified by the unvarnished narrative we read upon the pages of Varchi and Segni concerning this most vicious, selfish, vain, and brilliant hero of historical romance.  Married to Clarice de’ Medici, by whom he had a splendid family of handsome and vigorous sons, he was more than the rival of his wife’s princely relatives by his wealth.  Yet though he made a profession of patriotism, Filippo failed to use this great influence consistently as a counterpoise to the Medicean authority.  It was he, for instance, who advised Lorenzo the younger to make himself Duke of Florence.  Distinguished, as he was, above all men of his time for wit, urbanity, accomplishments, and splendid living, his want of character neutralized these radiant gifts of nature.  His private morals were infamous.  He encouraged by precept and example the worst vices of his age and nation, consorting with young men whom he instructed in the arts of dissolute living, and to whom he communicated his own selfish Epicureanism.  To him in a great measure may be attributed the corruption of the Florentine aristocracy in the sixteenth century.  In his public action he was no less vacillating than unprincipled in private