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FILIPPO STROZZI.*

An author cannot often be placed in a more enviable position than to be living in Italy while writing upon Italian subjects. Roscoe had not the enjoyment of such a privilege when preparing the materials for his "Lorenzo," and so serious a disadvantage was in his case only lessened by the assistance of a travelled friend devoted to the same pursuits as himself, and with whom, as he tells us in his preface, he had been united for many years "in studies and affection." Since that time archives have been freely published which were formerly almost inaccessible; but as happens with many other books of reference, we may find, on consulting them, that they give ample information except on the very point of our inquiry. They can never supersede the better aid of investigation on the spot.

Both in Italian literature and Italian art everything has its peculiar locality. Though we see the works, for instance, of the great painters in the galleries of other lands, it is only on the very scene of their principal labours that their talent can be fully felt and appreciated: nor-if we turn to letters-can we conceive that such a poem as the Lament of Tasso could have been written in its existing truthfulness, had its author never been at Ferrara and at Rome.

The author of Filippo Strozzi appears to be still residing at Florence. He had already brought before us the subject of his present volume in the memoirs of Tullia d'Arragona, which formed part of his "Decade of Italian Women;" but of Strozzi's amours with that medieval Aspasia very little is here repeated. His biographer has now connected the events of his life with "A History of the Last Days of the Old Italian Liberty"with the age of its decadence. The clouds that have obscured it for upwards of three hundred years were then fast gathering; but they had risen long before. The freedom which had been secured to the Italian cities by the peace of Constance at the close of the twelfth century was not preserved for many generations even by Florence. Little more than a hundred years had elapsed before the dissensions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines commenced, and when Italy was torn asunder by the wars that followed, it was soon found that a government changed every two months, and appointed by lot, might be sufficient in times of prosperity, but was powerless against aggression. Then came the ascendancy, in various parts of Italy, of the men who, as statesmen or as chiefs, were destined to be the founders of short-lived dynasties or the despotic rulers of their fellowcitizens. Before she had submitted to the tyranny of her dukes, Florence had long been under a despotism "surrounded by republican institutions:" under the last of the Medici it was a despotism undisguised.

In the intervening events Filippo Strozzi played an important part. We noticed in a former article that the character with which Roscoe had invested him had been questioned by Pignotti; and Mr. Trollope takes the same unfavourable view. He had described him in the memoir of

* Filippo Strozzi: a History of the Last Days of the Old Italian Liberty. By T. Adolphus Trollope. London: Chapman and Hall. 1860. † New Monthly, vol. cxvi. p. 70.

Tullia d'Arragona as "one of those marvellous men whose abounding vital energies enable them to unite, in their own persons, characters, pursuits, and occupations which might seem to belong to half a dozen most dissimilar individuals. His political speculations and intrigues did not interfere with his much-loved literary pursuits. His free-thinking philosophy did not prevent his close intimacy with the Pope. And his vast commercial and banking operations were somehow made compatible with the career of a very notorious man of pleasure."* It must be remembered, however, that this "man of pleasure," this "Don Juan" in the person of "a middle-age banker," had been a widower for three years at the time of his liaison with the Roman frail one, and we must not expect from him a greater measure of correctness than we should find in his contemporaries, or probably in our own. The charges against his public character are of a graver kind. "Loudly as Strozzi talked of his patriotic devotion, and liberally as he expended his immense wealth for political purposes, we are obliged (says Mr. Trollope) to come to the conclusion that no trace of real patriotism is to be found in his conduct from beginning to end." Yet we feel interested in him; apart from the interest that attaches to the times in which he lived. He had the noble qualities of energy and of intellect; and most of us will find it easier to descant on his vices than to imitate his relieving virtues.

He was born-a son of "the wealthiest man in his native city"-in 1489, while the Palazzo Strozzi, the pile of massive grandeur which so many of us have looked upon, was still in progress of construction, and three years before the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent. His boyhood was passed during the wild fanaticism of Savanarola. His manly life may be considered to have commenced in 1509; and its first important act was his marriage with Clarice de' Medici, a niece (though not in the papal sense) of Leo X. Seldom has such a connexion led to so much of danger and of difficulty. After the disgraceful compact entered into by Piero de' Medici, her father (when Charles VIII. advanced towards Florence), himself and his adherents had been in exile. The alliance, on the part of Filippo Strozzi, with one of a family who had been the bitter enemies of his own, and with a daughter of the betrayer of his country, was considered by the republican party as a dereliction of principle, and involved the politic bridegroom-for, though the lady was handsome, the marriage was more a matter of policy than affection-in most of the consequences which form the narrative of his chequered life. The stake he first played for was the return of the Medici to power, and he seemingly won. But it was a hazardous game, and ultimately a losing one. The connexion he had formed brought him into disfavour, both with the existing government and with the people. One of its immediate results was his banishment to Naples. This, however, was not of long duration. Clarice, his bride, had been well received by the Florentines, who thought it a shame to keep so charming a young woman's husband away from her;" the tide of opinion changed; and the exile was permitted, "on sufferance," to return.

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Soon after this his life of policy and intrigue began. The republican government had incurred the displeasure of Pope Julius II. Its gon.

*Decade of Italian Women, vol. ii. p. 11.

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faloniere had treated the papal interdict with as little respect as seems likely to be paid to it in our own day by the governments of Italy and France. It was determined that he should be replaced by the Medici; and the first act of his holiness was to provide for his assassination, through the instrumentality of a wild-brained young Florentine, named Prinziyalle della Stufa. In this movement Filippo Strozzi had the wisdom, or the patriotism, to abstain from taking part. The project was defeated; but it would argue little knowledge of the medieval popes, and more especially of Julius II.-a fighting Della Rovere-to suppose that his intentions would be abandoned. On the contrary, Giovanni de' Medici was appointed his legate, and advancing upon Florence by Prato, accompanied, amongst others, by his cousin Giulio, and with an army of "Moors, renegades, and other outcasts and off-scourings of Europe, employed by the Head of the Church "for the gratification of his hatred and revenge,' "the future Leo X. and Clement VII. were eye-witnesses of the sack of that unhappy city; a spectacle of "hideous and obscene details of torture and butchery," which Mr. Trollope spares us "the sickening disgust and horror" of reading. Yet he tells enough to make us think that the Sepoys were, in comparison, angels of mercy. The Florentines, on hearing of this event, were in a state of terror and consternation, and amongst the supposed partisans of the Medicean faction, whom it had been thought prudent to imprison, was Filippo Strozzi. He might have fled; but, "foreseeing probably that the moment for the return of the Medici was approaching, he was not sorry to be marked by a few days' imprisonment as one of their adherents." He accompanied the deputation sent to Prato to negotiate; and the end, after a few scenes of republican servility and degradation, was the return of the family of the great Lorenzo, and their supporters, to supreme power. This was in 1511. Filippo was not included in the new government. He still trimmed for either direction; but, in little more than a year, Giovanni de' Medici became Leo X., and his prudent kinsman was made his banker. From this time he continued attached to the Medici, through good and evil, till his allegiance was divided by the rivalry between Alessandro and Ippolito. During the interval, Leo X. had "laughed his last convivial laugh," and (after the short intervening pontificate of Adrian VI.) had been succeeded by another of the holy men who looked upon the scenes of butchery at Prato, and was now Pope Clement VII., a name strangely inconsistent with the "cold-blooded and vindictive cruelty which never forgave an offence nor spared an offender." Though we have passed over it so briefly, it was a period crowded with important events, many of them deeply affecting the interests of Filippo. He tells us himself that, at the sack of Rome by the troops under the Constable Bourbon, his losses were so great that he could not "estimate" them "within many thousands of crowns." But this was not all. He was exposed to a preliminary danger. Under the new pope he had resumed his office of banker and treasurer of the Apostolic Chamber, and when his holiness wished to make terms with the Emperor Charles V., after the chastisement which had been inflicted upon him for going over to the King of France, his kinsman and banker was asked, and very unwillingly consented, to be delivered as a hostage to the imperial general, and was sent to Naples. Knowing, as he did, the character of Clement-for they

had long been aware of each other's qualities—it is strange that he should have placed himself in such a position. In the present day we shrink from the violation of a treaty made forty-five years since. In the sixteenth century such a compact was often broken in little more than forty-eight hours after it had been signed. This was pretty nearly the case with the Pope; and the sending his friend and kinsman as hostage for the performance of conditions he had predetermined to break, was something very like "sending him to certain death." One of the arguments used to hasten such a catastrophe, when the treachery had become apparent, was rather curious. "Francis I. (it was urged), who, after the battle of Pavia, had become Charles V.'s prisoner, and had been taken to Madrid, had recently been restored to liberty on signing a treaty, and leaving his sons in hostage with Charles as pledges for its fulfilment. Now, under these circumstances, nothing could be more judicious or more useful to the emperor's interest than putting to death a hostage whose principal had broken his faith." Filippo gained time by offering that, if they would allow him to return to Florence, he would revenge both them and himself upon Clement, by causing a revolt against the Medici, and securing the adherence of his fellow-countrymen to the emperor; but before this additional iniquity could be carried into effect, the Pope made a new treaty, and the crafty banker, whom his wife (in her earnest remonstrances with his holiness on hearing of Filippo's danger) had described as an "innocent lamb," was set at liberty. This cost him fifty thousand crowns.

After the complicated horrors of the sack of Rome, Filippo Strozzi returned to Florence.

The next ten years comprise the remainder of his life, and some of them were its busiest portion. He was occasionally in high favour with his countrymen as the assertor of their rights, and at other times unpopular even to danger as the friend of their oppressors. The last faint semblance of liberty had disappeared. The Pope, assisted by his now ally the emperor, had besieged Florence and reduced its people to submission; and its government had become a despotism with Alessandro de' Medici, as duke, at its head. Filippo had, during the same period, lost his clever wife, the mother of seven sons and three daughters; and Clement, to whom he had devoted years of well-paid servility, had himself gone to his

account.

Though the cautious and politic banker had assisted in restoring the Medici to power, he soon joined-and with sufficient reason-in the general execration of Alessandro. This first of the ducal rulers was in no aspect of person or character attractive. As a son of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, he must have been the great-grandson, illegitimately descended, of Lorenzo the Magnificent, but he was by many believed to have been the son of the Cardinal Giulio, afterwards Pope Clement VII.; and, from his woolly hair and strangely swarthy complexion, his mother was supposed by some to have been a negro slave. For the rest, he was a profligate and a tyrant of the most loathsome description; so that whatever may have been the motive, we cannot have any bad feeling against Filippo Strozzi for conspiring with the Cardinal Ippolito-another illegitimate Mediciand with the exiled republicans, to remove him from the place he had usurped.

Then followed the plottings and intrigues, the struggles for violated

rights, the revenge for private injuries, the treachery, the misery, and the wrong which are the usual attendants upon such movements. The conspirators were of very unmanageable materials. Ippolito, though he pos sessed some attractive qualities, was almost as unfit as Alessandro for the sovereignty to which he aspired; Filippo, in supporting his cause at Florence, was still supporting the Medici; and the feeling of the republican exiles was not against Alessandro only, but against the Medici in general-" not against the existing tyrant, but against tyranny." They had nearly, however, reconciled their differences when one of the principal parties to the compact was withdrawn by the sudden death of Ippolito; attributed, but without much reason, to means employed by Alessandro. The exiles soon saw that their cause was for the present hopeless. The duke was supported by the emperor, his intended father-in-law. And, after a dignified protest-"the last protest made by Florentine liberty" -the attempt to restore a better form of government was abandoned. Filippo and his sons were soon after outlawed, and thus added to the list of exiles: an event that, in the feelings it called forth, gave proof that he possessed qualities as a master and employer which had secured the attachment and devotion of those who had known him best and been most constantly about him. On his retirement from Florence a new actor appeared upon the scene, in the person of Lorenzo, Lorenzino, or Lorenzaccio de' Medici, a cousin of the Cosimo who afterwards became duke. This unworthy scion of a great and honoured house was an "ill-famed and illlived lad." He was never happy, cheery, prosperous, nor agreeable. "He never laughed, but only sneered;" and though not without talent, was moody, strange, fantastic, and disgusting. He had come to Florence upon being banished from Rome for defacing the statues on the Arch of Constantine; an act of wanton barbarism that could only have had its motive in a mind so strangely constituted. The change of scene and of associates had no effect upon his character. Under the impulse of wounded vanity this miserable creature had conceived a mortal hatred towards the duke; and the profligate usurper, instead of being brought to the scaffold as he ought to have been, was assassinated by his kinsman, assisted by a murderer whom he had saved from the gallows and had kept in his employ. It was a fearful and prolonged scene of butchery, but its perpetrator managed to escape. Filippo Strozzi received the news of this event from Lorenzaccio himself at Venice; and, coming from such a source, he was at first very doubtful of its truth. It raised the hopes of the exiles, but only to be disappointed as similar hopes in Italy were doomed to be for generation after generation. With no availing opposition, Alessandro was succeeded in the despotism by Cosimo, a son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, and a youth of talent, who became the first of the grand-dukes of Tuscany; and against him the schemes of the exiles were now directed. Their movements, however, were vacillating and badly conducted; and the only immediate result to the unfortunate banker was the payment of the greater part of the cost and charges from his own resources. Still hostilities were persevered in. Their forces were led by his son Piero, a soldier of fortune, ambitious of distinction, to whom there was something tempting in an attack upon Florence; and upon Florence it was determined that they should advance. The attempt, which, under any circumstances, could in their hands scarcely have been successful, was dangerously delayed for promised assistance from the King of France. In the mean time Vitelli, the captain

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