the Medici
family from Florence. Giovanni's widow and their son Cosimo got
along as best they could until the murder of Alessandro in 1537,
when Cosimo was nearly eighteen. He was a quiet, reserved youth,
who had apparently taken but little interest in public affairs, and
had spent his time in the country with his mother, chiefly in field
sports. But no sooner was Alessandro dead, and his slayer Lorenzino
had escaped, than Cosimo approached the Florentine council and claimed
to be appointed to his rightful place as head of the State, and this
claim he put, or suggested, with so much humility that his wish was
granted. Instantly one of the most remarkable transitions in history
occurred: the youth grew up almost in a day and at once began to exert
unsuspected reserves of power and authority. In despair a number of
the chief Florentines made an effort to depose him, and a battle was
fought at Montemurlo, a few miles from Florence, between Cosimo's
troops, fortified by some French allies, and the insurgents. That
was in 1537; the victory fell to Cosimo; and his long and remarkable
reign began with the imprisonment and execution of the chief rebels.

Although Cosimo made so bloody a beginning he was the first imaginative
and thoughtful administrator that Florence had had since Lorenzo the
Magnificent. He set himself grimly to build upon the ruins which the
past forty and more years had produced; and by the end of his reign he
had worked wonders. As first he lived in the Medici palace, but after
marrying a wealthy wife, Eleanora of Toledo, he transferred his home
to the Signoria, now called the Palazzo Vecchio, as a safer spot, and
established a bodyguard of Swiss lancers in Orcagna's loggia, close
by. [3] Later he bought the unfinished Pitti palace with his wife's
money, finished it, and moved there. Meanwhile he was strengthening
his position in every way by alliances and treaties, and also by the
convenient murder of Lorenzino, the Brutus who had rid Florence of
Alessandro ten years earlier, and whose presence in the flesh could
not but be a cause of anxiety since Lorenzino derived from an elder
son of the Medici, and Cosimo from a younger. In 1555 the ancient
republic of Siena fell to Cosimo's troops after a cruel and barbarous
siege and was thereafter merged in Tuscany, and in 1570 Cosimo assumed
the title of Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and was crowned at Rome.

Whether or not the common accusation against the M