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

What remains of Florentine history may be briefly told. Clement, now
the undisputed arbiter of power and honour in the city, chose
Alessandro de' Medici to be prince. Alessandro was created Duke of
Civita di Penna, and married to a natural daughter of Charles V.
Ippolito was made a cardinal. Ippolito would have preferred a secular
to a priestly kingdom; nor did he conceal his jealousy for his cousin.
Therefore Alessandro had him poisoned. Alessandro in his turn was
murdered by his kinsman, Lorenzino de' Medici. Lorenzino paid the
usual penalty of tyrannicide some years later. When Alessandro was
killed in 1539, Clement had himself been dead five years. Thus the
whole posterity of Cosimo de' Medici, with the exception of Catherine,
Queen of France, was utterly extinguished. But the Medici had struck
root so firmly in the State, and had so remodelled it upon the type of
tyranny, that the Florentines were no longer able to do without them.
The chiefs of the Ottimati selected Cosimo, the representative of
Giovanni the Invincible, for their prince, and thus the line of the
elder Lorenzo came at last to power. This Cosimo was a boy of
eighteen, fond of field-sports, and unused to party intrigues. When
Francesco Guicciardini offered him a privy purse of one hundred and
twenty thousand ducats annually, together with the presidency of
Florence, this wily politician hoped that he would rule the State
through Cosimo, and realise at last that dream of the Ottimati, a
_Governo Stretto_ or _di Pochi_. He was notably mistaken in his
calculations. The first days of Cosimo's administration showed that
he possessed the craft of his family and the vigour of his immediate
progenitors, and that he meant to be sole master in Florence. He it
was who obtained the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany from the Pope--a
title confirmed by the Emperor, fortified by Austrian alliances, and
transmitted through his heirs to the present century.

XXVIII

In this sketch of Florentine history, I have purposely omitted all
details that did not bear upon the constitutional history of the
republic, or on the growth of the Medici as despots; because I wanted
to p