resent a picture of the process whereby that family contrived to
fasten itself upon the freest and most cultivated State in Italy. This
success the Medici owed mainly to their own obstinacy, and to the
weakness of republican institutions in Florence. Their power was
founded upon wealth in the first instance, and upon the ingenuity with
which they turned the favour of the proletariate to use. It was
confirmed by the mistakes and failures of their enemies, by Rinaldo
degli Albizzi's attack on Cosimo, by the conspiracy of Neroni and
Pitti against Piero, and by Francesco de' Pazzi's attempt to
assassinate Lorenzo. It was still further strengthened by the Medicean
sympathy for arts and letters--a sympathy which placed both Cosimo and
Lorenzo at the head of the Renaissance movement, and made them worthy
to represent Florence, the city of genius, in the fifteenth century.
While thus founding and cementing their dynastic influence upon the
basis of a widespread popularity, the Medici employed persistent
cunning in the enfeeblement of the Republic. It was their policy not
to plant themselves by force or acts of overt tyranny, but to corrupt
ambitious citizens, to secure the patronage of public officers, and to
render the spontaneous working of the State machinery impossible. By
pursuing this policy over a long series of years they made the revival
of liberty in 1494, and again in 1527, ineffectual. While exiled from
Florence, they never lost the hope of returning as masters, so long as
the passions they had excited, and they alone could gratify, remained
in full activity. These passions were avarice and egotism, the greed
of the grasping Ottimati, the jealousy of the nobles, the
self-indulgence of the proletariate. Yet it is probable they might
have failed to recover Florence, on one or other of these two
occasions, but for the accident which placed Giovanni de' Medici on
the Papal chair, and enabled him to put Giulio in the way of the same
dignity. From the accession of Leo in 1513 to the year 1527 the Medici
ruled Florence from Rome, and brought the power of the Church into the
service of their despotism. After that date they were still further
aided by the imperial policy of Charles V., who chose to govern Italy
through subject princes, bound to himself by domestic alliances and
powerful interests. One of these was Cosimo, the first Grand Duke of
Tuscany.

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_THE DEBT OF ENGLISH