to make use of. Piero dei Medici had not
yet taken any resolution or formed any plan, when he suddenly heard two
startling pieces of news. A jealous neighbour of his, the Marquis of
Torderiovo, had betrayed to the French the weak side of Fivizzano,
so that they had taken it by storm, and had put its soldiers and
inhabitants to the edge of the sword; on another side, Gilbert of
Montpensier, who had been lighting up the sea-coast so as to keep open
the communications between the French army and their fleet, had met with
a detachment sent by Paolo Orsini to Sarzano, to reinforce the garrison
there, and after an hour's fighting had cut it to pieces. No quarter
had been granted to any of the prisoners; every man the French could get
hold of they had massacred.

This was the first occasion on which the Italians, accustomed as
they were to the chivalrous contests of the fifteenth century, found
themselves in contact with savage foreigners who, less advanced in
civilisation, had not yet come to consider war as a clever game, but
looked upon it as simply a mortal conflict. So the news of these two
butcheries produced a tremendous sensation at Florence, the richest
city in Italy, and the most prosperous in commerce and in art. Every
Florentine imagined the French to be like an army of those ancient
barbarians who were wont to extinguish fire with blood. The prophecies
of Savonarola, who had predicted the foreign invasion and the
destruction that should follow it, were recalled to the minds of all;
and so much perturbation was evinced that Piero dei Medici, bent on
getting peace at any price, forced a decree upon the republic whereby
she was to send an embassy to the conqueror; and obtained leave,
resolved as he was to deliver himself in person into the hands of the
French monarch, to act as one of the ambassadors. He accordingly quitted
Florence, accompanied by four other messengers, and an his arrival at
Pietra Santa, sent to ask from Charles VIII a safe-conduct for himself
alone. The day after he made this request, Brigonnet and de Piennes came
to fetch him, and led him into the presence of Charles VIII.

Piero dei Medici, in spite of his name and influence, was in the eyes of
the French nobility, who considered it a dishonourable thing to concern
oneself with art or industry, nothing more than a rich merchant, with
whom it would be absurd to stand upon any very strict ceremony. So
Charles VIII received him on horseback, and