cide.
Segni inclines to the belief that he was murdered by the creatures
of Duke Cosimo.

The moral and political debility which proved the real source of the
ruin of Florence is accounted for in different ways by the historians of
the siege. Pitti, whose insight into the situation is perhaps the
keenest, and who is by far the most outspoken, does not refer the
failure of the Florentines to the cowardice or stupidity of the popular
party, but to the malignity of the Palleschi, the double-dealing and
egotism of the wealthy nobles, who to suit their own interests favored
now one and now another of the parties. These Ottimati--as he calls
them, by a title borrowed from classical phraseology--whether they
professed the Medicean or the popular cause, were always bent on
self-aggrandizement at the expense of the people or their princes.[1]
The sympathies of Pitti were on the side of the plebeians, whose policy
during the siege was carried out by the Gonfalonier Carducci. At the
same time he admitted the feebleness and insufficiency of many of these
men, called from a low rank of life and from mechanical trades to the
administration of the commonwealth. The state of Florence under Piero
Soderini--that 'non mai abbastanza lodato cavaliere,' as he calls
him--was the ideal to which he reverted with longing eyes. Segni, on the
other hand, condemns the ambition of the plebeian leaders, and declares
his opinion that the State could only have been saved by the more
moderate among the influential citizens. He belonged in fact to that
section of the Medicean party which Varchi styles the Neutrals. He had
strong aristocratic leanings, and preferred a government of nobles to
the popular democracy which flourished under Francesco Carducci. While
he desired the liberty of Florence, Segni saw that the republic could
not hold its own against both Pope and Emperor, at a crisis when the
King of France, who ought to have rendered assistance in the hour of
need, was bound by the treaty of Cambray, and by the pledges he had
given to Charles in the persons of his two sons. The policy of which
Segni approved was that which Niccolo Capponi had prepared before his
fall--a reconciliation with Clement through the intervention of the
Emperor, according to the terms of which the Medici should have been
restored as citizens of paramount authority, but not as sovereigns.
Varchi, while no less alive to the insecurity of Carducci's policy, was
anima