(For the past few weeks, I've been posting my comic about Machiavelli—the father of political science—to the site. Hope you enjoy it)
Here are this week's pages:
Next page and footnotes after the jump:
Footnote: In 1494, Charles VIII of France quartered his men in Florence on his way to attack Naples. Piero de’ Medici (Lorenzo’s son) initially tried to block the king’s army, but was not supported by others in Florence, particularly Savonarola, as France was an important ally. But Piero went too far in his accession to the King’s demands: he accepted all of the King’s terms, giving up important fortresses to France and, most galling of all, allowed the King to give Pisa its independence from Florence. Machiavelli found the capitulation to be particularly bitter and humiliating. He complained that the French “took the city with chalk,” referring to the chalk marks the French made on the houses where soldiers were to be quartered. These concessions, especially the loss of Pisa, proved to be the undoing of the Medici, and they were exiled from the city. The end of the Medici’s long dominance over Florentine politics enabled new faces to enter government service, including Machiavelli, although not immediately (Machiavelli became Secretary to the Second Chancellery in 1498; Savonarola’s faction ruled in the interim.)
When the French arrived in the city, things got worse. As Luca Landucci describes: “The city is in a great dread of being pillaged. The French seemed to be becoming more and more masters of the place. The French soldiers went about robbing in the night, their guards parading the city. Everyone was so discouraged and intimidated.” Savonarola was able to convince the King to move on before things got too out of hand, but the damage had been done; the loss of Pisa would obsess Florence for the next decade, as we shall see.