eaty obligations--for Florence never was a city of
soldiers--nor had he the prestige of an official position to lend weight
to his words. To all intents and purposes he was a private citizen of
the Florentine republic. Yet such was the dynamic power of the man's
marvellous personality, and the reputation he had earned, even in his
early years, for supreme prescience and far-reaching diplomatic subtlety,
that far and wide he was regarded as the greatest force in Italian
politics. Sixtus sallied forth to crush; he returned to the Vatican a
crushed and a discredited man, to die of sheer chagrin over his defeat by
Lorenzo in his designs upon Ferrara.

Then followed the memorable dispute, in 1472-1473, over the bishopric of
Pisa, when the Pope's nominee, Francesco Salviati, was refused possession
of his see, Pisa being one of the Tuscan towns under the control of
Florence. To this Sixtus retaliated by seeking the friendship of Ferrante
of Naples, a move Lorenzo anticipated by forming the league between
Florence, Milan, and Venice. This league thoroughly alarmed both the Pope
and Ferrante, and on the latter visiting Rome in 1475 a papal-Neapolitan
alliance was formed.

Even then hostilities might not have broken out had the young Duke
of Milan not been assassinated in 1476, leaving an infant heir. This
entailed a long minority, with all its dangers, and the apprehensions
regarding these were not fanciful, inasmuch as Lodovico Sforza, uncle of
the baby Duke, usurped the position under pretext of acting as regent.
These crimes were plainly responsible for the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478
against the Medici themselves, a conspiracy which resulted in Giuliano,
the younger brother of Lorenzo, being murdered in the cathedral, during
mass, on the Sunday before Ascension, while Lorenzo himself was slightly
wounded. That Sixtus and his nephew were accessories before the fact
is now regarded as unquestionable. The vengeance taken by the enraged
Florentines on the conspirators, their relatives, friends, and property,
was terrible; the innocent, alas! being sacrificed indiscriminately with
the guilty.

The Archbishop of Pisa, Francesco Salviati, had entered eagerly into
the scheme, and, although his sacred office prevented him from actually
assisting in the deed, he was present in the cathedral until the signal
was given for the perpetration of the deed, when he left the building to
secure the Palazzo Publico. He was therefore summarily ha