scans; one of the friars lent the fugitive his dress,
and the cardinal, under the protection of this humble incognito,
contrived at last to get outside Florence, and joined his two brothers in
the Apennines.

The same day the Medici were declared traitors and rebels, and
ambassadors were sent to the King of France. They found him at Pisa,
where he was granting independence to the town which eighty-seven years
ago had fallen under the rule of the Florentines. Charles VIII made no
reply to the envoys, but merely announced that he was going to march on
Florence.

Such a reply, one may easily understand, terrified the republic.
Florence, had no time to prepare a defence, and no strength in her
present state to make one. But all the powerful houses assembled and
armed their own servants and retainers, and awaited the issue, intending
not to begin hostilities, but to defend themselves should the French make
an attack. It was agreed that if any necessity should arise for taking
up arms, the bells of the various churches in the town should ring a peal
and so serve as a general signal. Such a resolution was perhaps of more
significant moment in Florence than it could have been in any other town.
For the palaces that still remain from that period are virtually
fortresses and the eternal fights between Guelphs and Ghibellines had
familiarised the Tuscan people with street warfare.

The king appeared, an the 17th of November, in the evening, at the gate
of San Friano. He found there the nobles of Florence clad in their most
magnificent apparel, accompanied by priests chanting hymns, and by a mob
who were full of joy at any prospect of change, and hoped for a return of
liberty after the fall of the Medici. Charles VIII stopped for a moment
under a sort of gilded canopy that had been prepared for him, and replied
in a few evasive words to the welcoming speeches which were addressed to
him by the Signoria; then he asked for his lance, he set it in rest, and
gave the order to enter the town, the whole of which he paraded with his
army following him with arms erect, and then went down to the palace of
the Medici, which had been prepared for him.

The next day negotiations commenced; but everyone was out of his
reckoning. The Florentines had received Charles VIII as a guest, but he
had entered the city as a conqueror. So when the deputies of the
Signoria spoke of ratifying the treaty of Piero dei Medici, the king
replied that