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 such a treaty no longer existed, as they had banished the
man who made it; that he had conquered Florence, as he proved the
night before, when he entered lance in hand; that he should retain the
sovereignty, and would make any further decisi