f constitutional equity for four
generations. In 1494, this state of things was violently shaken. The
Florentines expelled the Medici, who had begun to throw off their mask
and to assume the airs of sovereignty; then they reconstituted their
Commonwealth as nearly as they could upon the model of Venice, and to
this new form of government Savonarola gave a quasi-theocratic
complexion by naming Christ the king of Florence.[2] But the internal
elements of the discord were too potent for the maintenance of this
regime. The Medici were recalled; and this time Florence fell under the
shadow of Church-rule, being controlled by Leo X. and Clement VII.,
through the hands of prelates whom they made the guardians and advisers
of their nephews. In 1527 a final effort for liberty shed undying luster
on the noblest of Italian cities. The sack of Rome had paralyzed the
Pope. His family were compelled to quit the Medicean palace. The Grand
Council was restored: a Gonfalonier was elected; Florence suffered the
hardships of her memorable siege. At the end of her trials, menaced
alike by Pope and Emperor, who shook hands over her prostrate corpse,
betrayed by her general, the infamous Malatesta Baglioni, and sold by
her own selfish citizens, she had to submit to the hereditary
sovereignty of the Medici. It was in vain that Lorenzino of that house
pretended to play Brutus and murdered his cousin the Duke Alessandro in
1536. Cosimo succeeded in the same year, and won the title of Grand
Duke, which he transmitted to a line of semi-Austrian princes.

[1] 'Nunquam in eodem statu permanserunt,' says Marco Foscari (as
quoted above, p. 42 of his report). The flux of Florence struck a
Venetian profoundly.

[2] The Gonfalonier Capponi put up a tablet on the Public Palace, in
1528, to this effect: 'Jesus Christus Rex Florentini Populi S.F.
decreto electus.' This inscription is differently given. See Varchi,
vol. i. p. 266; Segni, p. 46. Nothing is more significant of the
difference between Venice and Florence than the political idealism
implied in this religious consecration of the republic by statute.
In my essay on 'Florence and the Medici' (_Sketches and Studies in
Italy_) I have attempted to condense the internal history of the
Republic and to analyze the state-craft of the Medici.

Throughout all these vicissitudes every form and phase of republican
government was advocated, discussed, and put i