14 - The French Descent

Summary

The pope’s support for the new king of Naples in the ‘agreement, alliance and pact’ signed in Rome on 28 March 1494 changed the balance of power in Italy – and with it, Piero’s importance as a mediator. It had been the pope’s long years of conflict with his recalcitrant vassal Ferrante that had enabled Lorenzo de’ Medici to mediate between Italy’s rulers as the needle of the balance, but the new alignment meant that Piero had lost his father’s role, and once the French expedition was confirmed, the months of temporising were also over. But Lorenzo had not called Piero his ‘warrior son’ for nothing, and when the war was decided on, he entered energetically into its planning, offering forth ideas as his father used to do, who liked to share his fantasies or ghiribizzi with his colleagues as a form of thinking aloud.¹ So although the events of the next few months are well known in outline, Piero’s own role – which, as usual, combined bursts of action with periods of inaction or escape – is less familiar.²