Among the great diversity of republican and signorial governments, it is possible to identify some shared understanding of basic political principles and their implications. One was the idea of Italy as a community of powers, not divided into blocs of republics and princes. The vocabulary of monarchy, of lordship, was used by republican governments of themselves with no indication those terms were considered anomalous in that context. There was no indication that it was thought inappropriate for republics to have subjects. There was also much common ground in the principles underpinning the attitudes of subjects to the governments exercising dominion over them, princely or republican. Citizens of subject towns and cities cherished the idea of their own right to libertà, in the sense of a substantial measure of self-government. Participation in offices, rather than in decision-making, was often what mattered most to members of political communities, large and small, in republics and principalities.

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