Piero, and Lorenzo until it was world famous, crumbled to dust. Piero
was a coarse-minded, pleasure-loving youth--"The Headstrong" his
father had called him--whose one idea of power was to be sensual and
tyrannical; and the enemies of Florence and of Italy took advantage
of this fact. Savonarola's sermons had paved the way from within
too. In 1494 Charles VIII of France marched into Italy; Piero pulled
himself together and visited the king to make terms for Florence,
but made such terms that on returning to the city he found an order
of banishment and obeyed it. On November 9th, 1494, he and his family
were expelled, and the mob, forgetting so quickly all that they owed
to the Medici who had gone before, rushed to this beautiful palace and
looted it. The losses that art and learning sustained in a few hours
can never be estimated. A certain number of treasures were subsequently
collected again, such as Donatello's David and Verrocchio's David,
while Donatello's Judith was removed to the Palazzo Vecchio, where
an inscription was placed upon it saying that her short way with
Holofernes was a warning to all traitors; but priceless pictures,
sculpture, and MSS. were ruthlessly demolished.

In the chapter on S. Marco we shall read of what experiments in
government the Florentines substituted for that of the Medici,
Savonarola for a while being at the head of the government, although
only for a brief period which ended amid an orgy of lawlessness; and
then, after a restless period of eighteen years, in which Florence
had every claw cut and was weakened also by dissension, the Medici
returned--the change being the work of Lorenzo's second son, Giovanni
de' Medici, who on the eve of becoming Pope Leo X procured their
reinstatement, thus justifying the wisdom of his father in placing
him in the Church. Piero having been drowned long since, his admirable
but ill-starred brother Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, now thirty-three,