had so often called the citizens to arms or meetings of independence.

Meanwhile Ippolito, the natural son of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and
therefore the rightful heir, after having been sent on various missions
by Clement VII, to keep him out of the way, settled at Bologna and took
to poetry. He was a kindly, melancholy man with a deep sense of human
injustice; and in 1535, when, after Clement VII's very welcome demise,
the Florentine exiles who either had been banished from Florence by
Alessandro or had left of their own volition rather than live in the
city under such a contemptible ruler, sent an embassy to the Emperor
Charles V to help them against this new tyrant, Ippolito headed it;
but Alessandro prudently arranged for his assassination en route.

It is unlikely, however, that the Emperor would have done anything,
for in the following year he allowed his daughter Margaret to become
Alessandro's wife. That was in 1536. In January, 1537, Lorenzino de'
Medici, a cousin, one of the younger branch of the family, assuming
the mantle of Brutus, or liberator, stabbed Alessandro to death while
he was keeping an assignation in the house that then adjoined this
palace. Thus died, at the age of twenty-six, one of the most worthless
of men, and, although illegitimate, the last of the direct line of
Cosimo de' Medici, the Father of his Country, to govern Florence.

The next ruler came from the younger branch, to which we now turn. Old
Giovanni di Bicci had two sons, Cosimo and Lorenzo. Lorenzo's son, Pier
Francesco de' Medici, had a son Giovanni de' Medici. This Giovanni,
who married Caterina Sforza of Milan, had also a son named Giovanni,
born in 1498, and it was he who was the rightful heir when Lorenzo,
Duke of Urbino, died in 1519. He was connected with both sides of
the family, for his father, as I have said, was the great grandson