cannot deny him the fame of brilliant mental qualities, a princely
bearing, and great courage.

[1] See Varchi, vol. iii. p. 61, for the first stone laid of this
castle. It should be said that accounts disagree about Filippo's
death. Nerli very distinctly asserts that he committed suicide.
Segni inclines to the belief that he was murdered by the creatures
of Duke Cosimo.

The moral and political debility which proved the real source of the
ruin of Florence is accounted for in different ways by the historians of
the siege. Pitti, whose insight into the situation is perhaps the
keenest, and who is by far the most outspoken, does not refer the
failure of the Florentines to the cowardice or stupidity of the popular
party, but to the malignity of the Palleschi, the double-dealing and
egotism of the wealthy nobles, who to suit their own interests favored
now one and now another of the parties. These Ottimati--as he calls
them, by a title borrowed from classical phraseology--whether they
professed the Medicean or the popular cause, were always bent on
self-aggrandizement at the expense of the people or their princes.[1]
The sympathies of Pitti were on the side of the plebeians, whose policy
during the siege was carried out by the Gonfalonier Carducci. At the
same time he admitted the feebleness and insufficiency of many of these
men, called from a low rank of life and from mechanical trades to the
administration of the commonwealth. The state of Florence under Piero
Soderini--that 'non mai abbastanza lodato cavaliere,' as he calls
him--was the ideal to which he reverted with longing eyes. Segni, on the
other hand, condemns the ambition of the plebeian leaders, and declares
his opinion that the State could only have been saved by the more
moderate among the influential citizens. He belonged in fact to that