could devise for forcing them into outlawry and contumacy.[3] Therefore
when he returned to inhabit Florence, he did so as the creature of the
Medici, sworn to maintain the bastard Alessandro in his power. He was
elected a member of the Senate of eighty; and so thoroughly did he
espouse the cause of his new master, that he had the face to undertake
the Duke's defense before Charles V. at Naples in 1535. On this occasion
Alessandro, who had rendered himself unbearable by his despotic habits,
and in particular by the insults which he offered to women of all ranks
and conditions in Florence, was arraigned by the exiles before the bar
of Cæsar. Guicciardini won the cause of his client, and restored
Alessandro with an Imperial confirmation of his despotism to Florence.
This period of his political career deserves particular attention, since
it displays a glaring contradiction between some of his unpublished
compositions and his actions, and confirms the accusations of his
enemies.[4] That he should have preferred a government of Ottimati, or
wealthy nobles, to a more popular constitution, and that he should have
adhered with fidelity to the Medicean faction in Florence, is no ground
for censure.[5] But when we find him in private unmasking the artifices
of the despots by the most relentless use of frigid criticism, and
advocating a mixed government upon the type of the Venetian
Constitution, we are constrained to admit with Varchi and Pitti that his
support of Alessandro was prompted less by loyalty than by a desire to
gratify his own ambition and avarice under the protective shadow of the
Medicean tyranny.[6] He belonged in fact to those selfish citizens whom
Pitti denounces, diplomatists and men of the world, whose thirst for
power induced them to play into the hands of the Medici, wishing to suck
the state[7] themselves, and to hold the prince in the leading-strings
of vice and pleasure for their own advantage.[8] After the murder of
Alessandro, it was principally through Guicciardini's influence that
Cosimo was placed at the head of the Florentine Republic with the title