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Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) - The Age of the Despots by John Addington Symonds
page 279 of 583 (47%)
Florentines, destitute of troops, divided among themselves and headed
by the excellent but hesitating Piero Soderini, threw their gates open
to the Medici. Giuliano, the brother of Pope Leo, and Lorenzo, his
nephew, whose statues sit throned in the immortality of Michael Angelo's
marble upon their tombs in San Lorenzo, disposed of the republic at
their pleasure. Machiavelli, as War Secretary of the anti-Medicean
government, was of course disgraced and deprived of his appointments. In
1513 he was suspected of complicity in the conjuration of Pietropaolo
Boscoli and Agostino Capponi, was imprisoned in the Bargello, and
tortured to the extent of four turns of the rack. It seems that he was
innocent. Leo X. released him by the act of amnesty passed upon the
event of his assuming the tiara; and Machiavelli immediately retired to
his farm near San Casciano.

Since we are now approaching the most critical passage of Machiavelli's
biography, it may be well to draw from his private letters a picture of
the life to which this statesman of the restless brain was condemned in
the solitude of the country.[1] Writing on December 10 to his friend
Francesco Vettori, he says, 'I am at my farm; and, since my last
misfortunes, have not been in Florence twenty days. I rise with the sun,
and go into a wood of mine that is being cut, where I remain two hours
inspecting the work of the previous day and conversing with the
woodcutters, who have always some trouble on hand among themselves or
with their neighbors. When I leave the wood, I proceed to a well, and
thence to the place which I use for snaring birds, with a book under my
arm--Dante, or Petrarch, or one of the minor poets, like Tibullus or
Ovid. I read the story of their passions, and let their loves remind me
of my own, which is a pleasant pastime for a while. Next I take the
road, enter the inn door, talk with the passers-by, inquire the news of
the neighborhood, listen to a variety of matters, and make note of the
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