Francesco Guicciardini, Roberto Acciaiuoli, Francesco Vettori, and
Baccio Valori. Of these men Francesco Guicciardini, Francesco Vettori,
and Baccio Valori were attendant at Bologna upon the Pope. They all
adhered with fidelity to the Medicean party at this crisis of their
country's fate, and all paid dearly for their loyalty. When Cosimo I.,
by their efforts, was established in the duchy, he made it one of his
first cares to rid himself of these too faithful servants. Baccio Valori
was beheaded after the battle of Montemurlo in 1537 for practice with
the exiles of Filippo Strozzi's party. Francesco Guicciardini, Francesco
Vettori, and Roberto Acciaiuoli died in disgrace before the year
1543--their only crime being that they had made themselves the ladder
whereby a Medici had climbed into his throne, and which it was his
business to upset when firmly seated. For the heroism of Florence at
this moment it would be difficult to find fit words of panegyric. The
republic stood alone, abandoned by France to the hot rage of Clement and
the cold contempt of Charles, deserted by the powers of Italy, betrayed
by lying captains, deluged on all sides with the scum of armies pouring
into Tuscany from the Lombard pandemonium of war. The situation was one
of impracticable difficulty. Florence could not but fall. Yet every
generous heart will throb with sympathy while reading the story of that
final stand for independence, in which a handful of burghers persisted,
though congregated princes licked the dust from feet of Emperor and
Pontiff.

Charles had come to assume the iron and the golden crowns in Italy. He
ought to have journeyed to Monza or to S. Ambrogio at Milan for the
first, and to the Lateran in Rome for the second of these investitures.
An Emperor of the Swabian House would have been compelled by precedent
and superstition to observe this form. It is true that the coronation of
a German prince as the successor of Lombard kings and Roman Augusti, had