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message—that neither the ailing father nor his awkward son would put up much of a fight. The next few days would put this judgment to the test.
    Indeed there was nothing in the biography of either Piero or Lorenzo to strike fear in an opponent. “[Piero] did not, to be sure, possess the wisdom and virtues of his father,” commented the historian Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540), usually a fair judge of men, “but he was a good-natured and very clement man.” A kind heart, however, was not necessarily an advantage in the cutthroat world of Florentine politics; in the centuries of bloody strife that marred the history of the City of the Baptist, men of saintly disposition were notable by their absence.
     
    Despite the rising tension, August 27 dawned in an atmosphere of deceptive calm. Elections for the new Signoria were scheduled for the following day, and Florentine citizens, the great majority of whom wished only to go about their daily lives undisturbed by the quarrels of their masters, were cautiously optimistic that the leaders of the opposing factions had pulled back from the precipice. Only the day before, Piero and his family had left Florence for their villa at Careggi, something he would never have contemplated had he believed a confrontation imminent. In a crisis anyone who found himself outside city walls could quickly be marginalized. It was just such a blunder that, thirty years earlier, almost cost Cosimo his life. Taking advantage of his temporary absence from the city, the government, led at the time by the Albizzi family, decided to move against their too-powerful rival. Upon returning to Florence, Cosimo had been arrested, threatened with execution, and ultimately sent into exile. The lesson could hardly have been lost on his son that leaving the city at a time of strife was a recipe for disaster.
    Curiously, it was Dietisalvi Neroni, one of the leaders of the Hill, who had persuaded the Medici leader to take this vacation, promising that he, too, would retire to his villa, thus lessening the chances of a violent clash breaking out between their armed supporters. It was an apparently statesmanlike gesture that would allow the democratic process to go forward without interference.
    Piero’s agreement suggests a misplaced confidence that the situation was moving in his direction, and there were in fact indications that the fortunes of the Medici party, which had reached a low ebb in the winter, were on the rebound. But the decisive factor may simply have been the poor state of his health; a few days earlier a flare-up of gout had confined him to his bed, making it almost impossible to conduct any serious business. Thus when Neroni held out an olive branch, Piero was only too happy grasp it.
    Piero had failed to take the measure of Neroni, whose powers of dissimulation were apparently so highly developed that he was able to maintain cordial relations with the man whose destruction he plotted. Piero, not necessarily an astute judge of men at the best of times and now distracted by the pain in his joints, allowed himself to be taken in by Neroni’s conciliatory gestures. “[I]n order to better conceal his intent,” explains Machiavelli, “[Neroni] visited Piero often, reasoned with him about the unity of the city, and advised him.” Though Piero was aware that his onetime colleague had at least flirted with the opposition, Neroni was able to convince him that he was a man of goodwill who could act as a moderating influence on his fellow reformers.
    Machiavelli portrays Neroni as an unprincipled schemer who set out to destroy his old friend in order to further his own career, but with him, as with all the leaders of the revolt of 1466, it is difficult to disentangle motives of self-interest from genuine idealism. Neroni does seem to have possessed some republican instincts, though it is uncertain if these were born of principle or sprang from a practical calculation that he could rise further as a