Note 192 — Chapter VIII · THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE ITALIAN STATES.
S. G. C. (Samuel George Chetwynd) Middlemore translation
Niccolò Valori, Vita di Lorenzo, Flor. 1568. Italian translation of the Latin original, first printed in 1749 (later in Galletti, Phil. Villani, Liber de Civit. Flor. famosis Civibus, Florence, 1847, pp. 161-183; passage here referred to p. 171). It must not, however, be forgotten that this earliest biography, written soon after the death of Lorenzo, is a flattering rather than a faithful portrait, and that the words here attributed to Lorenzo are not mentioned by the French reporter, and can, in fact, hardly have been uttered. Comines, who was commissioned by Louis XI. to go to Rome and Florence, says (Mémoires, l. vi. chap. 5): ‘I could not offer him an army, and had nothing with me but my suite.’ (Comp. Reumont, Lorenzo, i. p. 197, 429; ii. 598). In a letter from Florence to Louis XI. we read (Aug. 23, 1478: ‘Omnis spes nostra reposita est in favoribus suæ majestatis.’ A. Desjardins, Négociations Diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane (Paris, 1859), i. p. 173. Similarly Lorenzo himself in Kervyn de Lettenhove, Lettres et Négotiations de Philippe de Comines, i. p. 190. Lorenzo, we see, is in fact the one who humbly begs for help, not who proudly declines it.
Dr. Geiger in his appendix maintains that Dr. Burchhardt’s view as to Lorenzo’s national Italian policy is not borne out by evidence. Into this discussion the translator cannot enter. It would need strong proof to convince him that the masterly historical perception of Dr. Burchhardt was in error as to a subject which he has studied with minute care. In an age when diplomatic lying and political treachery were matters of course, documentary evidence loses much of its weight, and cannot be taken without qualification as representing the real feelings of the persons concerned, who fenced, turned about, and lied, first on one side and then on another, with an agility surprising to those accustomed to live among truth-telling people (S.G.C.M.)
Authorities quoted by Dr. Geiger are: Reumont, Lorenzo, 2nd ed., i. 310; ii. 450. Desjardins: Négociations Diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane (Paris, 1859), i. 173. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Lettres et Négociations de Philippe de Comines, i. 180.