Pietro possessed neither capacity nor prudence, and in the troubles which the ambition of her princes and the profligacy of her popes brought upon Italy, by plunging her into civil and foreign war, he showed him- self treacherous and vacillating alike to friends and foes. Lodovico Sforza, surnamed the " Moor," relying on the friendship which, from the middle of the 15th century, had prevailed between the Sforza family of Milan and the Medici, applied to him for assistance in establishing his claim to the duchy of ^Nlilan ; but, seeing that no re- liance could be placed on Pietro, he threw himself into the arms of Charles VIII of France. The result was the invasion of Italy by a French army of 32,000 men. Pietro, in hopes of conciliating the powerful invader, hastened to meet the troops on their entrance into the dominions of Florence, and surrendered to Charles the fortresses of Leghorn and Pisa, which constituted the keys of the republic. The magistrates and people, in- censed at his perfidy, drove him from the city, and for- mally deposed the family of the Medici from all partici- pation of power in 1494.
The attempts of Giovanni, then a cardinal, to up- hold the ]Medician authoritj', and his success in the re- establishment of his house in 1512, we have narrated in our article on Leo X. Pietro was slain in 1503, while fighting in the French ranks.
It was during the invasions of the French in Italy, in the days of Pietro, that Florence was robbed of one of her greatest treasures— the invaluable librarj' which had been collected by the care of his father and grandfather. " The French troops, which had entered the city with- out opposition, led the way to this act of barbarism, in which they were joined by the Florentines themselves,
who openly carried off or purloined whatever they could discover that was rare or valuable. Besides the nu- merous manuscripts, the plunderers carried off the ines- timable specimens of the arts which the palace of the Medici contained, and which had long made it the ad- miration of strangers and the chief ornament of the city. Exquisite pieces of ancient sculpture, vases, cameos, and gems of various kinds, were lost amid the indiscriminate plunder, and the rich accumulations of half a century were destroyed or dispersed in a single day." During the interregnum, the labors of the Piagnoni were sud- denly checked by the martyrdom of their beloved leader, Savonarola, in 1498 ; and, when the Medici came again to rule over Florence, this disposition of some of their strongest ojiponents threw a -weight of power into the hands of the Medici which rendered all attempts to maintain even a show of independence futile on the part of the Florentines. The faintest indication of re- publican spirit was at once crushed by the combined aid of pope and emperor.
5. The accession of Clement VII only strengthened the Medici in Florence, and, though the legitimate male line of Cosmo was extinct (with the exception of the pope), Clement VII gave, in 1529, to Alessandro, natural son of the last prince Lorenzo II, the rank of duke of Florence ; and on his death, by assassination, without direct heirs, in 1537, raised Cosmo I, the descendant of a collateral branch, to the ducal chair.
Cosmo, known as the Great, possessed the astute- ness of character, the love of elegance, and taste for literature, but not the frank and generous spirit that had distinguished his great ancestors; and wliile he founded the academies of painting and of fine arts, made collections of paintings and statuary, published magnifi- cent editions of his own works and those of others, and encouraged trade, for the protection of which he insti- tuted the ecclesiastical order of St. Stephen, he was im- jjlacable in his enmity, and scrupled not utterly to ex- tirpate the race of the Strozzi, the hereditary foes of his house. His acquisition of Sienna gained for him the title of grand-duke of Tuscany from Pius V ; and he died in 1574, leaving enormous wealth and regal power to his descendants, who, throughout the next half century, maintained the literary and artistic fame of their fam- ily. In the 17th century the race rapidly degenerated, and, after several of its representatives had suffered tjiemselves to be made the mere tools of Spanish and Austrian ambition, the main line of the Medici family became extinct in 1737. The genealogy of the Medici to the present time is given in a splendid work but little known, entitled Fami<]lie celebii Italiane, by Litta. The IMedici and their descendants are comprised in Fascicolo XVII (in seven parts, Milan, 1827-30, folio). See also Modern Universal History, vol. xxxvi ; Noble, Memoirs of the House of Medici, illustrated with genealogical ta- bles; Tenhove, il/ewoirs of the House of Medici, trans- lated from the French by Sir R. Clayton (Bath, 1797, 2 vols. 4to) ; Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, and his Life and Pontificate of Leo X (Liverp. 1805, 4 vols. 4to) ; Guicciardini, Storia d' Italia ; Botta, Storia d' Italia ; Sismondi, Hist, des Repuhliques Italiennes ; Leo, Gesch. v. Italien; TroUope, Hist, of Florence (Lond. 1865, 4 vols. 8vo) ; Hallam, Middle Ages (Smith's ed.. Harpers, 1872), p. 229 sq. ; National Quart. Rev. Dec. 1863, art. iii ; For- eign Quart. Rev. v, 475; and the excellent article in the English Cyclopcedia, s. v.