Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/380

300 But this change of persons spoiled all. The priest, though more irreligious, was less expert. Giuliano was indeed stabbed to death by Bandini di Pazzi, at the moment of the Elevation of the Host, but Lorenzo escaped with a flesh wound from the inexperienced hand of the priest, and fled into the sacristy. The congregation, the whole populace of Florence, rose as a man, and pursued the murderers. The Archbishop Salviati di Pazzi, and some of the others, were seized and hung from the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico, the same day; and the eighteen-year-old Cardinal Raphael Riario was flung into prison.

Sixtus was furious at the failure of the plot, and demanded the liberation of his great nephew, the boy-Cardinal, and at the same time the expulsion of the Medici from Florence. As the citizens refused to do this, he excommunicated Lorenzo di Medici, and all the heads of the Republic, and placed Florence under an interdict. After a few days the boy was released; but that was as far as the Florentines would go. Accordingly the Pope, his nephew Riario, and the King of Naples, who had entered into league with the Pope, raised armies to attack Florence, and a savage war of revenge raged for years. It was not till 1481 that a descent of the Turks on Otranto made Sixtus tremble for his own safety, and forced him to make peace with Florence. After the death of Pietro, Sixtus took his nephew, Giovanni della Rovere, into the favour that Pietro had enjoyed. He married him to Giovanna, daughter of the Duke of Urbino, and created him Duke of Sinigaglia. This fellow founded the second dynasty of the Dukes of Urbino.

"The plebeian violence of the Della Rovere temper," says Mr. Addington Symonds, "reached a climax in Giovanni's son,