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Updated: June 18, 2025
Italy was to Europe what Athens was to Greece. In Italy, therefore, a more accurate and manly mode of narration was early introduced. Machiavelli and Guicciardini, in imitation of Livy and Thucydides, composed speeches for their historical personages. But, as the classical enthusiasm which distinguished the age of Lorenzo and Leo gradually subsided, this absurd practice was abandoned.
The circumstance of the Dutch, even before their revolt from Spain, carrying on a great trade, especially to the Baltic, is confirmed by Guicciardini; according to him, about the year 1559, they brought annually from Denmark, Eastland, Livonia, and Poland, 60,000 lasts of grain, chiefly rye, worth 560,000l. Flemish.
Compare Ariosto, Satire i. 208-27. Guicciardini had been secretary and vicegerent of the Medicean Popes. See back, p. 206. These utterances are all the more remarkable because they do not proceed from the deep sense of holiness which animated reformers like Savonarola. Machiavelli was not zealous for the doctrines of Christianity so much as for the decencies of an established religion.
The want of money determined all Charles's operations in this expedition. Borrowing from Lodovico, laying requisitions on Piero and the Florentines, pawning the jewels of the Savoy princesses, he passed from place to place, bargaining and contracting debts instead of dictating laws and founding constitutions. La carestia dei danari is a phrase continually recurring in Guicciardini.
Except for glimpses of the river and the Via Guicciardini which it gives, I advise no one to walk through the passage uniting the Pitti and the Uffizi unless of course bent on catching some of the ancient thrill when armed men ran swiftly from one palace to the other to quell a disturbance or repulse an assault.
The contemporary, or quasi-contemporary writers upon whose "authority" it is usual to show that Cesare Borgia was guilty of both those revolting crimes are: Sanazzaro, Capello, Macchiavelli, Matarazzo, Sanuto, Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, Guicciardini, and Panvinio. A formidable array!
"The king," says Guicciardini, "departed from Italy, carrying away with him to France great glory by reason of so complete and so rapidly won a victory over the Venetians; nevertheless, as in the case of things obtained after hope long deferred men scarcely ever feel such joy and happiness as they had at first imagined they would, the king took not back with him either greater peace of mind or greater security in respect of his affairs."
I will recall to your recollection two or three of the most important; you may think of the others at your leisure. Of the sons of Maso degli Albizzi, Luca, from envy of Rinaldo, has thrown himself into their hands. In the house of Guicciardini, of the sons of Luigi, Piero is the enemy of Giovanni and in favor of our adversaries.
Guicciardini informs us, that there were in the Netherlands, in time of peace, 700 busses and boats employed in the herring fishery: each made three voyages in the season, and on an average during that period, caught seventy lasts of herring, each last containing twelve barrels of 9OO or 1000 herrings each barrel; the price of a last was usually about 6£. sterling: the total amount of one year's fishery, was about 294,000£. sterling.
Finally he took a sheet of his best cream laid note paper, dipped his pen in the ink, and began to write. The note was short, but it took him a long while to compose it, and when it was sealed and directed to "Miss Ruth Deane, Lung' Arno Guicciardini, Florence, Italy," he sat holding it in his hand as if he did not know what to do with it. Two o'clock struck.
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