With a masterly hand the tardy and involuntary
decisions are characterized which at critical moments play so important
a part in republican States. Once, it is true, he is misled by his
imagination and the pressure of events into unqualified praise of the
people, which chooses its officers, he says, better than any prince,
and which can be cured of its errors by 'good advice.' With regard to
the Government of Tuscany, he has no doubt that it belongs to his
native city, and maintains, in a special 'Discorso' that the reconquest
of Pisa is a question of life or death; he deplores that Arezzo, after
the rebellion of 1502, was not razed to the ground; he admits in
general that Italian republics must be allowed to expand freely and add
to their territory in order to enjoy peace at home, and not to be
themselves attacked by others, but declares that Florence had un at the
wrong end, and from the first made deadly Pisa, Lucca, and Siena, while
Pistoia, 'treated like a brother,' had voluntarily submitted to her.
It would be unreasonable to draw a parallel between the few other
republics which still existed in the fifteenth century and this unique
city--the most important workshop of the Italian, and indeed of the
modern European spirit. Siena suffered from the gravest organic
maladies, and its relative prosperity in art and industry must not
mislead us on this point.
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