A northern prince would scarcely
have acted in the same way, certainly not one whose morality in other
respects was like that of Visconti. What confidence was felt in the
power of self-interest is shown by the celebrated visit (1478) which
Lorenzo Magnifico, to the universal astonishment of the Florentines,
paid the faithless Ferrante at Naples--a man who would certainly be
tempted to keep him a prisoner, and was by no means too scrupulous to
do so. For to arrest a powerful monarch, and then to let him go alive,
after extorting his signature and otherwise insulting him, as Charles
the Bold did to Louis XI at Peronne (1468), seemed madness to the
Italians; so that Lorenzo was expected to come back covered with glory,
or else not to come back at all. The art of political persuasion was at
this time raised to a point--especially by the Venetian ambassadors of
which northern nations first obtained a conception from the Italians,
and of which the official addresses give a most imperfect idea. These
are mere pieces of humanistic rhetoric. Nor, in spite of an otherwise
ceremonious etiquette was there in case of need any lack of rough and
frank speaking in diplomatic intercourse. A man like Machiavelli
appears in his 'Legazioni' in an almost pathetic light. Furnished with
scanty instructions, shabbily equipped, and treated as an agent of
inferior rank, he never loses his gift of free and wide observation or
his pleasure in picturesque description.
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