Siege of Florence

Let's do it short. Rather than describing the various political-warrior relations between states and families of the time, we come to the fact that the Spanish troops, after the failure to intervene in defense of the Pope during the sack of Rome, had to "return" a favor to Pope Clement VII and restore the Medici to power in the city. For this reason, the French troops arrived in front of the walls of Florence on October 14, 1529, armed in full force and ready for the siege. Florence and its fortresses resisted, opposing strenuous resistance, so much as to suggest that they rather seek a surrender than a real assault. They found a valid ally in the tradidor, Malatesta IV Baglioni, commander of the city troops (Captain General) who had more interest in returning to Perugia to defend Florence. His actions came to total betrayal during the clash of Gavinana. The only serious and powerful of all the siege. The Florentine troops, commanded by the Florentine Francesco Ferrucci, got the worst and were defeated. The commander brought before the Spaniards and Fabrizo Maramaldo, was pierced by the latter with the sword violating every possible chivalric and humanitarian rule. It is said that on that occasion Ferrucci pronounced the famous phrase: "Coward, you kill a dead man", handing the sentence to history.

On the other hand there are several versions of the facts, the one that made "fortune" to memory is the Varchi and says: "The Maramaldo did not kill Ferruccio on behalf of the hanged tambourine and it was not true that what Maramaldo said then for his excuse, that is, for not wanting to leave the Captain of the enemy alive, the Prince being dead; but it was, besides his natural cruelty, because Ferruccio, while he was in Volterra, marauding Maramaldo as a merchant, who had greater rank in the war and who would fight "a man for man", following in this the abuse of modern captains. And in real Ferruccio was rather proud, but very just and very modest in other things, and we can not excuse Fabrizio, who was rather a chief of murderers than real soldiers, who didn't use a vile cruelty ". For the purposes of our discussion it's useful to underline that Varchi was the first and only contemporary historian to attribute to Ferrucci the fateful phrase "You kill a dead man". The value of the commander Ferrucci on the battlefield in front of his death, the strenuous and decisive resistance towards the foreign invader, earned him so much glory and honor that he was remembered in Risorgimento hymn, which later also became the Italian national anthem. While Maramaldo, saw his surname associated with a synonym of betrayal and cowardice. At the end of the siege presented with a stroke by the traitor Malatesta, the Medici regained control over Florence. Buonarroti also took part in the defenses, but he gave it to his legs before the beginning of the hostilities and to return to the city during the siege risking his life. This action, read by the Pope as "hostile" for the obvious reasons, gave him many problems. He had to remain hidden in Florence for almost a year before being forgiven.