PIERO DEI MEDICI had, as we may remember, undertaken to hold the entrance
to Tuscany against the French; when, however, he saw his enemy coming
dawn from the Alps, he felt less confident about his own strength, and
demanded help from the pope; but scarcely had the rumour of foreign
invasion began to spread in the Romagna, than the Colonna family declared
themselves the French king's men, and collecting all their forces seized
Ostia, and there awaited the coming of the French fleet to offer a
passage through Rome. The pope, therefore, instead of sending troops to
Florence, was obliged to recall all his soldiers to be near the capital;
the only promise he made to Piero was that if Bajazet should send him the
troops that he had been asking for, he would despatch that army for him
to make use of. Piero dei Medici had not yet taken any resolution or
formed any plan, when he suddenly heard two startling pieces of news. A
jealous neighbour of his, the Marquis of Torderiovo, had betrayed to the
French the weak side of Fivizzano, so that they had taken it by storm,
and had put its soldiers and inhabitants to the edge of the sword; on
another side, Gilbert of Montpensier, who had been lighting up the
sea-coast so as to keep open the communications between the French army
and their fleet, had met with a detachment sent by Paolo Orsini to
Sarzano, to reinforce the garrison there, and after an hour's fighting
had cut it to pieces. No quarter had been granted to any of the
prisoners; every man the French could get hold of they had massacred.

This was the first occasion on which the Italians, accustomed as they
were to the chivalrous contests of the fifteenth century, found
themselves in contact with savage foreigners who, less advanced in
civilisation, had not yet come to consider war as a clever game, but
looked upon it as simply a mortal conflict. So the news of these two
butcheries produced a tremendous sensation at Florence, the richest city
in Italy, and the most prosperous in commerce and in art. Every