“During this scene in the cathedral, the Archbishop Salviati, with a strong band of conspirators, attempted, as had been concerted, to seize the palace of the signiory and the persons of the magistrates. After filling the outer apartments with his followers, the archbishop obtained by his rank an easy admission to the presence of the gonfaloniere and priors who were sitting. But instead of immediately attacking them he hesitated; and his manner betrayed so much confusion, that the suspicion of the gonfaloniere being excited, he rushed from the hall and assembled the guards and servants of the palace. The doors were secured, and the conspirators were furiously assaulted by the magistrates and their attendants with such motley weapons and instruments as the furniture of the palace afforded. Dispersed and intimidated, they made but a feeble resistance, and were all either slaughtered on the spot, hurled from the windows, or made prisoners. Jacopo de’ Pazzi, followed by a troop of soldiery, attempted to succour them, after an abortive effort to excite the citizens to revolt by crying liberty through the streets. But the magistrates held the palace until numerous citizens came to their aid, and Jacopo, seeing that the game was lost, fled into the country. “The fate of most of the conspirators was not long delayed. The Archbishop Salviati was hanged from a window of the public palace, even in his prelatical robes. Francesco de’ Pazzi, who, exhausted by loss of blood from his self–inflicted wound, had been obliged to confine himself to his uncle’s house, was dragged from his bed, and suspended from the same place of execution. Jacopo himself, being discovered and arrested in the country by the peasantry, was brought into the city a few days afterwards, and similarly executed, with another of his nephews, whose knowledge of the conspiracy was his only crime, for he had refused to engage in it: and the whole of the devoted family of the Pazzi were condemned to exile, except Guglielmo, the brother–in–law of Lorenzo. The priests who had attacked Lorenzo, the condottiere Montesecco, and above seventy inferior persons besides, suffered death; and even Bernardo Bandini, though he escaped for a time to Constantinople, paid the forfeit of his crimes; for Lorenzo had sufficient interest with Mahomet II. to cause him to be seized and sent to Florence for execution. The young Cardinal Riario, rather an instrument than an accomplice in the conspiracy, was with difficulty saved by Lorenzo from being torn to pieces by the fury of the Florentine mob; but his attendants were mercilessly butchered by them.”