Lorenzo, the one great statesman of Italy, had no easy part to play. As prudent as he was dexterous, the preservation of peace in Italy was his constant aim, to be attained by a maintenance of the balance of power so that no one State should become pre-eminent. His violent and unscrupulous enemy Sixtus IV. used every arm against him. When assassination failed he tried excommunication, and the laying of Florence under an interdict. The Florentines answered by appointing twelve citizens as a bodyguard to Lorenzo, and bidding the clergy to celebrate the sacraments. His sagacity, not only as a Tuscan but an Italian, was shown by the able way in which he traversed French schemes for interfering in Italy, although the fortune of his house was largely dependent on the well-being of the bank at Lyons. So quietly and unostentatiously was this done that French ambassadors were instructed to act according to his advice, and he became the intermediary between Rome and Paris.[155] “Lorenzo,” writes Dr. Creighton, “had striven to identify the Medici family with Florence, and had been himself the representative and expression of the desires and aspirations of Florentine life and culture. He had also learned that the existence of Italy depended upon the maintenance of internal peace, and his efforts for that end had, for the last ten years of his life, been unceasing. His early experience had taught him how difficult was the position which he had to maintain, that of chief citizen of a free city, whose fortunes and whose very existence depended on exercising absolute power without seeming to do so. It is easy to accuse him of insidiously destroying Florentine liberty; but the policy of Sixtus IV. left him no choice between such a course and retirement from Florence, and he may be pardoned if he doubted whether his abdication would conduce to the welfare of the city. He has been accused of abetting the moral enervation and corruption of his people; but the causes of this corruption are to be found in the general character of Italian life, and Lorenzo did no more than follow the prevailing fashion in lending his refinement to give expression to the popular taste. Lorenzo did what all Italian statesmen were doing; he identified his city for good and ill with his own house. He worked craftily and insidiously, not by open violence, and in the midst of his self-seeking he retained the large views of a statesman and embodied the culture of his age.”[156]