Beloved and great Friends,--We have just heard of the great and inhuman outrage, opprobrium and injury, which not long ago has been committed against your Seigneury, against the persons of our most dear and beloved cousins Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici, their friends, relations, servants, and adherents, by those of the Pazzi Bank and their dependants; and of the death of our said cousin Giuliano de’ Medici, whereby we have been and are as much grieved as though it had happened to ourselves. Now as your honour and our own has been so gravely offended, and as the Medici are our relations and allies, and as we regard this outrage and the death of our cousin Giuliano as though it had happened to our own person, and therefore consider the Pazzi guilty of _læsæ Majestatis_, we cannot permit this deed to go unpunished; we desire with all our heart that adequate punishment should follow as an example to others. We have therefore decided to send to your Excellencies our well-beloved and faithful Councillor and Chamberlain, Messire d’Argenton,[214] Seneschal of our province of Poitou, who is one of the men in whom we have the utmost confidence, to inform you at length of our wishes; he will tell you more about this matter. We beg you to place the same trust in him and the same belief in his words as you would in ours, it is for this that we send him. I pray God, beloved and great friends, to keep and to guard you.--12th May 1478.[215] Louis XI. _to_ Pope Sixtus IV. _Copy of our Letter sent to the Pope_