in consequence of her fickleness, a contest for the throne between Renè, Count of Provence, and Alfonso of Aragon, King of Sicily, whom she had successively adopted as sons, while the Pope showed an inclination to claim Naples as a relapsed fief of the Church. Alfonso, defeated and taken prisoner at the Ponza Islands by the Genoese, allied with Renè, was restored to liberty by Filippo Maria Visconti, then ruler over the Sigurian harbour, but this generosity was regarded as detrimental by the victors, and excited an insurrection in Genoa against the supremacy of Milan, which found support from the republic of Venice, the ancient enemy of the Visconti. Hereupon the Duke, not to have to cope with too many enemies at once, entered into the alliance with the Pope which has just been mentioned. As far as the resistance to Filippo Maria was concerned, the Venetians were hand-in-hand with the Florentines; as soon as Cosimo had returned, the Senate congratulated the Signoria. But Florentine plans of winning still independent parts of Tuscany, and the Venetian intentions on Romagna, upon which, for the sake of the safety of their own frontiers, the eyes of the Florentines were always directed, could not but endanger the harmony of the two republics. The whole of the remaining lifetime of Cosimo de’ Medici was occupied with the endeavour to support and secure his position at home, and his connection with foreign countries, each reciprocally aiding the other. He found favourable soil in Florence. His partizans had prepared the way for him. All the heads of the opposite faction were exiled, and most of them ruined. Many were dead. It was easy for him to boast in his memoirs, that during his administration not one individual was banished or injured in any way. It was not lenity on his part, for he had no more horror of violence or bloodshed than the majority of his contemporaries where political ends were at stake, but it was prudent calculation. He knew that he could allow others to give the laws an interpretation which secured him, without being himself taxed with using hard measures. He did this by the execution of penal laws, and by making changes in the constitution. He first put forward Puccio Pucci, who showed such zeal, and attained such authority, that the Hotspurs of the party were named after him Puccini. When it was an object to further the aims of this party even by the most sanguinary measures, or to raise money, Puccio, otherwise an able man, and proved to be such in office and in embassies, knew no scruples. Cosimo employed the services of Luca Pitti even more frequently than those of Pucci. The family came originally from Semifonte, in the Elsa valley, a castle the conquest and destruction of which, as has been mentioned, plays a part in the oldest annals of the development of the commonwealth. Maffeo Pitti sat as early as 1283 in the magistracy of the Priors. Buonaccorso was a