The last years of Cosimo’s life had shown how hard it was for him to maintain the supremacy over his party in Florence. The people had grown too rich and powerful. Cosimo had himself much contributed to it by his fear of putting himself forward; his prudent reserve had gone too far. He had long foreseen that his son would not be in a position to master and guide the contending elements, but precisely the measures he took to meet the danger brought it nearer. Those in whom he trusted, from the conviction that as they had grown rich with him, and mostly through him, they would hold to his family, did not respond to this confidence. However different their motives might be, in a city where so many special interests prevailed beside the political party currents, and where men were so little accustomed to subordination, they yet united against him, whose inherited position was burdensome and hateful to them, and whom more than one looked down upon. The causes of the movement which broke out in 1466, and which threatened the authority of the Medici, were apparent soon after Cosimo’s death. The great liberality of the rich merchant, by no means always dictated by pure motives, but for the sake of preserving his authority, had brought much idle capital into strangers’ hands. The evil necessarily became clear when the accounts were revised. It was Diotisalvi Neroni, the man on whose acuteness and attachment Cosimo relied the most, who owed him much, and whom he had recommended to his son as the most trustworthy friend, who advised the former to call in the outstanding sums. The evil effect of following this advice—namely, the sudden embarrassment in which numerous citizens who were under obligations to the Medici found themselves, and the discontent and estrangement which followed—caused Diotisalvi to be suspected of bad intentions, a belief which was strengthened by his behaviour afterwards. Thus the historians of the time immediately succeeding him, as well as almost all later ones, express themselves in this sense.[124] But the motives must ever be veiled in obscurity. Diotisalvi was wealthy and respected, his brother Giovanni was Archbishop of Florence after 1462. Still it is difficult to believe that he aimed at becoming the head of the State. The motives of the distinguished citizens who allied themselves to this man, in order first to undermine the position of the Medici, and then to overthrow them by violence, were, however, so different that we cannot be surprised at the failure of the undertaking.