prevented the delivery of the sums deposited in Florence, which by no means increased the goodwill of the Pope towards the State. In the spring of 1466 it became evident that a party strife was impending. In the beginning of May, after the occasion of the Milanese grant of money had revealed the deep-lying discord, the Signoria endeavoured to bring about a compromise. On the proposal of a commission appointed for the purpose of consultation, all the citizens eligible for the offices of State, from the age of twenty-four years upwards, were summoned to the palace, where the assembly took place in a hall adjoining the chapel. Here resolutions were passed that no meetings should be held, political consultations, public or private, that were not summoned by the government; that everyone should solemnly promise to act in his office only according to right and law, and to let all party quarrels rest; that finally all existing political societies should be dissolved, and the ties which bound them become null and void.[127] The stipulations show plainly enough how things stood with the city. Those present took the oath to these obligations, which, being the mere outgrowth of discontent, no one, however, seriously thought of fulfilling. Everyone had a pretext in his neighbour’s behaviour. Things took their natural course; Piero de’ Medici knew nothing of the violent intentions of his opponents, but the factions already stood opposed to one another, although the strife was maintained on the grounds of the constitution. These factions were called those of the Mountain and the Plain (del Poggio—del Piano), because Luca Pitti’s house stood on the slope of the hill of San Giorgio, that of the Medici on a level part of the city. When the heads of the Mountain party saw that the others were not to be reached by the usual seemingly legal means, they set on foot a formal conspiracy. The story of this conspiracy affords a remarkable example of the insecure foundation of public affairs in such states, as well as the want of all real determination when it was necessary to act. With Bartolommeo Colleone of Bergamo, the celebrated _condottiere_, negotiations were opened which subsequently bore fruit. At all events, the opponents of the Medici appear to have been the first who had no dread of employing foreign military power. Ercole of Este, brother of the Marquis Borso of Ferrara, was to march into the territory and upon the capital itself, while they were to attempt to take the life of Piero, whom Diotisalvi Neroni was to endeavour to lull into a false security. The circumstance that Piero mostly resided in his villa at Careggi, from whence he, ill as he was, used to have himself carried in a litter to the city, seemed to favour the plans of the conspirators. The Signoria, which had entered upon office on July 1, with the Gonfaloniere Bernardo Lotti, were mostly favourable to them: they determined to make use of