Though the position of the Medici was secured for a time, their finances could not be set right. The banks of Lyons and Bruges, directed by Leonetti de’ Rossi, Francesco and Cosimo Sassetti, Tommaso Portinari, and others, only saved themselves by compounding with their creditors. Lorenzo’s correspondence shows what a vast deal of trouble these pecuniary embarrassments gave him, notwithstanding his levity in money-matters. As early as 1484 he had to write to de’ Rossi to insist on withdrawing the name of Medici from the Lyons firm before next Easter. Eighteen months after, he ordered the balance of the Bruges bank to be sent to him, in consequence of Portinari’s bad management. On one day, April 21, 1488, he despatched to the King of France, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the Duke and Duchess of Bourbon, the Seigneur du Bouchage, the Bishop of Valence, and others, no less than seventeen letters relating to the Lyons bank and Francesco Sassetti, after whose death in 1490 Lorenzo Spinelli took the direction of the Medici’s financial interests in France.[388] It was inevitable that there should be a vehement outcry against this disorder. Many foreigners who had placed their money in the banks sustained heavy losses, and on the violent overthrow of the Medici, when their palace was plundered at the entry of Charles VIII., the king’s quarter-master, the seigneur de Balassat, who had given the signal for the plundering, defended himself on the plea that the Medici bank of Lyons owed him large sums.[389] One of the sufferers by these shameful money-dealings was a man who had done much for Lorenzo, and who, on his side, was influenced in his relations with him and his business agents by a consideration of the advantages which Lorenzo’s political position might give him. This was Philippe de Commines, who, at one of the most critical moments of his life, was greatly injured by the pecuniary difficulties of the Medici and their unwillingness or inability to meet their obligations. After the death of Louis XI., Commines, who had been an instrument of the king’s tyranny and enriched by his confiscations, was first sent away from court for taking part in the intrigues of the Princes against the Regent, Anne de Beaujeu; then shut up in one of the iron cages at Loches; and, in the spring of 1488, sentenced by the Parliament to lose a fourth part of his property, and find security for ten thousand crowns. He found it impossible to realise his demands on the Medici bank and liquidate the sums which he had deposited there since 1478 through Louis’ confidant Du Bouchage, and part of which had been employed in 1486 to support the opposition against the Regent.[390] Even when Commines, set free from his worst embarrassments, was again on the way to political influence, these difficulties remained, and a letter from Lorenzo to him[391] gives a glimpse into the financial troubles of the Medici.