While tracing the salient points of Lorenzo de' Medici's administration I have omitted to mention the important events which followed shortly after his accession to power in 1469. What happened between that date and 1480 was not only decisive for the future fortunes of the Casa Medici, but it was also eminently characteristic of the perils and the difficulties which beset Italian despots. The year 1471 was signalised by a visit by the Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, and his wife Bona of Savoy, to the Medici in Florence. They came attended by their whole Court--body guards on horse and foot, ushers, pages, falconers, grooms, kennel-varlets, and huntsmen. Omitting the mere baggage service, their train counted two thousand horses. To mention this incident would be superfluous, had not so acute an observer as Machiavelli marked it out as a turning-point in Florentine history. Now, for the first time, the democratic commonwealth saw its streets filled with a mob of courtiers. Masques, balls, and tournaments succeeded each other with magnificent variety; and all the arts of Florence were pressed into the service of these festivals. Machiavelli says that the burghers lost the last remnant of their old austerity of manners, and became, like the degenerate Romans, ready to obey the masters who provided them with brilliant spectacles. They gazed with admiration on the pomp of Italian princes, their dissolute and godless living, their luxury and prodigal expenditure; and when the Medici affected similar habits in the next generation, the people had no courage to resist the invasion of their pleasant vices. In the same year, 1471, Volterra was reconquered for the Florentines by Frederick of Urbino. The honours of this victory, disgraced by a brutal sack of the conquered city, in violation of its articles of capitulation, were reserved for Lorenzo, who returned in triumph to Florence. More than ever he assumed the prince, and in his person undertook to represent the State.