Machiavelli, who was now to some extent received back into favour, afterwards dedicated his _Istorie Fiorentine_. In 1523 the Cardinal Giulio, in spite of his illegitimate birth, became Pope Clement VII., that most hapless of Pontiffs, whose reign was so surpassingly disastrous to Italy. In Florence the Medici were now represented by two young bastards, Ippolito and Alessandro, the reputed children of the younger Giuliano and the younger Lorenzo respectively; while the Cardinal Passerini misruled the State in the name of the Pope. But more of the true Medicean spirit had passed into the person of a woman, Clarice, the daughter of Piero (and therefore the sister of the Duke Lorenzo), who was married to the younger Filippo Strozzi, and could ill bear to see her house end in these two base-born lads. And elsewhere in Italy Giovanni delle Bande Nere (as he was afterwards called, from the mourning of his soldiers for his death) was winning renown as a captain; he was the son of that Giovanni dei Medici with whom Piero had quarrelled, by Caterina Sforza, the Lady of Forlì, and had married Maria Salviati, a grand-daughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent. But the Pope would rather have lost Florence than that it should fall into the hands of the younger line. But the Florentine Republic was to have a more glorious sunset. In 1527, while the imperial troops sacked Rome, the Florentines for the third time expelled the Medici and re-established the Republic, with first Niccolò Capponi and then Francesco Carducci as Gonfaloniere. In this sunset Machiavelli died; Andrea del Sarto painted the last great Florentine fresco; Michelangelo returned to serve the State in her hour of need. The voices of the Piagnoni were heard again from San Marco, and Niccolò Capponi in the Greater Council carried a resolution electing Jesus Christ king of Florence. But the plague fell upon the city; and her liberty was the price of the reconciliation of Pope and Emperor. From October 1529 until August 1530, their united forces--first under the Prince of Orange and then under Ferrante Gonzaga--beleaguered Florence. Francesco Ferrucci, the last hope of the Republic, was defeated and slain by the imperialists near San Marcello; and then, betrayed by her own infamous general Malatesta Baglioni, the city capitulated on the understanding that, although the form of the government was to be regulated and established by the Emperor, her liberty was preserved. The sun had indeed set of the most noble Republic in all history.