But Sixtus and his nephews did not in their hearts desire peace in Italy, and were plotting against Lorenzo with the Pazzi, who, although united to the Medici by marriage, had secret and growing grievances against them. On the morning of Sunday April 26th, 1478, the conspirators set upon the two brothers at Mass in the Duomo; Giuliano perished beneath nineteen dagger-stabs; Lorenzo escaped with a slight wound in the neck. The Archbishop Salviati of Pisa in the meantime attempted to seize the Palace of the Priors, but was arrested by the Gonfaloniere, and promptly hung out of the window for his trouble. Jacopo Pazzi rode madly through the streets with an armed force, calling the people to arms, with the old shout of _Popolo e Libertà_, but was only answered by the ringing cries of _Palle, Palle_.[18] The vengeance taken by the people upon the conspirators was so prompt and terrible that Lorenzo had little left him to do (though that little he did to excess, punishing the innocent with the guilty); and the result of the plot simply was to leave him alone in the government, securely enthroned above the splash of blood. The Pope appears not to have been actually privy to the murder, but he promptly took up the cause of the murderers. It was followed by a general break-up of the Italian peace and a disastrous war, carried on mainly by mercenary soldiers, in which all the powers of Italy were more or less engaged; and Florence was terribly hard pressed by the allied forces of Naples and Rome. The plague broke out in the city; Lorenzo was practically deserted by his allies, and on the brink of financial ruin. Then was it that he did one of the most noteworthy, perhaps the noblest, of the actions of his life, and saved himself and the State by voluntarily going to Naples and putting himself in the power of King Ferrante, an infamous tyrant, who would readily have murdered his guest, if it had seemed to his advantage to do so. But, like all the Italians of the Renaissance, Ferrante was open to reason, and the eloquence of the Magnifico won him over to grant an honourable peace, with which Lorenzo returned to Florence in March 1480. "If Lorenzo was great when he left Florence," writes Machiavelli, "he returned much greater than ever; and he was received with such joy by the city as his great qualities and his fresh merits deserved, seeing that he had exposed his own life to restore peace to his country." Botticelli's noble allegory of the olive-decked Medicean Pallas, taming the Centaur of war and disorder, appears to have been painted in commemoration of this event. In the following August the Turks landed in Italy and stormed Otranto, and the need of union, in the face of "the common enemy Ottoman," reconciled the Pope to Florence, and secured for the time an uneasy peace among the powers of Italy. [18] The _Palle_, it will be remembered, were the golden balls on the Medicean arms, and hence the rallying cry of their adherents.