573. The Medici: Lorenzo the Magnificent (Part 2)

25:33I mean, she basically paints him. It's a great book, actually, her book. She paints him as this arrogant, spoiled, super rich kid who blew his inheritance. She says, quote, a depressing tale of greed and inexperience from which the Medici brand never really recovered. Just to present the counter-argument, I mean, the fact that he is still thought of as the embodiment of Renaissance Prince right up to the present day, and the fact that, spoiler alert, the Medici in due course will establish themselves as the Dukes of Florence. Surely that suggests that to a degree he's right in saying that by presenting himself as a princely figure, he's able to elevate his descendants to the actual rank of princes.

26:15Possibly, although there were an awful lot of twists and turns before we get to that point. I mean, there are a couple of generations. There are periods of exile and whatnot. I mean, you could argue that in the long run, would it be better for them to remain in the shadows and piled up the money? That's what I would have done, Tom. I don't need a fancy helmet with feathers on it. I'd rather have the money. This is perhaps where you and I differ. All I will say is that we're going to be doing a series on Mary Queen of Scots. Eder of Medici will be featuring in that story as a Queen of France. So they did do well in the end.

26:45They do do well. Now, some listeners may be a bit surprised to hear anybody criticizing Lorenzo, because basically, as in the Assassin's Creed video game, he's usually treated as thoroughly admirable. But of course, you're not thoroughly admirable if you're wielding power in Renaissance Italy. You know, a saint doesn't wield such power. And his chief ally, I mean, it's a really good example of this. His chief ally is the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza. He's a patron of the arts. He's a complete Renaissance man, but he's also a complete psycho. Is this the son of the guy who was bending iron bars in the previous episode?

27:17It is his son, Francesco's son, and Galeazzo Maria Sforzi. He's a pungent character, I think it's fair to say, Tom. Do you want to know what he got up to? Yeah, I'd love to. I quote, he raped the wives and daughters of numerous Milanese nobles. He took sadistic pleasure in devising tortures for men who offended him. He supervised these tortures himself and pulled their limbs apart with his own bare hands. And he delighted in the moans of dying men and sight of corpses. So this is very much the English Renaissance sense of what Italian princes are getting up to, isn't it? Exactly, yeah. The black legend of the Italian Renaissance of such a thing existed.

27:51And actually, you may say, well, obviously this is exaggerating propaganda, but to be a Renaissance magnate, you have to behave in pretty grim ways. And Lorenzo himself is a good example. Remember we talked about that alum mine? Oh, yes. So in 1472, Lorenzo becomes involved with another alum mine. This is in Volterra, just south of Florence. Now, this is a town that is under Florentine control, where the locals have discovered a load of alum and they've developed a mine. The problem for Lorenzo is that Volterra's alum is cheaper than the alum made by the Medici-controlled mine near Rome. And so, basically, there's a big dispute about control of the Volterra consortium.

28:32He uses Florentine troops to go in and teach Volterra a lesson and bring it into his orbit. and the Volterrans are completely helpless and the result is an unbridled massacre. Lorenzo's mercenary is run amok in Volterra. They rampage through the town for 12 hours. They loot all the shops. They kill hundreds of people. There is mass rape. It is a horrendous story. Now, afterwards, Lorenzo says, oh, that's such a shame. I'm so sad that that went a little bit too far. I feel so guilty about it. But actually, I think even at the time, people thought this is very disingenuous of him. He basically unleashed his mercenaries on this town for his own financial gain.

29:13And also to enhance his reputation as a man, it's dangerous to cross, I assume. Right. But the problem with doing that is that if there are other powerful people, they may say, you've crossed a line and now we're going to move against you. And there are other powerful people in Florence because the Medici are not the only powerful banking family. There is another family called the Patsy. Now, the Patsy are an older and more prestigious family than the Medici. So one of their ancestors, Tom, this will appeal to you, had gone on the First Crusade, and he brought back some stone flints from the altar of the Holy Sepulchre.

29:51Oh, I'm definitely team Patsy. Right, well, the Patsy trade on this. They bring them out, I think, something like every Easter and kind of parade around the city with them, and people are weeping with joy and all this. I don't want to sound dismissive, but you know my views on relics. so the Pazzi have got a big banking network of their own they've got offices in Florence and in Rome and in Avignon Valencia and all these places and the head of the Pazzi family is not like Lorenzo at all he's called Jacopo de Pazzi he's in his mid-50s he's simultaneously I think an interesting combination he's both a miser and a gambler he's very competitive and you get this sense, I think maybe this is my sort of romantic imagination, that he is watching Lorenzo with the cold eyes of a predator all the time.

30:37I like the sound of him. He's got relics. He's in his mid-50s. Intensely competitive. He's like you. He's quite like me. Cold eyes of a predator. Cold eyes of a predator, exactly. But let's see who this man reminds you of. There's another ruthless character who's watching Lorenzo very closely. And this is a man called Francesco del Rovere, or rather Pope Sixtus IV. So Pope Sixtus IV came from a fishing town in Liguria. He's a bit of a self-made man. He has climbed the ecclesiastical ladder to win the papacy. He's very clever, but he's a complete bruiser. So Christopher Hibbert, who's very good at these pen portraits, calls him a big, gruff, toothless man with a massive head, a small, squashed nose, and an intimidating expression.

31:22Goodness, I can't think who that reminds me of. I think he's a bit like the Emperor Vespasian. A bit, yeah. Now, he's incredibly corrupt, even by papal standards. So I can now bring out my inner Thomas Cromwell. He's handing out offices to his family. He makes six of his nephews cardinals. But if he genuinely thought that they were worthy of it, I don't see what the problem is. I'm sure he did think that. Yeah, I'm sure they're genuinely really kind of upstanding religious people. Now, at first, he confirmed the Medici as the papal bankers, and he actually sent Lorenzo some presents. He sends him busts of Augustus and Agrippa.

31:59No better present than that. Those choices are a sign of Lorenzo. Lorenzo is following in Cosimo's footsteps at this point, right? Cosimo admired Augustus. But then they have a massive falling out in 1473. Sixtus had a favourite nephew, who he hadn't made the cardinal yet, called Girolamo Riario, who is described as, and I quote, a fat, uncouth, rowdy young man. And everybody says, This bloke, Riario, is actually the Pope's son. He's not really his nephew, he's his son. Right. Riario wanted to buy the town of Imola. He's a fan of Formula One. Formula One, exactly. Has a key strategic location on the road from Bologna.

32:36And Sixtus said to the Medici bank, could you lend us the money, please, to buy this town of Imola? Now, Lorenzo was horrified at this. He wanted Imola for Florence. There was no way he was going to let it fall into somebody else's hands. And he turns down the loan. The Pope is furious. Who does the Pope turn to for the money? He turns to the Pazzi bank and Jacopo gave him the money. A year later, in the summer of 1474, Sixtus got his revenge on the Medici. He stripped them of the papal account and gave it to the Pazzi. And then, as the new Archbishop of Pisa, which was in Florentine control, he appointed Jacopo de Pazzi's cousin, Francesco Salviati.

33:19Remember him, he spoke Salviati. And Lorenzo was obviously very offended by this. He could see that this was a massive snub that the Patsy were being advanced. And Lorenzo, how old is he at this point? He's born in 1449, so he's 27, Tom, because we're now approaching the end of 1476. Now, there's a sense in which things are turning against him. The Pope has turned against him, and then on Boxing Day, he gets terrible news from Milan. His friend, Gagliazzo Maria Schwarzer, a psycho, he has been assassinated on his way to Mass. and his son is only seven and there's a massive succession crisis in Milan.

33:53So Milan is now effectively out of the game, Lorenzo's biggest ally. And a few weeks later, three men meet in secret in Rome. One of them is Girolamo Riario. So he's the fat, rowdy, papal nephew stroke son. One of them is Francesco Salviati, the Pazzi cousin who has just been made the Archbishop of Pisa. And the other man is Francesco de Pazzi, and he is the manager of the Pazzi Bank in Rome. And he is described as, in a quote, a young man of great arrogance and pretension. And these three men have met to discuss one thing and one thing only, and that is how to get rid of Lorenzo de' Medici. God, it's so mafia, isn't it?

34:38So they have this meeting. And soon after that, Francesco de Pazzi, the bank manager, is basically brains behind all this. He asks for a meeting with one of Rome's most hard-bitten mercenary commanders. This is a man called Monteseco, who has done a lot of dirty work for the papacy over the years. And Francesco de Pazzi says to him, I would like to hire you for an operation against the Medici. And Monteseco says, I'm not going to do anything without the Pope's approval. And Francesco says, great, because the Pope is already on board. Now, Monteseco doesn't believe him, so they organize a meeting with Sixtus IV himself.

35:19And the Pope says, he's quite elliptical, he says, obviously the last thing I would like to see is any killing. Heaven for fiend. It would make me really sad if you killed, I'd be awful, if you killed Lorenzo de' Medici. I actually hate bloodshed, and if Lorenzo was dead, I'd be very, very upset. However, I'd really like to see the back of Lorenzo. I really strongly desire to see this change. I want to see Lorenzo disappear from the picture in Florence. And obviously Montesecco gets the message. You know, Lorenzo has got to go and probably doesn't really mind that much. So there's only one link in the chain left, and that is Jacopo de Pazzi, the head of the family.

35:57Because he's a chill calculating man, isn't he? Exactly. Now, he's a banker and he knows the costs of failure. When Montesecco, the mercenary, goes to see him, he says, I think this is a bad move. He says, quote, they're going to break their necks. I understand what is going on here better than they do. I don't want to hear any more about this. Monteseco says, look, the Pope is on board with this. We've got the money. We've got the muscle. We can do it. And Jacopo says, you know, it's so Godfather Part II. He says, fine, do it. But you can't just kill Lorenzo. You must kill his brother Giuliano.

36:31And you must do it at the same time. You know, no slip ups. We have to get this right. Because the lesson from the previous episode is that if you're striking at the Medici, you've got to get rid of all of them. Exactly. So the months pass while they're negotiating all this. And finally, we get to early 1478. They've toyed with various different schemes, but now they have what they think is the right opportunity. Another relative of the Pope, who's a young cardinal called Raffaele Riario, is going to visit Florence, completely unrelated. And Lorenzo has organized a banquet for him. And they're like, right, the banquet is the time to strike.

37:08They make their plans and Montesecco basically stations his mercenary company in the villages outside Florence, ready to pour into the city for the crucial moment. But then they hear bad news. Giuliano, the brother, has an eye infection and he's probably not going to go to the banquet. So they can't do it there after all. They meet hurriedly to discuss the position. They say, look, we've told so many people now. Word is leaking out. Montesecco has brought his men to Tuscany. like it's really now or never and then one of them says look there is actually one more possibility on sunday the 26th of april the medici brothers are bound to go to high mass in the cathedral with this young cardinal viario this is the chance this is the one place where the brothers are bound to be together why don't we strike there the plan is to cut them down at mass in front of the altar, in a church, in front of everybody, all the assembled clergy.

38:12How would the Pope react to this? We'll find out. I think the Pope could live with it. I mean, God's watching wherever they do it, Tom. Let's be honest. It doesn't make any difference to God where it happens. I think it does make a difference to God where it happens. I don't think God would at all approve of people being murdered in front of the altar of the church. But you think God would be all right with it if it's like a public toilet or something? Fine, yeah, crack on. It's an interesting theological question. But I just generally think murdering people in cathedrals at high mass is probably not.

38:37You don't approve of it. Not whether I approve of it, whether God approves of it. I just don't think God would approve of that. Going out on a theological limb there. Okay. Let's talk through the details of the plan. So Francesco de Pazzi, a young, arrogant bank manager, he will kill Giuliano. And he will be helped by an adventurer called Baroncelli, who owes the Pazzi lots of money and wants to basically wipe away the debt. So that's how they deal with Giuliano. Now the Renzo, the hard-bitten mercenary captain Montesecco, will kill him. But actually Montesecco is like you. He's in a terrible funk about doing this in the cathedral.

39:14He says, I can't do it. And actually he says explicitly, I can't do it because God will see it. So he agrees with me. God wouldn't see it in a public toilet, but he would see it at the cathedral. I don't think that's what he's saying, Dominic. But there are two other candidates on hand, which is good news. And these are, and I quote, lean, embittered priests. The best kind. The best kind of priests. And the best kind of lean and bitter people. And these are called Bagnoni and Maffei. So the person we began with, the person from Assassin's Creed 2. Bagnoni is a patsy tutor. Maffei, here's the thing, is from Volterra, the place where the alum mine.

39:50Yeah, where they've all been massacred. He hates Lorenzo for what he did to his town. And this is what they agree. The signal will be when the sacristy bell rings at the point in the service where the priest elevates the host before communion. God, this is just getting more and more sacrilegious. Oh, it's brilliant. So this is an unmissable signal. And crucially, at that moment when the bell rings, the whole congregation, including the Medici brothers, will have bowed their heads in reverence. So they'll kill them then, and then the bloke is the Archbishop of Pisa, Salviati. He will seize the Palazzo della Signore with the armed mercenaries, They'll take the Florentine government prisoner, they'll crush resistance, and the Patsy will control the city.

40:36It's a great plan. I mean, this is not good arch-episcopal behaviour. It's not, but it is a fun plan. I suppose it is. I suppose that's the genius of it. It's the last thing they would expect from an archbishop. Exactly. If an archbishop and two embittered priests. Brilliant. Who'd have thought it? So we get to the morning of Sunday the 26th of April 1478. At about 11 o 'clock, Lorenzo sets off from the Medici Palace with his guest, Cardinal Riario. It literally takes them, I've actually checked it on Google Maps, it takes them three minutes to walk from the Palazzo to the Duomo. And they're joined on the walk by Archbishop Salviati, the snake.

41:16And when they get to the cathedral, the Archbishop says, oh, I actually have to skip masks. My mother is feeling ill. So I'll leave you here. God, so not only is he going to launch a massacre as the host is being raised, but he's lying. Yeah, that's poor, isn't it? Is there no limit to his iniquity? So Lorenzo goes into the cathedral with the cardinal. They go to the high altar and then Lorenzo leaves the cardinal, goes off to chat to some friends, some sort of Medici cronies. Now, important for people to picture this, you don't sit down. There are no chairs in the cathedral and there are pews.

41:48People are standing and they're standing in groups chatting and mingling and moving about, which they would do during the service. Giuliano however has not arrived where is he? Francesco de Pazzi and the adventurer Baroncelli they go to the Palazzo Medici to fetch him it's quite like Julius Caesar not going to the Senate House on the day he's murdered exactly I mean obviously they are kind of classical cosplaying in the Renaissance but the kind of the rhythms and rhymes it's nice to see Giuliano is feeling ill and he was actually thinking about skipping mass but they persuade him again very Julius Caesar to change his mind.

42:23They say, come on, it'll be great fun. And so they walk with him to the cathedral. Along the way, I love this detail, Francesco di Pazzi puts his arm around him and gives him a squeeze and says, you're getting fat. But actually the reason Francesco does that is to check if he's wearing armor under his clothes. And he's relieved to find that he isn't. So they're now into the cathedral. It's midday. The service is about to start. Giuliano is on one side of the choir, the north side with his assassins standing around it. Lorenzo is on the other side of the altar. He's in the ambulatory, whatever that is.

42:58I don't even know what it is. Some cathedral thing. There's a lot of his friends nearby, but the two killer priests, the lean murderous ones, are standing right behind him. The service starts, you know, a lot of chanting, whatever. We reach the crucial moment, right? The priest at the altar lifts up the host and the congregation bowed. their heads and the bell rings and the priests draw their daggers and the guy from Volterra Maffei he puts his hand gently on Lorenzo's shoulder sort of to steady himself for the thrust and Lorenzo turns at that point and he feels the dagger on his neck and just at the point when Maffei is digging it in he pulls away so what happens is the dagger slices into his neck but it doesn't kill him.

43:50So there's a spurting of blood. Blood. Lorenzo pulls off his cloak. He wraps it around his arm and he uses it as a shield to kind of ward off the blows. Then he reaches for his sword. He's carrying a sword. He reaches for his sword. He unsheathes it. He slashes at the priests and then he turns and he runs and he leaps over the rail of the altar and then he sprints for the bronze doors of the sacristy which might offer some refuge. Because there are a lot of bronze doors in the Dwightville, aren't there? The Florentines love a bronze door. While that's happening, what's happened to Giuliano? When the bell rang, Giuliano had bowed his head as Lorenzo had, and the guys on his side were much more efficient.

44:26Barranceli, the adventurer, struck first. He shouted, take that, you traitor. Slashed at his head so fiercely that he almost split it in two, apparently. And then Francesco Di Pazzi was on him. He stabbed him in the chest again and again. Giuliano fell to the floor with blood everywhere. Francesco, like a madman, stabbing furiously, 19 wounds in all. So a puddle of blood spreading over the holy altar. Exactly. The two killers look up. They can see Lorenzo running for the doors. They run after him. They want to cut him off before he gets to the doors. But at that point, a very unappreciated man, a man called Francesco Nori, who's a partner in the Medici bank, mate of Lorenzo's, he rushes in to intervene.

45:08A crucial moment, actually, in the whole story of the Medici dynasty. Nori threw himself in their path. Baron Celi plunged his dagger in and stabbed him and killed him. But in doing so, they lost vital seconds. Lorenzo and a couple of his friends were able to get to the sacristy doors, slam them shut, and jam them behind them. So now he's safe. So now the cathedral, a scene of total chaos and uproar. There are people running and screaming. There's this puddle of blood from Giuliano's body spreading everywhere. It was said that the high altar, Cardinal Riario, who knew nothing about this, was standing there like gaping in shock and was rushed to safety.

45:48But it was said afterwards that his face never lost the pallor that it had had at that moment at the altar. I can well believe it. Yeah. He wasn't expecting it, I think it's fair to say, Tom. The day had not unfolded as he imagined. Now, meanwhile, what's happened to Lorenzo? Lorenzo's friends kind of bustled him out of the back door of the cathedral to the Medici Palace. A great crowd assembles outside the Medici Palace, And he comes out and he's kind of bleeding from his neck, but he's still very clearly alive. And he says, you know, there's a coup. We must fight back against the conspirators.

46:21Now, meanwhile, what happened to the Archbishop, Salviati, he had marched on the Palazzo della Signoria with his mercenaries, but he was taken aback. He thought the councillors would be, you know, he'd be able to kind of steamroll with them. But no, they fought back. the standard bearer of Florence, the Gonfalonieri, apparently grabbed a cooking spit and fought back against the archbishop personally. The council start ringing the big bell, the vacca, calling for aid. Loads of people pour into the square. They completely outnumber the plotters and the mercenaries, and they're chanting splendidly, Vivano la Palle.

46:57Long live the balls. Hurrah for the balls. So that's from the Medici symbol, the coat of arms, yeah. Exactly. So these people are chanting about balls. They end up slaughtering all of the archbishop's mercenaries. They cut off their heads, and then they rampage around the city with these heads on lances. The archbishop, he was cornered. They tied a rope around his neck, and then they threw him out of an upper window of the Palazzo della Signoria, and they left him to dangle there. I think that's fair enough. And now Francesco di Pazzi, the bank manager, they found him. They stripped him naked.

47:29They did the same thing to him. Would you like a gory fact? Go for it. These two blokes are dangling from the ropes and kind of writhing in agony. And the Archbishop, it was said, while he was writhing at the end of his rope, about to die, for some peculiar reason, he took a massive bite out of Francesco de Pazzi's chest and sank his teeth into his torso. You know what? It's like something out of Dante's Inferno. It is a bit, isn't it? Hideous scene. It actually is a hideous scene because it turns into a massive riot. And about 80 people, many of them completely innocent, were lynched until Lorenzo managed to calm things down.

48:04So what happened to the other plotters? So we mentioned that that bloke, Maffei, who you began with, had an appointment with the knife. He did indeed. He and the other priest, they were caught, they were castrated, and then one of them was hanged and one of them was beheaded. So that was the end of them. Montesecco, the sort of hard-bitten mercenary captain, he was interrogated under torture. That's how we know the details of the story. And then he had a slightly more benign end in that he was beheaded with a sword in the courtyard of the Bargello, which is now a very famous art and sculpture museum.

48:38But if he revealed all the details, I mean, he's not that hard-bitten, is he? Don't forget, he had been worried that God would see him in the cathedral. That's true, yeah. So he clearly had doubts the whole time. And then the adventurer, Baroncelli, who killed Giuliani, he escaped as far as Constantinople. But he was recognized somehow in Constantinople, and the Sultan agreed to extradite him to Florence and he ended up being beheaded in the Bargello as well. So that was what happened to him. Now, what about the godfather of the Pazzi, Jacobo? He fled to a village. People recognized him. He was dragged back to Florence.

49:12This is a very gory end, actually. He was tortured. He was stripped naked. He again was hanged from a window of the Palazzo della Signoria. So that's the style of execution of choice. Very much so. Very much the vibe. his body was thrown into the river arno but some children then fished it out and children hung it from a willow tree and to amuse themselves used to go and beat it and flog it it's more innocent times how long was it hanging there i don't know but it's better than just being stuck inside in a playstation no i mean i think it's good to get outside and have some fun i suppose so and of course all this his head came off people took it people took it to the palazzo Patsy and they used to amuse themselves by banging it on the door, like using it as a door knocker.

49:54Oh, God. So he should have gone with his original instincts, shouldn't he? He should have gone with his instincts. It's a sign, never go against your instincts. The Patsy family were banished forever from Florence. Their property confiscated. Their symbol, which was the dolphin, was erased from the city. Even if you'd married a Patsy, you were banned forever from holding office. And actually, Botticelli painted a lovely mural at the Bargello, where the executions had taken place. a lovely mural of the Patsy with ropes around their necks, kind of dangling to their deaths. Nice. So that's nice. Now, actually, across Europe, the Patsy conspiracy was a great story.

50:28Everyone was very shocked by it. The King of France, Louis XI, he wrote to Lorenzo saying, gosh, what a terrible story. I'm, you know, unbelievable to do it at mass. I mean, he's not wrong. I find that very shocking. No, I think you should pay more heed to the Pope. The Pope said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this and the real miscreants here. at the Medici. Do you know what he did? When he heard about the failure of the plots, he promptly excommunicated Lorenzo and the entire Signoria of Florence. He said, for killing the two priests and the Archbishop. He thought that was absolutely disgraceful.

51:03You hear Catholics complaining about, I don't know, Francis or whatever. Woke popes. Woke popes. You have to say, I mean... Sixtus is a more robust pope, I think. It looks pretty feeble compared to Sixtus IV. Sixtus IV is a very robust pope. Now, Lorenzo said to the Council of Florence, look, we're up against it with the pope against us. I could go into exile. He knows that they'll say no, but he says, I could go into exile. And everybody said, oh, no, don't do that. We'll all stand together. We'll defend the House of Medici as we will defend our own republic. But at the end of June 1478, Sixtus placed Florence under interdict, which I believe, Tom, means that no one can take the sacraments.

51:46They can't take communion in Florence. Yeah, and they're not allowed to be born or die or anything like that. Right. And he actually then issued, it's like George W. Bush in the Axis of Evil or something. He said, I call on all the other Italian states. Let's stage a liberal intervention against the excommunicated and heretical Lorenzo de' Medici. God wants us to basically punish him for his wickedness. The Medici Bank was expelled from Rome and from Naples. Its assets were seized. And a few weeks later, heeding the Pope's call, the heir to the throne of Naples, who is Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, left Naples with the big army heading for Florence.

52:25So things are looking a bit desperate now for Lorenzo. He really needs money to raise an army, but actually he's blown all his money on fancy helmets and stuff with stallions and altarpieces and all of this. Annunciations. Yeah, exactly. So he has to send messengers across Italy to beg for cash, especially to Milan. He sends his family to the Medici castle at Cafagiolo, which is in the mountains north of Florence for safety. The months go by and Alfonso makes very slow progress, basically grinding his way through central Italy, take town by town, castle by castle, heading Florence. The war drags on.

53:03It blows a hole in the Florentine economy. People start running out of food. There are bread riots. Alfonso and the Neapolitan army with the Pope's backing It's getting closer and closer. In the late summer of 1479, a friend writes to Lorenzo and says, Florence is exhausted. People just want this to end. There are bread riots now. Something has to change. And then Lorenzo comes to a really extraordinary decision. Is it a bombshell? It is a bombshell. We haven't had a bombshell in this episode, but now we have. On the 5th of December, 1479, he sends a message to the Signoria. He says, I made my mind up.

53:40I'm going to make the ultimate sacrifice for peace. He says, given the dangerous circumstances in which our city is placed, the time for deliberation is over. It is time for action. I have decided to sail for Naples immediately. I am the chief target of our city's enemies. So I've decided to surrender myself into their hands. And perhaps that way we will have peace. The war began with the blood of my brother and of myself. and perhaps it is the will of God that this is how we will end it. So Tom, an incredible gamble. Lorenzo, the playboy, the patron of the arts is going to risk his freedom, perhaps even his life to save the people of Florence.

54:22Goodness, stunning stuff. If you want to know what happens, you can find out right now by joining the Rest is History Club at therestishistory.com. And not only will you find out what happens to Lorenzo, but you will get to hear about his giraffe, which is, for me, the highlight of the whole series. And of course, you'll get episode four as well. The last in the series, Savonarola, Bonfire of the Vanities, all of that. But if you want to wait, that's fine. It will be coming out next Monday and next Thursday, episodes three and four. So thank you, Dominic. Fantastic stuff. Thanks, everyone, for listening.

54:55And bye-bye. Grazie, arrivederci.

55:05I'm Gordon Carrera and I'm David McClaskey. Together we're the co-hosts of another goal hanger show called The Rest is Classified. Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on. When I look back on it now, you still see that, you know, there's plans, there's memoranda, There's notifications. There's all these things. But they're never actually executed. They never actually kind of pull the trigger on anything, do they? I'm a little bit of two minds on this because I agree with you that the theme of this episode really is a series of missed opportunities to get Osama bin Laden prior to 9-11. Yeah. But we should also note that once Tenet and the CIA understand that Osama bin Laden is coming for us, in particular after the East Africa bombings, there is a push to improve our collection and our understanding of Al-Qaeda pretty significantly.

56:02I mean, there's a bunch of human sources who get recruited in this period. There's a lot more technical collection. Alex Station is beefed up to more than 40 people. There's a bunch of connections with foreign partners and al-Qaeda that hadn't existed before. I mean, interestingly, there's a PDB, President's Daily Brief, in December, December the 4th of 1998, which is titled, quote, Bin Laden preparing to hijack U.S. aircraft and other attacks. And so there's a lot of strategic warning, I think you could say, about what Al-Qaeda is up to. And yet there's an inability, I think, to translate that into practical efforts and operations to stop these attacks and to stop Al-Qaeda from ultimately carrying out 9-11.

56:49If you want to hear the full episode, listen to The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.