The rise and fall of the house of medici5/10/2023 But by the end of the saga, there were those who looked dangerously to the past, favouring prejudice over wisdom, fearful of the uncertainties of progress. Many of the early Medici looked to the future, took leaps of imagination, and shaped great destinies. But with the passage of time, their journey appeared to go backwards rather than forward. There were many compelling figures who led it. Like great lands before it, and in a lesson to societies even now, Florence was led to its decay by the downfall of vision, its pain alleviated only by wistful memories from happier times. Florence, where the Renaissance birthed fabled works of art in monumental halls, now cradled heaps of beggars in streets that stank. The great Florentine navy employed a grand total of 198 equally rickety sailors manning three prehistoric galleys. The Florentine army was an assemblage of 3,000 decrepit men, its rolls reconciled to such gloomy observations as “has lost his sight” and “walks with a stick”. It was a time of economic and cultural depression in the capital of Tuscany-an autonomous state, with the Italian unification a century away-and what was once a great city where the House of Medici patronized Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo Galilei, now confronted spectacular decline. In the year 1740, residents of Florence welcomed a memorably named character called Lady Pomfret.
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