15,697
edits
Changes
no edit summary
Cosimo was a very effective leader and was a skilled negotiator and he brought stability to the city and made it even wealthier. Prior to Cosimo the city had been regularly disturbed and unsettled by political factions and powerful families. Cosimo was succeed by his son Piero who had little of the abilities of his father. He died while still quite young and was succeed by his son Lorenzo, who is known to history as Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was a very capable ruler and brought peace and prosperity to Florence and its hinterland.
However, the De Medici business fortunes began to falter and this was to ultimately weaken their hold on Florence. Lorenzo and the Medici survived a plot to kill them and seize power in 1474.<ref>Schevill, p. 115</ref> After Lorenzo died, his son became head of Florence but he was incompetent and he provoked a popular uprising against the family and this led to their expulsion from Florence from 1494-1512. The Family was restored to Florence in 1512 and they eventually became the Dukes of Florence. However, the glory days were gone, the later de Medici was not as powerful or as rich as their predecessors and Florence became a political and cultural backwater.<ref>Paul Strathern, <i>The Medici—Godfathers of the Renaissance</i> (London, Pimlico, 2005), p. 213</ref>.
==de Medici and Florence==
