572. The Medici: Masters of Florence (Part 1)
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Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. In the distant plain lies Florence, pink and grey and brown,

with the ruddy, huge dome of the cathedral dominating its center like a captive balloon, and flanked on the right by the smaller bulb of the Medici Chapel, and on the left by the airy tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. After nine months of familiarity with this panorama, I still think that this is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon.

though most satisfying to the eye and the spirit, to see the sun sink down, drown in his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city into a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.

So that, Dominic, was Mark Twain, I think the friend of the show. And for once, he's not being rude. He's actually engaging in extravagant praise because he's writing from a house in the autumn of 1892.

just outside Florence, and he is gazing at this famously most beautiful of cities. And I guess there he is capturing the romance and the poetry and the glory of the place that many people would say is indeed the most beautiful city on the face of the earth. Yeah, a city, Tom, that I think has become the embodiment of elegance,

a beauty of human achievement, I guess. So every year, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of people go to see its cathedral and its churches and museums.

The artworks in the centre of Florence, things like Michelangelo's David or Botticelli's Birth of Venus, the great treasures of the Uffizi, they're seen as high points, aren't they, of human culture. So you chose Twain for the introduction, but I think I would have gone for maybe some lines from the second greatest film ever made, which is, of course, A Room with a View, in which the character Eleanor Levish...

is talking to Helena Bonham Carter, who's gone there as a tourist. And Helena Bonham Carter has fallen in love with Gillian Sands, who of course is now very sadly dead. And she cries out, a young girl transfigured by Italy. And why shouldn't she be transfigured? It happened to the Goths. And that's very much the vibe, isn't it? It is. Even Goths can be transfigured. Yeah, you're right, Tom. But the period in which Florence has become synonymous actually

comes long after the Goths, doesn't it? It's the Renaissance in the 14th and 15th centuries. So the period when Italians are embracing humanism, there's a rediscovery of classical art and literature. There's a sort of spirit of curiosity and self-confidence. And one family above all, I think, has become the embodiment of Florence's wealth and glory. And they are the people who are often seen as the architects or the sponsors of this new age of inquiry, this new age of artistic expression.

And Twain mentioned them, didn't he, in that passage? They are, of course, the Medici. So in this series, we're going to meet them at their zenith in the 15th century, the high point of Florentine power. And some people would say of Renaissance culture. And I thought it would be fun to concentrate on three characters above all. So one of them is Cosimo de' Medici. So he's a banker, wily banker who makes himself master of the city. He's very much your kind of man, isn't he? I like Cosimo. Yeah, I think he's great.

Number two, who I'm less keen on, I think it's fair to say, is his grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent. So he's seen as the great statesman and the patron of the arts. And his life is a really kind of bonkers story, all kinds of conspiracies and twists and assassination attempts.

And then the third man, who I feel is much more your kind of man, is the man who kind of succeeds them as master of Florence. And this is a monk called Girolamo Savonarola, who tries to purify the city with a sort of flame of evangelical zeal. The bonfire of the vanities, isn't it? Yeah, bonfire of the vanities. He himself comes to a fiery end, I think it's fair to say.

So all in all, I think it's actually one of the most dazzling stories we've ever done on The Rest is History. It's full of melodramatic twists, but also full of great art, great culture and bad behavior. So it's the perfect combination. So shall we kick off with Cosimo? Cosimo de' Medici. He's born in September 1389. So to put this into some context for the listeners, we're about 40 years after the Black Death.

and we're about a century before Columbus sails to the New World. And Florence is going to be a big character in this story. So let's talk a little bit about Florence. You've been to Florence, obviously, Tom, haven't you? You've been to the Uffizi. You went on a private tour. Oh, yes. One adores going to Florence. Firenze, as I call it. So to give you people a bit of backstory about Florence, for a long time, Florence was just an obscure market town on the banks of the River Arno in the heart of Tuscany. But from the 12th century onwards, it

underwent this explosive growth. And that was because of two things. One was cloth and the other was credit. So cloth, it's basically wool and it's imported from across Europe and especially from England. And then when it gets to Florence, it's kind of processed and turned into cheap cloth

And about a third of Florence's population works in cloth factories on all this. So England is basically Florence's India. Yes, I guess so. That's a nice comparison. And then they take the money they get, the profits from all this, and they use that to kickstart a financial revolution. So this is the other thing, which is credit. So the Florentines start doing things like they use Arabic numerals instead of Roman numerals.

And Arabic numerals make it easy to do complicated calculations like interest payments because they have the concept of zero. They're also using paper rather than parchment. So that's also been introduced by the Arabs, hasn't it?

Exactly. And paper is about half the cost of parchment. So I know this is a very strange thing to say, but they lead the world in bookkeeping and accountancy because they've got this cheap paper and they've got these nice new numerals. And that's something that's often forgotten about Florence, isn't it? That as well as being the home of Dante and Boccaccio and Botticelli and Brunelleschi, it's also the home of accountancy.

Well, that's what all the culture is founded on. You know, no accountancy, no culture. So, for example, it's the Florentines who invent something called the double entry. And that means you have two columns in your accounts book. One is debit and one is credit. And it's very easy to check a customer's account. And all accountants will be familiar with that. So by the beginning of the 14th century, the Florentines have become bankers to Europe.

And they are not just changing money, so they're exchanging one currency for another, but they're lending it at interest. And the symbol of their success is the florin.

named after the city. The florin is a little coin stamped with a lily, the symbol of the city. And it is recognized not just in Italy, but across the continent as a symbol of financial stability. And I guess there is one other kind of symbol that emerges in this period that, of course, Twain would have seen the visitors to the city now see, and that's the cathedral, the Duomo, which is being built throughout this early period, isn't it? Throughout Cosimo's life.

So it's begun, I think, at the end of the 13th century and it's built throughout the 14th century and it's on a massive, massive scale. And so it gets paused by the Black Death very much as the similarly huge cathedral in Florence's great rival, Siena, gets paused. But Florence does have the kind of the muscle to carry on, I suppose, because it has the Florence, because it has the wealth, because it has all the accountants and everything. And

By the end of the 14th century, everything's been completed apart from the dome.

And the challenge with the dome is it's going to have to be on such a massive scale that nobody's quite sure how to do it. They kind of draw up a plan for a dome that is going to be modeled on Roman exemplar, but is going to be kind of radically different. But nobody's quite sure how to build it. And in the long run, someone will come up with a wheeze for how to build it. But I guess it's providing a kind of backdrop to the events that you're going to be describing. This massive, not yet completed cathedral, but

the idea of building this dome is going to be something that's never been seen before, but also rooted in the classical past. And I guess that's kind of emblematic of what Florence is all about, isn't it? I think that's absolutely right. I think a lot of the action that we're going to be describing this year is actually takes place in the cathedral, including the kind of altar of the cathedral. And,

And you mentioned how big it is. So the cathedral capacity is about 30,000 people. I mean, that's extraordinary. Now, at its height, Florence had about 100,000 people. So this is because it sucked in people from the countryside because of the cloth industry. Then the Black Death happens and it shrinks to about 50,000. So remember, the cathedral seats or rather you stand there.

30,000. So that gives you a sense of just how important the cathedral is in the life of the city. So you could imagine they could have abandoned the cathedral like the Sienese do, but I guess they don't because they are confident. It's not just that they've got the money, but they're confident the city will grow again. They're looking to the future. Well, it's still one of the top five cities in Europe. So Paris, Milan, Venice, Naples are the other big players in the late 14th, early 15th century. Because Florence is such a character in the story, maybe

worthwhile giving people a sense of what it would have been like. It would take you about half an hour to walk across it. And you're walking through this sort of warren of narrow streets, which of course is still there. There's great stone palaces, the palazzi, the churches. There are loads of shops because it's a very commercial place. There's a lovely description by a historian called Donald Weinstein. And he's writing about what it would have been like. And he says, you know, crowded with people in doublet and hose, silk gown ladies, you

long-robed clerics, laborers, beggars, hawkers, cut purses, flesh peddlers, and gangs of rowdy youths. And we'll come to some gangs of rowdy youths later in the series. And there's something else, actually, which we never think about in Renaissance Florence. There would have been thousands of slaves. And these slaves were usually young girls or young women, Greeks, Turks, Circassians from the Caucasus. And it was very, very common for these rich Florentine bankers to have slave girls,

with whom they would sleep, actually sort of effectively sex slaves. Cosimo will have a son by a Saccasian slave girl, won't he? He will indeed. Now, cities politics, let's talk about that. Remember, Italy is not, I mean, I know you know this, Tom, Italy is not united. It's a patchwork of kingdoms and duchies and city-states and so on. And Florence is relatively unusual because it's a republic. It's been a republic since the 12th century and power

again, interestingly, resides with the mercantile elite, not the old landowning nobility. The landowning nobility are formally excluded from power. So the way the elections work is very complicated. Basically, you have to belong to one of these trade guilds. And every two months, there is an election. And it's not an election where you vote. It's an election for the city council, which is called the signoria.

And basically the names of everybody in these guilds is put into eight leather bags and they draw them out supposedly at random. So it's a kind of cross between ancient Rome and ancient Athens. Yes, I guess so. Or a cross between an election and the draw of the national lottery.

That's another way of putting it. Eight of these names that are pulled out become priori or councillors. And the ninth becomes the standard bearer of the city, the gonfalonieri. And he chairs the council, the standard bearer. And all of them, when your name is pulled out, you have to move into the big stone city hall, which is, of course, still there in the centre of Florence, the Palazzo della Signoria. You move in there and you have servants. You have a buffoon who tells you stories and jokes and stuff.

You're there for two months. So your term is only two months and then you're out again. And the point is to stop any one faction having too much power. And so that, again, is very reminiscent of the way the consuls function.

in ancient Rome. And generally there is an anxiety, as there was in the Roman Republic, about great powerful men seizing power. I'm all right that actually the nobility, if you become a nobleman, you're not eligible for office. So in a way it kind of becomes a punishment. To become a noble is to be deprived of the chance of political office. There are lots of advisory councils and things which you probably don't need to go into. But

one thing worth mentioning is what happens in an emergency in an emergency the council will ring the great bell of the palazzo della signoria which is called the vacca it's kind of called the cow bell because it's meant to sound like a cow mooing does it i don't think it probably does i don't think a cow would sound like a bell but there you go all male citizens then have to kind of pour into the piazza della signoria and they hold what's called a parlamento a parliament

And there they elect a kind of emergency committee called a balia, which has kind of powers to deal with the crisis. And we'll see people doing this again and again in this story. Now, it's quite a complicated system, all this business about drawing names out of bags and whatnot. But the Florentines think it's brilliant. I mean, they boast, you mentioned Rome and Athens, they boast of their descent. They say, we are the daughter of Rome.

And they have a very Roman culture in some ways, or a culture that they think is modeled on the Romans. So they say, we're very hardworking. We're very serious. Duty and responsibility are terribly important to us. They sort of boast, you know, we bring up our children not to hunt and to hawk. This is a bit of an exaggeration, by the way, but to fill in ledgers and to do sums and to make money because that's the...

That's the sinews of our power. And they love all this kind of stuff. That's why the great dome, the Duomo, is the perfect symbol because it's simultaneously Roman.

but also very distinctively Florentine. And I guess the Florentines would be absolutely delighted to think of that. I mean, that's what they're about. They don't want to kind of ape Rome completely, but they want to dignify their own system. Exactly. Exactly. Now, by the time Cosimo is born in 1389, there are definitely tensions emerging. Number one, there's a big gap between rich and poor, the super rich, the people in the palazzi and the masses, the textile workers in the slums. Number two,

Rather like Rome, actually, Florence has expanded and it's swallowed up neighbouring towns like Arezzo or San Gimignano. So that's the territory rather than the city itself. Yeah. So like Rome, Florence has expanded. So the Republic of Florence is now more than just the city. So it's swallowed up neighbouring towns like

San Gimignano or Arezzo. It's got a bigger hinterland now. And of course, success, as in Rome, breeds opportunities for corruption. So more and more, the rich merchant families will rig these elections. They'll rig the names in the leather bags. And there's actually, I mean, if you like kind of slightly old-fashioned history books, there's a brilliant book on the Medici by Christopher Hibbert, a very popular historian of the 60s and 70s,

And he says of Medici Florence, it had a government carried on mainly by the rich and almost exclusively in their own interests, which, of course, will in the long run create tensions, as we will see in our final episode. So all of this brings us to Cosimo's own family, the Medici. So they were initially economic migrants from a place called the Mugello, which is sort of hills north of the city. And they'd probably moved to Florence in about the 12th century.

They're famous for their coat of arms, which is red balls on a field of gold. And their supporters would often go into the streets and shout, balls, balls.

balls in Excitemans. Yeah, I bet they did. Now, some people think these are kind of, the balls are kind of apothecary's pills or cups linked to the surname of the family, Medici, which means medics, doctors. It could be pawnbroker's balls. We don't really know, but either way, it's a reminder of their humble origins. And the humble origins are a standing affront to the old families of the Florence, who even centuries later see the Medici as upstarts and parvenus and vulgar and whatnot. Anyway,

Anyway, over time, they've worked their way up the ladder. They're a respectable family who make their money from banking. And by the time Cosimo is born in the late 1380s, they've got branches in Florence, in Rome, in Venice, in Genoa, in Naples, and so on.

As a result of their wealth and their success, they now have a little bit of political clout. And they are, you know, Medici relatives are often appearing in the lists of people who've been elected to the Signoria, to the council. So one of the Medici is on the board that votes for Brunelleschi's Great Dome. Yes, exactly.

But to the old families, this is a challenge. And there are lots of people who are muttering by the time Cosimo is born that the Medici have got above themselves. The chief among these are a family called the Albizzi. And we'll come back to the Albizzi in this episode. Cosimo's father was a man called Giovanni di Bici di Medici. We'll call him just Giovanni for short. He's a very, very smart and shrewd man. He has built up the family business above all by investing in Rome.

Rome was a massive market for the Florentine bankers because Florentine banks would charge big interest rates for handling papal business, the business of the papacy. And they made a lot of money by lending to cardinals who needed to build up power bases of their own. And so, Dominic, this is the period when the Avignon exile has kind of come to an end. There's still a pope in Avignon, but the papacy has also returned power.

to Rome and so there's a there's a kind of split and so all the cardinals who have come back to Rome to be with the Pope obviously need to refurbish their decayed palaces and apartments so there's a lot of credit needed. There's actually two popes at this point Tom and as we'll see there are sometimes three popes. Well there's one in Avignon, one in Rome and yes in due course they're going to try and solve it by electing a third. And a roving Pope. Yeah.

So in the late 1390s, when Cosimo was about 10, his father Giovanni makes this very, very consequential bet on an aristocrat from Naples called Baldassare Cossa, who used to be a pirate, but now decides he'd actually like to make a correct name for himself in the Catholic Church.

So he's like Lawrence, what's his name? Blackburn, who was the Archbishop of York who'd been a pirate. Really? I didn't know that. Well, this guy, Cossar, borrows 10,000 ducats from the Medici and it works, actually. He becomes cardinal, first of all, and then in 1410, he becomes Pope John XXIII. Now...

At this point, there are actually two other popes already. There's one in Rome and there's one in Avignon. And Cossa doesn't get into the kind of canonical lists of popes. He actually is deposed after five years. He was accused of sleeping with more than 200 women in seven years. Now, I think that's too many. I think there's a happy medium and he has crossed the line. What would you see the happy medium as being? If you're a pope, I think 20 in seven years is reasonable.

What do you think is reasonable for a Pope? Three. Three in seven years. But I'm the Savonarola of this podcast. I'm slightly more hedonistic, I think. I mean, just a question about this. Because he's branded as an anti-Pope and basically it's necessary to brand him as being terrible so that they can, in the long run, end the schism. Do you think maybe there's a little bit of exaggeration going on there? I think there may be a slight bit of exaggeration. I do actually think 200 women in seven years is a lot. Anyway.

Giovanni and the Medici made a lot of money from this bloke. And actually, they made a lot of really good connections. And eventually, in 1420, they become the bankers for the real pope, who's called Martin V. So that's after the Council of Constance, isn't it, where they get rid of the other three? So at this point, the Medici have become some of the richest people in Florence. And Giovanni, as a result of this, becomes a big political player. And he...

is elected to the Signoria multiple times. And is that because he's respected or is it because he's bribing people? I think both, actually. I think he's genuinely respected and he's bribing people to an extent that we find it hard to discern through the sort of murk of history. Or offering patronage, rather. Patronage, yeah. It's not bribery to a scale that shocks people at the time. I think it's considered completely reasonable and far for the course. So while all this is going on, Cosimo is growing up in the

what's called the Casa Vecchia, which is the kind of stone Medici palace in the center of Florence. He goes to school as a nearby monastery. He learns Latin, German, and French. His tutor is a rich patrician called Roberto de Rossi, who is a classic humanist scholar. And we should talk a little bit about humanism

So this is basically the study of the humanities, which means the study of the classical world. So it's grammar and rhetoric, but it's also philosophy and poetry and art, all of these kinds of things. And the very term humanism at this point, so when Cosimo is like 10, 12, 14, is really breaking through and becoming fashionable.

And to become a humanist, in other words, to study Ovid and Plato and Aristotle and so on. Well, not, I think, Plato at this point. No, Plato is beginning to come through at this point, Tom. Plato is really coming through in the 15th century. Yeah, but there's the early signs of it at this point. And I think the important thing is that you need money, that humanism is a sign of status because...

Most of these humanist scholars work as private tutors. They don't have institutional backing. So in other words, you need to be able to afford a private tutor who will give you access to all of this kind of scholarship. And young Cosimo is exactly the kind of person who'd like to get into this. And actually, he really gets into it. So there's a great book and actually quite a caustic book about the Medici by Mary Hollingsworth.

And she points out that when he was in his late 20s, there was an inventory of his house. And the books were things like Cicero, Julius Caesar, Virgil, Marshall, Ovid, Tacitus. And she says, you know, it's a big library for the period by any standards, but very unusual for somebody who's in their late 20s and is basically a banker, not a scholar. And Dominic, can I just pick up on that list? Tacitus...

I mean, he has only just been discovered. So we know that Boccaccio, the great 14th century Florentine writer, is reading Tacitus, but nobody else really knows about him. So for Cosimo to have Tacitus, he's amazingly cutting edge. I mean, it's kind of almost avant-garde in his tastes. Yeah, I think so. I think there's no underestimating all this or sort of underplaying it. I think clearly this is somebody who has

who's really, really interested in all this and is keen to buy the latest things that have been discovered, keen to be at the sort of cutting edge exactly.

We don't get many glimpses of Cosimo as a young man. He seems to keep out of the public eye. He's said to be very soberly dressed. He doesn't go around with a big retinue. He's said to have a kind of terse and sardonic sense of humor. He's very Sambra. I mean, now that you've said that, Tom, here's a definite point of difference. He marries a woman called Contesina di Bardi, who's from another banking family. Christopher Hibbert describes her as

fat, capable and cheerful. Certainly capable and she's capable of being cheerful but she's definitely not fat. No, I just want to place that absolutely on the record. And they have two children and he also, as you said earlier, he has this illegitimate son by one of his slave girls, a Circassian slave girl, a son called Carlo. This is absolutely standard and he's brought up with

his legitimate sons. He's trained as a banker from an early age. His father sends him to branches in France and Germany. And then in 1420, Cosimo effectively takes over the family business. Now, at this point, the Medici bank is a really, really serious enterprise. It's one of the most sophisticated trade networks in Europe. It's also a very sophisticated political network by this point.

He's got his cousin, Averado, who's very good at running all this. And you asked, is it bribery? They're using loans, gifts,

favors, all of these kinds of things. Offers people can't refuse. There is a mafia flavor to all this. They call their network their amici, their friends, and they don't refer to their friends. When they're writing to each other, they will just say of somebody, you know, he's a friend of ours, but they won't kind of name him or go into details. So there is a sense, there's a kind of slight shadiness. And I mentioned Mary Hollingsworth book. In her book, she points out that these are families who have migrated to Florence after the Black Death.

So they are newcomers. They are self-made, aspirational families who are not part of the existing mercantile oligarchy. And these are people who perhaps feel a little bit snubbed and left out by the more conservative families. And so they are the people to whom the Medici are appealing. And so there is a scope for someone who is fabulously wealthy to play the part of the friend of the people. Yeah, and we see it in ancient Rome and we see it in the modern American Republic. So maybe...

something that is inherent within the functioning of republics, perhaps? I think absolutely. There are so many parallels here with sort of the Roman Republic, I think, Tom. So Cosimo's father, Giovanni, dies in 1429.

And there's some very famous words that are given to him on his deathbed. Giovanni is meant to have said to Cosimo, you know, be very wary about being summoned to the Palazzo della Signoria. Wait to be summoned when you are summoned. Do as you ask. Never be conceited. Never be proud. Now, whether he actually said this, we don't know. There's probably a kernel of truth in it because I think it's clear at this point, the late 1420s,

that the Medici's rivals are kind of sharpening their knives a bit. They're sick of the Medici. They're anxious about them. And they're ready to choose their moment to strike. And chief among them are this rival family that I mentioned before who are called the Albizzi. The Albizzi are also a mercantile family. They're not a noble family. They've made their money from wool, from cloth. But...

They have been major players for longer than the Medici. They clearly think, no, we want to get rid of these rivals before they become too big. They haven't bought their own furniture. Exactly. Exactly. The Arbizzi have inherited their furniture and the Medici are commissioning kind of fancy furniture from artists. Their leader is a guy called Reynaldo di Arbizzi. And he is a kind of grizzled, you know, he'd be Sean Bean probably. Oh.

Oh, well, that doesn't promise well for his fate. No, exactly. He's kind of grizzled. He's a former soldier. He's very haughty. He's very proud. And he says, you know, the Medici are absolute scum. I can't stand the Medici. And he actually gives a brilliant speech in 1426 to his supporters, which is reported in one of the chronicles. And he says, we are well-born, yet now we find ourselves companions in the government with men from the Mugello, from the hills.

Those who were once our household servants, they treat us as servants while they themselves behave like lords. Shocking. And he says to his supporters, let us make sure that men of the right background end up in government and that these upstarts return to their pitiful trades and focus on providing food for their family tables. And actually, Tom, that reminds me of how you talk about other podcasters. Yeah.

The tone of hatred and condescension. I don't know what you're talking about. So on that note, let's move to the cliffhanger. Months after Giovanni has died, there is a bit of a crisis. The Albizzi are very keen on a little war to bolster their prestige, Ronaldo in particular. And the war they want is against the neighbouring city-state of Lucca,

Cosimo thinks this is a very bad idea. He says, listen, we can't win because Lucca is supported by Milan, which is a kind of regional superpower. And, you know, let's not get tangled up with the Milanese. But the vote goes against him. The Arbizzi get their way. The war starts. Celsa Breeze, it goes really badly for Florence. Florence starts running out of money.

So this is great news for Cosimo. He lends money to the Florentine government at 33% interest. So he's put up all this money. He's been proved right, and he's making loads of cash from the interest payments. And the Albizzi are absolutely furious. This has gone very badly.

And by 1433, Tom, I hate to say it, but storm clouds are gathering over the Tuscan hills. Over Florence. Over Florence, exactly. There's lots of murmurs on the streets. You know, there's clearly going to be a showdown between the Albizzi and the Medici. And the Albizzi are spreading rumors. Cosimo is planning to seize power and he has to be stopped. One night it is said he comes home and he finds the doors of his palazzo smeared with blood. So he knows that something is coming.

At the end of May 1433, he starts basically sending money away. He lodges 8,000 Florians with the Dominican monks at San Marco, a monastery that we'll be talking about a lot in this series. He sends the rest of his money to the Medici banks in Rome and Naples. And later that summer, he moves his family out of the city as well to their country estate in the Mugello. And he takes them there. But while he is away,

Reynaldo Di Albizzi has been fixing the coming Signoria elections. So the end of August, the elections take place and they're a huge blow for the Medici. Seven out of nine of the people who are elected are Albizzi loyalists. And the standard bearer, the gonfalonieri, is a bloke whose debts Reynaldo has just paid off. So this is looking very bleak. On the 1st of September, this new council, the Signoria, take office.

And the next day, a message arrives at Cosimo's country estate in the Mugello saying, you must return to the city. We need your help making some important decisions. And he thinks, oh, no. Now, he could flee. But if he flees, he will lose everything. He could be declared a traitor and his property confiscated or something. So he thinks, no, I've got to face the music. And on the 7th of September, he comes into the city. He goes straight to the Signoria. And he finds that the council session has already started.

And the captain of the guard leads him in. He leads him up the stairs and they get up to the council chamber, but the doors are firmly shut. And the guard says, keep walking. And they go up, up. And the captain leads him past and he shows him into a small cell. And then the captain says, you are under arrest on good grounds, as will soon be very clear. And then he slams the door, Tom. He locks it shut. And on that incredible bombshell, I think we should take a break.

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Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And I'm David McCloskey, CIA analyst turned spy novelist. Together, we're the co-hosts of another Goldhanger show called The Rest is Classified, where we bring you the best stories from the world of secrets and spies. We have just released a series on the decades-long battle between the CIA and Osama bin Laden, and this week, we are stepping into the devastation of the 9-11 terror attacks to understand how Osama bin Laden was able to carry out

to carry out such a plot right under the nose of the CIA. It was a moment that changed global politics forever, shifting the focus of spy agencies away from nation-states

towards hunting for terrorists and understanding the extremist ideology that drove them. We will then go into the decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden, which culminated in a dramatic raid at his compound in Pakistan in 2011, which killed the world's most wanted terrorist. So if all of this sounds good, we've got a clip waiting for you at the end of the episode. ♪

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. And Dominic, you left us on an absolute cliffhanger. Cosimo de' Medici loves his Tacitus, loves the high interest rate, loves the Circassian slave girl. He's gone to the Palazzo della Signoria and there, shock horror, he's been locked up in a cell. So what's going on? How's he going to get out of this? Well, two days go by, Tom, and he's sitting there in his cell. And then on the morning of the 9th of September, he hears the great bell

The Vaca tolling overhead. Surely mooing overhead. Mooing, I believe is the word, yeah. And this is summoning the citizens of Florence to this emergency mass meeting, a parlamento that I talked about in the first half. But as the people sort of flood towards the square, there are armed Albizzi loyalists guarding the entrances. They turn away anybody who's suspected of being a Medici supporter. So this crowd assembles and the councillors ask approval. They say, can we have an emergency committee, a balia,

to reform the city for the good of the people. So in other words, what they're carrying out is an anti-Medici coup. And this Balear formally charges Cosimo with high treason. They say...

ironically, given that he'd been against the war, they say, you've been prolonging the war with Luka to charge high interest rates and to line your own pockets. And is that accurate? Well, do you know what? They had loads of witnesses. The witnesses had been tortured on the rack, so the witnesses were slightly unreliable. That said, I think a lot of modern historians say he probably had been prolonging the war to charge high interest. So yeah, I mean, it's, you know, listeners can make up their own minds. Rinaldo Diabizzi says, all right, let's have the death penalty on this bloke.

But actually, he now starts to find things very difficult. First of all, the Medici Bank has so many kind of tentacles, as it were, everywhere, that foreign opinion is very much on the Medici side. So the Venetians, for example, sent envoys and say, can we have Cosimo released, please?

The standard bearer, who was meant to be an Albizzi loyalist, he actually takes a bribe from the Medici and says, oh, I'm actually very ill. I can't take part in the decision at all. He seems magnificently corrupt. Yeah, he's incredibly corrupt. Taking bongs from everybody, left, right and centre. And also the Albizzi are not sufficiently ruthless. They haven't arrested the...

the other members of the Medici family. So Cosimo's cousin, Alvarado, his brother, Lorenzo, other kind of Medici bigwigs are kind of supposed to be raising mercenaries outside the city. And so people are very anxious about that. So that definitely loses in points on the Sandbrook scale of effective political operators then. He's a bodger. He's made a mess of this. He had his chance and he's blown it. Because basically when the Balear hands down its verdict, Cosimo is not executed. He's banished to Padua for 10 years.

And Cosimo is brought in to hear the sentence and gives this incredibly disingenuous speech in which he says, you know, I'm very happy to be exiled because I know it's for the good of Florence. I leave my heart and soul with you, he says. My troubles will be easy to bear as I know that my adversity will bring peace and happiness to the city. Well, you know who he's echoing there.

is Cicero, who was the great model for Italian humanists, who was exiled by his rival and then makes a triumphant return. And I imagine that with that speech...

Cosimo is channeling Cicero and everybody knows he's channeling Cicero. So by saying that, he's basically saying, I will be back. Yeah. And remember, he had Cicero in his library. So he's very familiar with all this kind of stuff. But I think his listeners would be familiar as well, just because Cicero is such a massive figure in the imagination of the time. They've all had this kind of humanist education. So they're all really into this stuff.

Off he goes into exile and it's like a triumphant progress. He's greeted as an honored guest wherever he goes. He doesn't actually go to Padua. He goes to Venice and he's treated as a VIP and he's put up in the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore. You know, he lives like a prince. It's all great. So Ronaldo must be thrilled about this.

He's raging. He's back in Florence and he says to all his sort of supporters, look, we have made a terrible mess of this. We've got the worst of all worlds. We've struck at the Medici family, but we haven't finished them off. Scotched the snake, not killed it. Exactly. And actually, they continue to do this. So over the winter...

They should have rolled up the Medici network. They should have won over Medici clients in Venice and Rome. They should have done all this. They should have started killing people, but they didn't. That's so sound broke. They should have started killing people. Well, they absolutely should. Listen, if you're not going to do it properly, don't play the game at all. That's my verdict. Yeah, I'm hearing you. So anyway, momentum kind of leeches away from the Albizzi.

And in the late summer of 1434, there's a Medici majority in the Signore elections. Ronaldo says, OK, now is the time for an armed coup. Enough of this messing around. But again, the Albizzi allies are like, no, I don't like the thought of an armed coup. We don't like that kind of thing.

And eventually the Signoria, they summon back Cosimo and they say to Ronaldo, and literally is the story of the previous year reversed. And they say to Ronaldo, come and meet us at the palace for an urgent, important meeting.

Ronaldo realizes, okay, they're going to throw me into prison. So actually he doesn't repeat Cosimo's mistake. He goes back to his house. It says to his guards, secure the city. Go out into the city. And he calls in loads of mercenaries from outside Florence. But over the next few days, his support melts away. It's pretty obvious that the pro-Medici council, the Signoria, have made preparations of their own. They've got troops of their own. Now, as it happens, the bloke who sorts all this out is the Pope.

Because he's also in Florence. Wow. That's a turn up for the book. So he's Eugenius IV.

And he's been kicked out of Rome by a mob. And he's basically lodging in a monastery in Santa Maria Novella in the center of Florence. And he needs money to get back to Rome. Who are you going to ask? Yeah, you're going to ask the Medici bank. He says, look, I'll act as a mediator on this. He says to Ronaldo, I don't think you can win. I think you should surrender. And I will try to persuade the Medici to be lenient with you.

So by the end of September, the struggle is over. The Signoria recall Cosimo to Florence. He makes this great progress through the countryside. There are crowds along the roads. Then on the 6th of October, he enters Florence in triumph. Even bigger crowds greet him as a hero, chanting his name and stuff. However, I will say there are two sides to this story.

The city has been secured beforehand by hundreds of Medici soldiers. So the crowds are not exactly under duress, but there is a degree of intimidation. Basically, if you're not a Medici supporter, you keep very quiet during this period. So you could argue it's a genuine upsurge of kind of popular affection, or you could say this is an intimidated population after what's basically a military coup.

And Cosimo, see, this is why I like Cosimo.

He's a serious person, Tom. He does what has to be done. I mean, he doesn't kill a lot of people, but he is ruthless. He just says, right, now we have to dismantle the Albizzi network completely. We kick them out of Florence forever so the whole clan are banished from Florence. And does that last? Does that stick? Yeah, it works. So he's then elected, Gonfalonieri, standard bearer of the Signoria. He only does it for two months, but it's just a little symbol, you know,

You know, I am the top man. I'm the top dog now. So actually he's now moved from being Cicero to Caesar Augustus. Yes. And actually this is a very, this is a comparison that was on my mind the whole time.

Basically, Cosimo is going to control Florence now for the next 30 years. And I would say he is one of the most impressive politicians that we've had on this podcast. And we've done however many hundred episodes. But he really stands out for me. And the Augustus comparison is exactly the one that was on my mind. So like Augustus, he keeps the existing system, the Republican system,

The difference is that now when you pull a name out of the leather bag, it is certain to have been pre-approved, to have been chosen by Cosimo and his allies. Now, there's always, as you said, there has always been bribery. There's always been patronage and whatnot. But they are doing it in a really systematic, ruthless way. Now, if you step out of line, you won't be killed.

but you might find yourself with an unexpectedly large tax bill, or you won't get planning permission for your new palazzo or whatever, or at worst, you'll be banished and your property confiscated. Foreigners always describe Cosimo as the lord of the city, as the master of the city, but he doesn't often hold public office. In fact, he very rarely holds it again. It's his clients and surrogates who hold public office, and he's kind of in the shadows the whole time. And your Augustus comparison says

Donald Weinstein, on his book on this period, says, Cosimo liked to be seen as a benevolent father figure who embodied the traditional Florentine virtues of the pious Christian, the shrewd, pragmatic merchant, and the republic-loving patriot. In other words, he's a kindly father figure.

He's the first citizen. He's not a prince. He's not a king or an emperor or anything like that. But he's just primus inter pares. So and I'm sure the Augustus comparison would have played on his mind. And he's basically copying from the playbook. Yeah, of course. I'm sure he's not kind of doing it in antiquarian way. I mean, it clearly gels with his character.

But he must be thinking all the time, well, you know, I have a president here. Exactly. Now, there are sometimes protests. There's one incident in particular in 1458. There's a lot of protests about election rigging and just how much money Cosimo is making from lending money to the government. And, you know, he does what needs to be done. He cuts it off before it can gather momentum. He actually says, people are protesting about election rigging. Well, fine, I'll double down. And he

He calls a big parlamento. He calls in loads of troops from Milan to police the streets. And so when people assemble to decide on what they want to do, they want to change the constitution, the place is lined with his armed men. He gets his way. He gets given full legal control of the electoral process, and he will never, ever be challenged again. So again, he's just done what needs to be done and got his way. And I mentioned he's brought in lots of troops. He's brought in troops from Milan,

Why Milan? And this brings us to his other big success story, which is his foreign policy. So his father, Giovanni,

had bet on that bloke who became, if only temporarily, Pope and slept with 200 women in seven years. And that had really worked out. And Cosimo places a similar bet in a big Milanese succession crisis. So Milan is eclipsed by Florence, I think, in the popular imagination now, sort of 14th, 15th century. But Milan was a massive power broker in the Italian landscape. It's rivaled really only by Venice.

And Milan had always been one of Florence's rivals, but Cosimo wants to have a little diplomatic revolution and ally with Milan. So for 200 years, Milan had been ruled by the Visconti family. And the current Duke of Milan is a man called Filippo Maria Visconti. And he is a tremendous character. I'm going to read you what Christopher Hibbert writes about him. He'd been known on summer days to strip the rich clothes from his grotesquely fat and dirty body and roll about naked in his garden.

He was so ugly, he refused to have his portrait painted. So nervous, he screamed at the sight of a naked sword. So frightened of thunder that he had a soundproof room built in his palace. And my favorite thing is we love a prankster and a practical joker. We do, yeah. So he would often talk to a courtier and then unexpectedly he would produce a snake out of his sleeve, which I think would be terrifying. Presumably he's doing that because the serpent is the emblem of Visconti, isn't it?

It's on its kind of coat of arms, the great viper. Yeah, but what a great trick to have a viper stuffed in your clothing to pull them out at a moment's notice. The one downside with this guy, Filippo Maria Visconti...

he's not a great husband. So he had two wives. One of them, he just had her executed. And the second one on their wedding night, he heard a dog howling in the background. And he said, oh my God, that's a terrible sign. This woman's obviously dreadful. Get rid. And he immediately had her locked up. Not many children then. So no legitimate heir. Now he has an illegitimate daughter.

And she marries a bloke, another great character actually, called Count Francesco Sforza. This bloke Sforza, his father had been an illiterate peasant who founded his own mercenary company, one of the best companies in Italy.

Sforza inherited it. And he is regarded as the absolute, if you like mercenary captains, he's number one. He can bend metal bars with his bare hands, Tom, like Augustus the Strong. But he doesn't throw foxes in the air. He doesn't throw foxes in the air. No, he's got better things to do. He wants to win the government of Milan. So there's an immensely complicated Milanese succession crisis. And Cosimo decides, this bloke Sforza,

bar bending mercenary captain. He is the man. He lends him

He gives him an unprecedented overdraft facility, 3,000 ducats. And armed with this amazing overdraft facility, he ends up getting control of Milan. So now there is a formal alliance between Cosimo's Florence and Sforza's Milan. And this means that basically the Medici are, they're not exactly invulnerable, but if anybody attacks them, they can call on the most powerful city in Northern Italy.

So Cosimo has the cash and Sforza has the manpower. Yeah. And as long as they're in cahoots, no one can really bring down either one of them. Exactly right. And the interesting thing actually is that a lesser man than Cosimo would have tried to take the opportunity to expand Florence's territory and to expand kind of Florence's empire. But he's really smart. He knows that Florence can't really support a larger empire. It's not a big enough city. So his priority is basically he wants peace because he just wants to make money.

He will use the Milanese troops to protect what we have.

And in the meantime, I'll just lend people money at 33% interest and we'll become richer and richer. And of course, create great masterpieces of Renaissance art. Exactly. But I think this point about money is actually really important because Cosimo is much less famous than his grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent. But Tom, I believe him to be the greater man because he never loses sight of what matters, which is the balance sheet. He doesn't showboat, does he? He doesn't showboat. He doesn't. He's all about the bank.

So he expands the bank across Europe. So there are representatives. I mean, the list of cities, London, Naples, Cologne, Geneva, Lyon, Basel, Avignon, Bruges, Antwerp, Lubeck, Ancona, Bologna, Rome, Pisa, Venice. There are Medici representatives, Medici branch offices everywhere. And they can source relics, silk, manuscripts, choir boys, you name it, they can deliver it. And as a result,

They are making enormous amounts of money. So I think one estimate, in 10 years after 1442, they make almost 190,000 florins in profit. And this is probably an underestimate because they're also fiddling books because they don't want people to know how much money they are making. However, as you will know...

There is a hidden cost to making all this money. And that is the future of his eternal soul. Yeah, it's that God hates you and you will burn in hell, which is unfortunate because this is the great problem with banking is the Bible explicitly says if you charge interest, if you're guilty of usury, you're a very bad person indeed. So you might think, how do they get away with it? I mean, there are various kind of fudges involved.

It's often pretended that people will pretend that the interest is a gift. Oh, we're not really charging interest. Just so happens that the borrower has given us this lovely present at the end of the loan. I don't think God is going to accept that.

But would God accept this? Could you disguise the interest payments as a Travelex style, you know, commission fee on changing ducats into florins or whatever it might be? I think that's more plausible. Yeah, well, this is what they do with the PayPal accounts because they're using lots of different currencies. I don't think God would have anything against exchange rates. Well, Cosimo was worried that he might because Cosimo is a serious person, Tom, and he, you know, he is undoubtedly familiar with something like Dante's Divine Comedy. When Dante goes to hell or

the poet in the story, he meets usurers, kind of bankers, and they're weighed down by these bags of gold around their necks and they're trapped in kind of burning, scorching sand. No one wants that to happen to them. No, not for eternity. No. I mean, not even for a few seconds, really. I wouldn't want that for any period of time. So how do you deal with that? How do you cope? Well, here is an example. Again, something that will very much appeal to you, Tom. In 1439, Cosimo plays a key part in Haradun,

in hosting in Florence an ecumenical council of the Western and Eastern churches. Oh, yes, an ecumenical council. Yes, get in. There are people sobbing with joy listening to this podcast. You know, basically all over your own household. No, not even my own household. Oh, really? Just you? Just me. So Cosimo personally welcomes Pope Eugenius IV, the bloke who negotiated that deal, the Patriarch of Constantinople pitches up in Florence, and...

the Emperor of the East, the Emperor in Constantinople, John Palaeologus. And actually the result of this council is a very short-lived and abortive deal, a union between the churches of Rome and Constantinople, between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The reason for that being that the Turks are closing in on Constantinople and the Emperor is desperate for Latin help. Yeah, exactly. For Cosimo, all this is absolutely brilliant because...

Because basically, to put this up, it's like hosting the World Cup or the Eurovision Song Contest or something. Florence can't really afford it. So basically, he has to lend the city, his own city, loads of money. And he takes home 14,000 Florins in interest. It's worked out splendidly for him. So I think this is a perfect example of the fusion of politics, finance, of religious faith, and culture that powers the Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance. So first of all, all of these scholars from Constantinople, they

They have turned up with loads of Greek manuscripts that they're going to quote from in these debates. So their bags are kind of bulging with manuscript rolls or whatever. This is when Plato really gets reintroduced. It's Plethon, this guy who actually, he doesn't even approve of Christianity. He wants to go back to worshipping the ancient gods.

And he brings Plato in Greek and he sets up a school there. And this is where Plato really becomes part of the bloodstream of the Renaissance. People become very excited about Plato in Florence. They're like, oh, wow, this is amazing, all this stuff. And actually some of these manuscripts end up in Cosimo's library. I think he probably, they're given as presents or he buys them or who knows, but they basically end up there.

So he's got all the manuscripts. We know he loves all these books. We know he's into all this stuff. But also the money that he's taken home in profits, he uses that money to launder his immortal soul. So he commissions, as a result of this council, a new fresco in the sacristy of the Basilica of San Lorenzo, the church where the Medici are buried. And you can see it today. It's one of the many tourist attractions that are associated with Cosimo and his family. And this is textbook literature.

Italian Renaissance patron behavior because the church is telling them all the time, listen, you're making a lot of money in interest payments and usury, but it's actually fine because if you spend a lot of that on charitable works, on arms, or even better, if you invest it in monasteries and church buildings, then God will probably forgive you and it'll all be all right. Do you think God likes art? I think God loves this because obviously the church know exactly what God wants, don't they?

I can't believe you would question that, Tom. They have a hotline to God. And the Pope, particularly, he knows exactly what God wants. And he knows that God wants a lovely fresco or a nice statue or something of that ilk. Yeah, of course. So Cosimo's father, Giovanni, he had hired Brunelleschi, the dome of the cathedral man, to redo the Medici church of San Lorenzo.

Cosimo himself spends more money on San Lorenzo. He spends money on the baptistry of the cathedral. If you go to Florence and you go do a sort of three-day itinerary, a lot of the churches you will visit are San Michele, Santa Croce, Santa Maria delle Angeli, like all the classic tourist sites. These are places that Cosimo has spent money on. And the one place above all, which will play a big part in this series, is the Dominican monastery at San Marco. And here, at one point, Cosimo said to the Pope,

you know, I'm actually genuinely quite worried about this burning sand. Like I'd love to get out of that somehow. And the Pope said, well, that monastery is the place, like really invest in that monastery.

Cosimo spent 30,000 florins completely renovating it. New church, new refectory for the monks, new library with hundreds of rare manuscripts. I mean, it's a very impossible question to answer, but in dollars? Oh, in millions. Unquestionably, it'd be millions. I mean, just if you think about the equivalent cost today of renovating a building like that, the state-of-the-art stuff, and then donating a library...

with the very most up-to-the-minute expensive and rare resources.

It's the equivalent of a big donor to an American university or something like that. It's a super rich donor to an American university laundering their reputation. I mean, it's exactly what it is. So that's got to keep the burning sand at bay. Yeah, I think so. So actually, rather like an American donor will have their name on the Tom Holland Library at the University of Arizona, right? Pope Eugenius IV gives Cosimo a

A bull of expiation, which is basically like a pardon for sins. Cosimo has it put up above the door of the sacristy. So to remind everybody, you know, I've paid for this. And as a result, I'm free of sin. Brilliant.

He very famously gets a friar there called Fra Angelico to paint kind of mystical frescoes in every monk's cell. And if you go to Florence and you go and see, I mean, these are some of the most amazing of all the artistic sites you will see in Florence. And actually we'll come back to this monastery because this monastery ends up being the power base of Girolamo Savonarola later in the series. But obviously art's not just about your soul. It's also about your status.

Great example is the Palazzo Medici. They got an architect called Michelozzo to do this in the 1440s. And this is another sort of temple to Renaissance art that Cosimo had made. It's a cross between, if you go to it today, it's a cross between a kind of Gothic fortress and a classical palace. So it has kind of Doric and Corinthian columns, very Renaissance style.

And then if you went in under the arcades, again, very Renaissance under the arcades, there would be classical busts. There'll be loads of artworks and particularly two of the most famous of all Renaissance artworks made by one of Cosimo's absolute favorites, who's a man called Donatello, a sculptor. And these are both on biblical themes.

So there's David, the Old Testament hero. And he's kind of very young and kind of slightly girlish looking in that one, isn't he? So not like the Michelangelo one. No. And the other is Judith and Holofernes. They're biblical themes, but the style is classical. And the David is the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity.

So it's both retro and very modern. Cutting edge. Cutting edge because it's made from bronze. And bronze casting was so expensive that only the really, really super rich could afford to pay for it. So it really is the kind of bauble that a kind of an Elon Musk or a Jeff Bezos or whoever, somebody of that ilk

So there's Donatello. And the other big artist associated with this building is the painter. He's a great character, actually. He's the friar, Filippo Lippi. So he's a friar, but he's also just an absolutely obsessive lecher.

So Filippo Lippi will be doing his artworks or whatever, and he's sitting there. And then he's suddenly, oh, I've got to go. He's overcome by lust and he has to leave. This happens all the time. And Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Great Artist says that basically eventually Cosimo had to lock him in his room and say, look, come on, sort yourself out. Like, finish the painting. Cut off his internet connection. Right. Lippi was so obsessed.

He cut up his own bed sheets and made the rope so that he could climb out to go visit a prostitute because he was so overcome by lust. And this is a friar. I mean, come on. You can't tell me that Thomas Cromwell wasn't onto something, Tom. Anyway, so the Palazzo Medici is not finished till the 1480s. But by that point, Quasimo is long dead.

So in the 1450s, so at that point, what is he, 60s? His health had entered a decline. And this will be a great theme of the series. And this is gout. We love a bit of gout in the show. I think there were two great ages of gout. So one of them is Medici Florence and the other is kind of 18th century British gentlemen's gloves. And this is one of them. Cosimo has terrible gout and he has to be carried everywhere.

And he basically says to his sons, Piero and Giovanni, look, you guys are going to have to manage this, the Medici interest. Piero, you do the politics. Giovanni, you do the bank. Unfortunately, they also have horrendous gout.

So this one day when a bloke turned up at the Palazzo Medici to meet Cosimo and he found them all lying in bed, presumably together, all groaning with their gout, which was obviously a ludicrous scene. They might bump into one another. And that's unbearably painful if you have gout. In bed. I think they're probably lying very rigidly. I don't know. I don't know how you lie in gout. You don't want to share a bed with someone if you've got gout, I don't think. No, I wouldn't anyway. Well,

Well, gout is a serious business now. I don't think we shouldn't be laughing about it. We're punching down, Tom. Poor. I'm not laughing. I'm being sympathetic. Giovanni, he died very young. Well, quite young. He died at 42 with his gout. Some historians say because of kidney failure, gout related. Others say he was unbelievably fat and he probably had a heart attack. Anyway, either way, he's dead. Giovanni was Cosimo's favorite. He's very depressed at this and never really recovers.

And actually, just under a year later, in August 1464, Cosimo died, probably of gout-related kidney failure. And he had a big funeral. He was buried in the Medici Church, San Lorenzo. And the Signore gave him the title

Pater Patriae, father of his country. And Tom, you will know who had this before. Cicero had it and Augustus had it. Exactly, exactly. And it's the title, the words are inscribed on his tomb. And of course, being a fan of Cicero and of Augustus, he would have absolutely loved it. Do you think it would have consoled him as he stood in the burning sand? No. You again, you're displaying your irreligiosity.

Because the Pope has explicitly said that God loved a fresco and that God loved all this stuff. So there's no burning sand. That's not in the equation. So Cosimo is now dead. But where does this leave the Medici? And where does it leave Florence? Well, I will give the last word to one of his opponents, who's a patrician called Marco Parenti. And he said, after Cosimo's death, he said, not for many years had Florence been so prosperous. But on his death, everyone rejoiced, such was their love and desire for liberty.

It appeared to the Florentines that Cosimo's style of government had brought them to subjection and servitude. And from this, they believed that his death would liberate them. But Dominic, will it? And I guess that in the next episode, we will be finding out and we will be exploring the life and times of the most celebrated, the most glittering, in fact, the most bloodstained of all the Medici.

Lorenzo the Magnificent. Is that right? Yes, I can't wait. And you know what? Not only can I not wait, but I'm guessing a lot of the listeners can't wait. And is there any way, Tom, that Renaissance men and women could hear that now? Absolutely there is, Dominic, because like the Medici, we have set up a very convenient banking system at restishistory.com where people can hear that episode and the next two episodes. So three episodes of unbelievable value. Yeah, and it's important to say

God wants you to do it and you will not go to hell if you join the Rest is History Club. That is the most important thing to emphasise. Make God happy. Yeah. Unbelievable value. And on that note, thank you, Dominic. And ciao. Ciao. I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McCloskey. Together we're the co-hosts of another Goalhanger 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 that...

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 alive,

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. I 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 on Al-Qaeda that hadn't existed before. I

There's a PDB, President's Daily Brief, in December, December the 4th of 1998, which is titled, quote, Bin Laden preparing to hijack US 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 just stop Al-Qaeda from ultimately carrying out 9-11. If you want to hear the full episode, listen to The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi everybody, you're still here. Right at the end of the episode, I'm very impressed by your commitment. But listen, I have a question for you. I want to ask you something in confidence. Do you sometimes listen to the adverts on these episodes? And do you sometimes think, do you know what? I wish that the listeners to this podcast, I wish they were listening to an advert about my brand rather than the other stuff that Tom and Dominic are promoting on here. If you have thought that, there is of course only one way to find out what that would be like. You can disrupt

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