THE HARE BRAINED EASTER BUNNY

I never believed in the Easter Bunny. The very idea seemed implausible at best to me. Even at the tender age of five I couldn’t ignore the fundamental disconnect between the egg and the rabbit.

Rabbits don't lay eggs. They don't even eat eggs. What eggo-centric lunatic dreamed up this harebrained mythology?  Rabbits are cute and soft, but they are not very bright. They eat grass and they poop a lot. Bunnies are basically just tiny, long eared cows. With short legs.  And I think their contribution to the world's methane surplus has been sorely under rated. Did I mention they were not good at mathematics? How are they supposed to count all these eggs?  We can assume they can't count above 16, because they only have four toes on every foot.  And if they can't count, how do they know how many eggs to leave in your yard? Listen - if you put an egg in front of a rabbit, the rabbit with nudge it aside to get to the grass underneath, even if it is plastic grass. You could even write the rabbit’s name on the side of the egg, and the rabbit would still ignore it.And yet every year we insist upon convincing our toddlers that for some reason a rabbit has chosen to hide vast numbers of eggs all over our back yards. Under bushes. Behind flower pots. In trees. What is wrong with us?! Rabbits can’t climb trees.You might as well tell your children that elephants have been herding water buffalo in your flower bed, or that squirrels are using your attic to store up their winter supply of canned beats. Why do we insist upon telling our children this particular absurd story?Where is this rabbit supposed to get all of these eggs? And from whom is he supposedly hiding them? From the chickens, perhaps - otherwise known as “the mothers”. If you think about it an Easter Egg Hunt is a mass kidnapping and we are encouraging our children to be accessories after the fact. The F.B.I. should be involved in this story line, or at least Farmer McGreggorThe very idea is so silly that most of the eggs hidden today aren’t even real, They're plastic. And they are filled with chocolate and licorice and sweet tarts, and other things that rabbits don’t eat! Show me a rabbit that eats sweet tarts and I will show you a candidate for hossenfeffer..Children eat those things. They are't healthy for the children, but they eat them anyway. And I understand that the Easter Egg hunt is for the children's entertainment. It’s just supposed to be fun. But couldn’t it be logical and fun at the same time? Couldn’t we have an Easter chicken hiding the eggs? Why does it have to be a bunny rabbit?!
I know I’m overwrought over this. The Easter bunny is just another one of those little contradictions in logic accepted without question by most people, one of those silly little missing gears in the workings of our mental machinery, that don’t make any sense but seem to be required to hold out culture together.  Like Daylight savings time. Or that bar on boy’s bicycles. Or Keanu Reeves’ movie career.You could get excited about outrageous, silly things like this Easter Bunny thing  Or you can just ignore them, and pretend there is a logic to them, and live your life in some semblance of calm. But to do so would be a fraud and you know it!The truth shall set you free. I don’t know who said that but whoever agrees with it are argumentative enough they will probably out live the rest of us.  We deserve to know why it is that an Easter Bunny would hide eggs. And if the answer isn’t good enough, we have a right to pick our own illogical anthropomorphic creature upon which to base our Easter fun.Here’s all I could find out about the birth of the Easter Bunny.  Rabbits are an old German symbol of fertility, for obvious reasons. And the egg is a symbol of...I guess breakfast and birth  And if you put those two together, the Easter Egg Hunt becomes a rabbit symbolically hiding his fertility all over your back yard, where your children are encouraged to hunt until they find it.  Are we nuts?  When they are five or six years old we send them looking for the symbol of fertility in their own backyard.. When they are twelve we don't even want them to be taught about this in the public schools!  No wonder Americans are so screwed up. We get our childhood from Baron Von Bismark, and our adolescence from Queen Victoria.Why do I feel so strongly about this? Because, oddly enough I had a male rabbit actually find his fertility  in my back yard. All over my backyard. And what his search left behind did not smell like eggs -  at least not fresh eggs. And I ended up with about fifty million female rabbits in my backyard for the next twenty-four hours or so. My dog was too scared to go outside. And I certainly didn’t want any small children going out there, either, because I wasn’t sure I could explain what they would see. Not to mention their propensity for picking things up and putting it in their mouths. What an Easter that was.But, getting back to the mythology - Why in God's name would you want your children to find the secret of fertility? And I think I have found the solution. So you can have a grandchild, that’s why. Grandchildren are essential because they help you torture your adult children, thus completing part of the circle of life.It’s curious that the chickens, who actually lay the millions of eggs that are stashed under bushes and flowers and lawn chairs on Easter Sunday, are not considered symbols of fertility. The feminists’ version of this is that these chicks do all the work while some crowing cock gets all the credit.  Thank goodness feminism has been totally discredited. Still, those hard boiled chicks may have a point.  Scrambled, like everything else in our polyglot culture, but a point never-the-less.

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BLOODY JACK Chapter Nine

I don't think it was more than a few seconds after lorry driver Charles Cross and his reluctant companion disappeared around the corner of Buck's Row and Court Street, before Police Constable John Neil appeared at the far western end of passage at Baker's Row. The dangers of his beat were manifest by the length of PC Neil's nightly walk. 

Working at the outer edges of Bethel Green - “J” - division, the debonair PC Neil (above) had last passed down Buck's Row, walking on the north side of the street about 3:15 that Friday morning, 31 August, 1888. Now, just about 3:45,  he was walking down the dark canyon again, west to east, on the south side of the street. As P.C. Neil said later, “There was not a soul about”.

As he approached where the Row narrowed,  PC Neil saw what he called “a figure” lying on the sidewalk, her head to the west, toward Bakers' Street, “...lying length ways... her left hand touching the gate.” The gate was the locked stable gate and the woman was lying in the short “driveway” of the Brown and Eagle Wool Warehouse (below, #1). Neil later testified, “I examined the body by the aid of my lamp, and noticed blood oozing from a wound in the throat. She was lying on her back, with her clothes disarranged. I felt her arm, which was quite warm from the joints upwards. Her eyes were wide open. Her bonnet was off and lying at her side, close to the left hand.”

At that moment, Neil heard the distinctive footsteps of a fellow Bobby's wooden souled shoes, and he flashed his lamp toward Brady Street. The Bobby crossing Buck's Row at Brady Street was PC John Thain. He hurried to Neil's assistance. Neil told PC Thain that a woman had been murdered, and added, “Run at once for Dr. Llewelklyn."  The doctor, Rees Ralph Llewelklyn, lived at 157 Whitechapel Road, just one block south and half a block west (above, #4), about 300 yards away - and opposite the London Hospital. And as Thain rushed off to fetch the doctor, Neil heard the approach of another constable. Neil did not inquire as to where this officer had come from, just sent him immediately to Bethel Green station house at the corner of Ainsely Street and Bethel Green Road, to fetch an ambulance cart. PC Neil knew that mission would take half an hour or more, and so alone in the dark with the dead woman, he waited for the arrival of the doctor.

It was now just before 4:00 in the morning. On his way to Whitechapel Road, PC Thain made a deter to Harrison, Barber and Company,  a slaughter-house (map above, #3)  on Winthrop Street, where his cloak had been left by the day constable. As he retrieved his garment, Thain told the three men working that night  -  Henry Tomkins, James Mumford and Charles Britten – that a murder had been committed on Buck's Row, and then hurried off to fetch the doctor. The men had been working since 8:00 p.m. Thursday night, and since the murder scene (above, white arrow) was literally just around the corner, Thomkins and Bitten decided to have a look. They left James Mumford behind to watch the premises.

Dr. Llewelklyn (above)  was a 38 year old unmarried graduate of the University of London, who had received his Medical degree in 1874, and was accepted into the Royal College of Surgeons a year later, and made a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1876. After 12 years in practice at the same location, he was also the official Medical Officer for the Metropolitan Police Holborn (E) division on Bow Street. And in one other way he was uniquely qualified to respond to this particular murder scene - although why would not be apparent for several hours. Dr. Llewelklyn was a member of the British Gynaecological Society.

By the time PC Thain returned with Doctor Llewelklyn, it was just after 4:00 in the morning. Thain was surprised to see  Thomkins and Bitten had beaten him back,  and he took it as his duty to keep those two men away from the body.  Dr. Llewelklyn immediately determined the woman (above) was dead, and that she had “severe injuries to her throat. Her hands and wrists were cold, but the body and lower extremities were warm...I believe she had not been dead more than half-an-hour.” That would have timed the murder just after PC Neil had made his previous pass down Buck's Row. After noting that there were no indications of a struggle and there was very little blood around the neck wounds, and no more than a half a wine glass of blood on the pavement around her - indicating the injuries were inflicted post mortem – Dr. Llewelklyn “...told the Officer Thain to see she was taken to the mortuary...” and left to return to his home.

While the doctor was making his exam, PC Neil ordered Constable Thain to take control of the scene while he began pounding on the gate of the Brown and Eagle stable. When no one responded, Neil then went back down the street to the Essex Wharf warehouse, where the night watchman said he had heard nothing. Neil returned to the scene just as the third officer, PC Jonas Mizen,  returned from Bethal Green station with the ambulance cart (above). Once the doctor released the body, the two officers loaded the dead woman onto the cart and they began to push her toward the Montegue Street Mortuary.

Just about then, Sargent Kirby from the Bethal Green station arrived to take charge of the scene - or what remained of it. PCs Neil and Mizen were pushing the ambulance toward the Montague Street mortuary,. so, by 4:20  that morning, less than an hour after her murder, not much more than 30 minutes after the discovery of her body,  and with two gawkers having already peered at her corpse, the dead woman had been removed from the scene, and a young boy from a house across the street had commenced to washing the blood off the cobblestones. And so far everything that had been done, was according to Metropolitan Police regulations.

It was at the mortuary that things went "pear shaped". It was around 4:30 in the morning when 53 year old Robert Mann, a ten year Whitechapel Workhouse resident because of “confusion” and a Mortuary attendant, opened the shed for Constables Neil and Mizen. They transferred the body to an exam table (above), and left. And then Mann locked the shed again, and went to his spare institutional breakfast. After eating,  Mann and his 68 year old assistant and fellow workhouse inmate, James Hatfield, returned to the mortuary, and, trying to be helpful, decided to strip and wash the body.

Perhaps the infirmary nurses who were supposed to preform this function, were unavailable at this time of day.  But the two men, one easily confused because of an injury and the other given to “fits”,  were left alone with the only valuable piece of evidence in this murder case, to exercise their own intuitive. With Mann's assistance Hatfield cut the clothes off the body, and dropped them on the dirt floor. Before they could do more damage,  Detective Inspector John Spratling from Bethnal Green Division arrived. He stopped the morgue attendants from any further tampering with the evidence, and sent for Dr. Llewelkyn to come at once.

It seems likely that neither Mann nor Hatfield ever had any idea what they had done wrong. And it also seems likely that their transgression had no substantial impact on the case. But their errors provided their “betters” with some one socially beneath them to blame for the failure to stop a horror they had not yet even begun to understand.

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THE FIRST DAY Chapter Nine

I can feel the anger dripping from every word in the diary entry of Rachel Bowman-Cormany for Tuesday, 23 June, 1863. The rebel cavalrymen had returned. “They rode in as leisurely as you please,” wrote Rachel, “I just wonder what they want this time...” 

Jenkin's raiders again invaded the town's businesses “... and were dealing out flour by the barrel and molasses by the bucketful. They made people take them bread and meat...Some dumb fools carried them jellies and the like.” The war for the citizens of Chambersburg was no longer a matter of political principle, religious conviction or moral imperative. Lee's march into Pennsylvania, like Sherman's later march through Georgia, had made it personal.

Two companies of Brigadier General Albert Jenkins' “Border Rangers” had snuck into Chambersburg the night before, and Captain Moorman's Company was ordered to “commender” horses from the farms on the western slope of South Mountain. The remaining 1,500 troopers arrived late in the morning. And 24 hours later, on Wednesday, 24 June, the cavalry were replaced by the 22,000 men of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. “At 10 a.m.,” wrote Rachel, “the infantry commenced to come and for 3 hours they just marched on as fast as they could.”  They were hurrying to the top of Jedediah Hotchkiss' 7 ½ foot long map of the Shenandoah and Cumberland Valleys. The road itself made their intended destination obvious. Wrote Rachel, “It is thought by many that a desperate battle will be fought at Harrisburg.”

Following Lieutenant General Ewell's men was the Third Corps under Lieutenant General A.P. Hill, which had crossed the Potomac 3 days before. Still in Virginia, but ready to cross the river at Williamsport, was the First Crops of Lieutenant General James Longstreet. When his entire 70,000 man Army of Northern Virginia was unified north of the Potomac, General Robert E. Lee would be positioned to raid the rich farms and factories of Pennsylvania, confiscating weapons, clothing, food, horses and escaped slaves. And perhaps force the Federal government to its knees.

To mask his movements in Pennsylvania,  Lee was operating behind the 70 mile long South Mountain - actually a jumble of peaks and folds up to 12 miles wide. There were only 2 gaps through the range. In the south, touching the Maryland border, was the 10 mile corkscrew Monterey Gap (above).. 

The Waynesboro - Emittsburg Turnpike (above)  followed Red Run creek, which meandered westward into the Cumberland valley. 

Half way up the palisade was the lower, wider and straighter 8 mile long Cashtown Gap, “... through which it was possible to move expeditiously a large force with artillery and wagon trains” (above). Past the Cashtown store, Marsh Creek ran eastward, into the rolling Piedmont of Pennsylvania. Fortifying these two passes would shield Lee's communications and his line of retreat. But even a hundred fifty years later it is unclear exactly what the 56 year old Confederate commander sought to accomplish behind that mountain curtain.

Part of the confusion was created by Lee's personality. On Monday, 22 June, he took note that many of the supplies Jenkin's cavalry had seized were not reaching the rest of the army. So he ordered General Ewell to “If necessary send a staff officer to remain with Jenkins.” Why not just insist on the staff officer? Not that it mattered in this instance because Lee immediately transferred Jenkins brigade out of Ewell's command and into J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry corps. 

 Lee also decided it was time to let General Stuart off the leash. He told his charismatic drama queen , “If you find...that two brigades can guard the Blue Ridge...you can move with the other three...and take position on General Ewell’s right.” He then warned Stuart these orders were to be “...strictly complied with”, but he never told Stuart how close to Ewell's right he should stay.

At that moment Stuart was guarding the flank of the First Crops of General James Longstreet. And Longstreet, who saw Stuart's orders, and warned Lee that a shift directly north, to cover Ewell, might tip off Hooker to the grand plan. “Pete" Longstreet  talked it over with General Lee, and convinced him that maybe, if Hooker was not moving north, possibly, Stuart could slip in-between the units of the Army of the Potomac, get on their eastern flank, raise hell, grab supplies and even beat Ewell to Harrisburg. It was the kind of maneuver Stuart had pulled before. It had the advantage of forcing Hooker to look to his own flank instead of Ewell's, putting Stuart in the soft underbelly of the Federal Army, and maybe surprising and capturing Harrisburg. And, since Lee had given Stuart the option, Stuart naturally decided to take it.

Lee's nonspecific orders, particularly when issues were vital, can be seen as either offering freedom of action for his subordinates, or merely southern gentility, or a passive-aggressive refusal to plainly state what he really wanted when it really mattered. And he had an almost religious faith in his soldiers. He wrote one of his division commanders, John Bell Hood, " There were never such men in an army before. They will go anywhere and do anything if properly led"  Such devotion covered a lot of failings in command. Also, whatever his intent his southern manners left his subordinates, like Stuart, struggling with ambiguous wording, and often choosing a course of action they preferred, rather than the one Lee preferred. When they were right, Lee was right. When they were wrong, they had failed Lee. Like his counterpart, Joseph Hooker, Robert E. Lee's talents and shortcomings would be on full display during the Gettysburg campaign.

Trying to guess Lee's intentions for the Union in late June of 1863 was the job of 33 year old Chief Engineer for the Army of the Potomac, Brigadier General Gouverneur K. Warren (above)  – a man Lee described as “calm, absorbed, and earnest”.  Warren resembled a professor of mathematics - which he had taught at West Point. He was “short and willowy...no more substantial... than a young boy...his uniforms tended to hang off him as if they were several sizes too big.” He was an introvert, rarely smiled, and suffered long periods of depression. But he was a fierce and capable warrior with a quick and powerful mind, and he was so honest his fellow Union officers either hated or admired him.

While the Army of the Potomac was still gathered around Fairfax Courthouse, Virginia, Major General Hooker (above) asked Warren to consider what would happen if he moved the army to Harpers Ferry. Warren admitted such a move would allow them to “protect Washington...and Baltimore... and...enable us to operate on (Lee's) communications.” And maybe catch his army divided by the Potomac, as Hooker's had been divided by the Rappahanock.  In addition, Warren mused, “It will prevent Lee from detaching a corps to invade Pennsylvania...”

But Lee already had 44,000 men in Pennsylvania. It was too late for Hooker to move his center of operations to Harpers Ferry, and Warren clearly suspected that, since, in his presentation to Hooker the shy and arrogant genius added “These opinions are based upon the idea that we are not to try and go round his army, and drive it out of Maryland, as we did last year, but to paralyze all its movements by threatening its flank and rear if it advances...”

This was the key to the balance of power between the two armies that June of 1863. By staying south of Lee, between his army and Washington, The Army of the Potomac was positioned to cut Lee off, trap him in enemy territory, and defeat the Army of Northern Virginia “in detail” - a piece at a time. It was a golden opportunity. General Warren knew it. Lincoln knew it. It seems Longstreet and Lee both knew it. But it does not seem to have occurred to “Fighting Joe” Hooker.

That Monday afternoon, 21 June, Company “D” – 50 to 100 men - of Jenkin's troopers under Captain Robert Moreman (above) were in the woods just west of Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, at the high point of Monterey Pass. They were looking for horses. What they found was some Pennsylvania militia. After firing a few shots the militia scattered, and the rebels pushed ahead to the town Fairfield (below), at the northwestern entrance to the pass. And with that, the south gate to the Cumberland valley was slammed shut.

About 5:00 p.m., 21 June, 1863, Stuart's formal orders arrived by courier and repeated Lee's earlier instructions. But now, they ended, “You...will...be able to judge whether you can pass around their army without hindrance, doing them all the damage you can...” Once again Lee had given Stuart permission to ride around the Army of the Potomac – again. He had not ordered it, but he had not forbidden it, either. Just after dark, another thunderstorm broke over the soldiers sleeping under the stars of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia..

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EASTER SERVICE Part Two

I don't believe the rumors of a plan to poison Lorenzo and Guiliano de Medici in their family villa on the sun warmed slopes of Fiesole, four miles above Florence. First, how was the poison to be administered? If a member of the Medici staff had been subverted, why wait for the banquet in honor of Cardinal Raphael Riario, when everyone was on high alert, with enemies in their home? And poison was an uncertain weapon. It might merely sicken the victims. It seems likely to me the banquet was used to lull the Medici and their allies into complacency, and set the stage for the actual assassination to take place the next day, Easter Sunday, 26 April of 1478, inside the Basilica of Maria del Fiore,

There has been a church on this spot out side the city walls since the fifth century, earning it the Italian title “duomo”, meaning 'the bishop's former house.” By the end of the thirteenth century the Florence duomo was too small and decrepit for the growing city, so the council approved a new cathedral, the Church of Saint Mary of the Flowers, 500 feet long, 124 feet wide, with walls supported by Gothic arches soaring 75 feet above the floor, and capable of holding upwards of 12, 000 faithful. The first stone was laid in 1296. Delayed by the Black Death, the red dome was not finished until 1436. Wars would slow work on the facade, which would not be completed for another 500 years. And the decision to murder the two oldest Medici males in this sacred place, on this sacred day, was a display of the Pope's arrogance and desperation.

Cardinal Raphael Riario entered the church with the man the Medici had preferred as archbishop of Florence, Rinaldo Orsini, and with Pope Sixtus' original choice for that chair, the visiting archbishop of Pisa Francesco Salviati. Accompanying them was Lorezo de Medici and his close friend Frecesco Nori. Lorenzo took a pew  in the front, and since his brother Guiliano had not appeared, Nori sat next to him on the aisle. The Cardinal would officiate at the mass, assisted by priests, and the two Archbishops sat next to each other, in chairs near the alter. Before them the great space of the cathedral filled with 10,000 penitents.

At about noon priest Francesco de Pazzi and Bernardo Bandi appeared at Guiliano de Medici's home, seeking to accompany Guiliano to the service, arguing their joint entrance would show unity on this holy day. Perhaps Guiliano ( above) was still ill, or perhaps the visitors plied the rakish young man with wine, or perhaps their argument took time to be effective. In any case the three men left together and were late in arriving at the duomo. They were forced to take seats near the rear of the cathedral, with Guiliano sitting directly in front of Francesco and Bernardo. This late arrival separated the intended victims, but it also separated the assassins.

Cardinal Riaro began the mass at one in the afternoon, with the blessing in Latin, “May the Lord be in your heart and on your lips, that you may proclaim his paschal praise worthily and well, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” While the mass continued, other pieces of the conspiracy were falling into place. Outside of the city, the Duke of Urbano (above) and an in-law to Pope Sixtus, had gathered 600 mercenaries,  prepared to storm the city at word the assassinations had taken place. Missing from the ceremony in the cathedral, if any Medici had taken note, was the old man, Jocopo Pazzi. He had gathered about 150 supporters , mostly members of the Perugia clan,  in the surrounding streets inside the city. These forces were primed to murder the mayor and seize the city hall, and then open the city gates. But everything had to wait until the murders about to take place during the Easter Service.

Slowly, the mass progressed toward its climax, as Riaro raised the host to be blessed. This motion was a signal for the bells to be set off in the tower. And also for Archbishop Salviati.to rise silently from his chair and quickly move toward an exit. And in the back of the cathedral, for Francesco de Pazzi to pull a knife from his priestly robes. He stood. He raised his arm, screaming, “Take it, traitor!" And with all the force he could muster he drove the blade deep into the top of Guiliano de Medici's skull (above). In its first instant the Pazzi conspiracy had achieved half of its goals.

Despite the loud tolling of the bells, there were screams and shouts of murder heard from the rear of the great cathedral. The two who had been assigned to murder Lorenzo de Medici, the priest Setefano da Bagnone and the vicar-in-training Antonio Maffei de Volterra, must have thought since Guiliano was absent the assignation had been postponed again. But now, as Lorenzo turned to investigate the clamor, one of them drew his dagger. Lorenzo saw the movement and staggered to his feet. The blade sliced across his throat, cutting into the skin and muscle, drawing blood.  Lorenzo fell backwards into the aisle, where he could draw his own knife.

In the center of the insanity, and blocking the main entrance door, Francesco de Pazzi had thrown himself upon the wounded Guiliano Medici in such a frenzy, he stabbed himself in the leg, without noticing the wound. Bernardo Bandi could do little more than ward off any who were inclined to intervene. None were and Guiliano suffered 19 separate knife wounds before Francesco paused to catch his breath.

At the front of the sacred hall, Frecesco Nori drew his own knife and moved to block the attackers, as other Medici allies hustled Lorenzo from the nave and into the sacristy, where the priests robed before and after services. The Medici supporters blockaded the only door, and the two attackers, Stefano and Antonio had to satisfy themselves with cutting down Lorenzo's friend, Frencesco .

Parishioners were climbing over pews to escape the church, and were now streaming out every exit they could find. Families huddled to protect their children. The old and blind were abandoned in the general panic. The bewildered Cardinal Riaro was pinned against the alter by pro-Medici priests who a moment before had been assisting him. They would later testify under oath he made no attempt to take part in the violence or to call for help.

Archbishop Francesco Salviati, still dressed in his robes, walked quickly from the duomo, In the streets outside he was met by the 150 Pazzi and Pergia, headed by the Pazzi patriarch, Jocopo. Together they marched the less than a quarter mile south to the city hall, the old palace, the Palazzo Vecchio. By the time they arrived, the bloodshed at the cathedral had already ended, and Francesco Pazzi, bleeding from his self inflicted leg wound, and realizing that Lorenzo was still alive, was himself staggering toward the Palazzo Vecchio.

Entering the palace by the Sala dei Duecento, the hall of the two hundred, Jacopo and Salviati, in front of 150 angry looking men, demanded the guards take them to Cesare Petrucci, the Gonfloniere, or mayor, who lived in the palace. It was an unusual request for a Sunday morning,  particularly from Salviati, who was supposed to be at the Easter Services. His guard already up, Cesare, a Medici supporter, agreed to speak with Salviati, but only him. The problem, for the Pazzi, was that the hall had originally been the city council or Signoria, meeting room, and the doors originally only led to rooms were ballots were counted. Because of this the door handles were cleverly recessed and hidden. Once Salviati entered the palace proper, he was cut off Jacopo and his soldiers, who could not find a door they could open.

Trying to convince Cesare to step outside to speak to Jacopo,  Salvati suddenly found words difficult. He was excited, and clearly worried, and Cesare responded by having his guards put the archbishop under arrest. At about the same time, the blood stained Francesco had made it to the Palazzo, and gave his uncle the bad news. Lorenzo de Medici still lived. Their only hope left was the 600 soldiers waiting outside the city under the Duke of Urbano.   Francesco, weak from blood loss, decided to return home. Jacopo decided to leave town. And the Pazzi and Pergia supporters who had done nothing but follow orders, were abandoned to fend for themselves. No one gave word to the Duke, to enter Florence.

The Pazzi Conspiracy, backed and funded by Pope Sixtus, had collapsed after murdering one unarmed man in the middle of a holy Easter service. And now the bill for that murder had to be paid.

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