In the meantime, Alessandro fell asleep and, having previously sent away his men, he was completely defenceless when Lorenzino came back with his servant Piero di Giovannabate, also known as Scoronconcolo.

[1] Lorenzino himself, however, stated in his famous Apology - written only a few days after his crime - that he acted for political reasons; he killed the duke to free Florence from the man that many considered to be a tyrant.

Among the many other exiles that exulted over the duke's death were the famous men of letters Iacopo Nardi and Benedetto Varchi: the latter said that Lorenzino was greater than Brutus.

The lack of a suitable lineal descendant created the conditions for the rise to power of the seventeen-year-old Cosimo, a member of the cadet branch of the family who was chosen as the new duke with the approval of the Emperor Charles V. After a few days in Venice, Lorenzino decided to go to Mirandola, where he was hosted by Count Galeotto Pico and remained for around two weeks.

Most importantly, he was in Italy from February to July 1542 to act as a go-between for the king and the Florentine exiles in Venice, with the aim of organizing a military venture against Cosimo.

[11] In 1544 Lorenzino returned for good to Venice, where he was in close contact with the other Florentine exiles and established a friendship with the papal legate Giovanni Della Casa.

In Venice, a nest of imperial and Medici spies, Lorenzino was much more vulnerable than in France, and the attempts to kill him and revenge the death of Duke Alessandro multiplied.

On the contrary, a study by Stefano Dall’Aglio has shown that the entire operation was orchestrated by the Emperor Charles V, who could not forgive the death of his son-in-law, the husband of his daughter Margaret.

It was Charles V who explicitly ordered the murder, writing from Augsburg unbeknownst to Cosimo, and gave detailed instructions to his ambassador in Venice, Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, who was in charge of the operation.

Lorenzino's assassination of Alessandro, as well as his republicanism and anti-tyrannical spirit, inspired French playwright Alfred de Musset to write the play Lorenzaccio.