much argument, with both sides persisting in their own views and there being no way of reconciling them, they all went home without even lighting the bonfire. And although Fra Girolamo went at once into the pulpit and showed how the failure of the ordeal was due to the Franciscans and that the victory was his many people thought that the question of the Host was quibble rather than a genuine reason; he lost many of his friends that day and public opinion became very hostile to him. In consequence, on the following day his supporters were disillusioned, and were insulted in the streets by the populace, while his adversaries were much emboldened by popular support, and by having the backing of the Compagnacci [a hitherto uncommitted group of young men] under arms and a sympathetic Signoria in the palace. A friar of San Marco was to preach in Santa Liperata after dinner that day, when great tumult arose as if by chance, spreading rapidly throughout the city, as happens when people are excited and minds are full of doubt and suspicion. The enemies of the friar and the Compagnacci took up arms and began to drive the mob towards San Marco. Many of the friar's followers were there at vespers, and they began to defend the convent with weapons and stones although it was not besieged. The fury of the mob then turned toward the house of Francesco Valori, which they attacked while it was defended by those within. Francesco's wife, the daughter of Messer Giovanni Canigiani, appeared at a window and was struck in the head by a spear which killed her instantly. Then the mob broke into the house and found Francesco in an attic; he begged to be taken alive to the palace and was brought outside. As he was accompanied on his way by a guard, he had gone only a few steps when he was attacked and killed by Vincenzo Ridolfi and Simone Tornabuoni in revenge for their kinsmen, Niccolò Ridolfi and Lorenzo Tornabuoni. He was also attacked by Jacopo di Messer Luca Pitti, a violent supporter of the opposite party; but when he struck him he was already dead.

Thus was shown in Francesco Valori a great example of the reversal of fate. But a short time before he had been undoubtedly the city's most important figure in authority, following and popularity: then suddenly all was changed. In the same day his house was sacked, his wife killed before his eyes, and he himself almost at the same moment basely murdered by his enemies; so that many thought God had wished to punish him for having, a few months earlier, refused the right to appeal against their death sentence to Bernardo del Nero and the other citizens of great authority who had long been his friends and colleagues in government. This was a benefit introduced by a new law, and had been allowed to Filippo Corbizzi, Giovanni Benizzi and others, from whom it might have been withheld with more justification considering their relative merits. And so, when circumstances changed, Francesco was killed by their relatives. Yet they, though executed without appeal, had been allowed to state their case and had been condemned by judgment of the magistrates and in a civil way; they had had time at the end to take the sacrament and die like Christians. But Francesco was killed in a skirmish by private hands without being able to utter a word – and in such sharp tumult and sudden calamity that he had no time to recognise, let alone to reflect on, his tragic downfall.

Francesco was a very ambitious and haughty man, so vehement and obstinate in his opinions that he pursued them without scruple, attacking and insulting all who opposed him. On the other hand he was a clever man, and so free of corruption or the taint of taking other men's goods, that there have been few citizens in Florentine politics who can compare with him; and he was greatly and uncompromisingly devoted to the public good. Because of these virtues, added to the nobility of his family and the fact that he was childless, he enjoyed immense popularity for a time; but later his violent manner and his excessively free criticism and sharp words in a free city came to displease the people, and his popularity changed to blame, which made it easier for the friar's enemies and the relatives of the five who had been beheaded to murder him.

When Francesco Valori had been killed and his house sacked, the fury of the mob turned toward the house of Paolantonio Soderini, who after Francesco was with Giovan Batista Ridolfi the leader of that party. However, many men of authority hurried thither who did not hate Paolantonio as they did Francesco, and the Signoria sent guards so that their impetus was checked. If it had not been, it would have resulted in great damage to the city in general, and the ruin of all the leaders of the friar's party in particular. Then the mob returned to San Marco, where a spirited defence was put up, and Jacopo de' Nerli had his eye put out with (I believe) a shot from a crossbow while leading all this disturbance against the friar