Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D
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and vowed to reform himself and the Church.
He loved his son Giovanni even more than his daughter Lucrezia. When
Pedro Luis died, Alexander saw to it that Giovanni should receive
the duchy of Gandia in Spain. It was easy to love the lad, he was so
handsome, kindly, gay. The fond father did not perceive that the youth
was made for Eros, not for Mars; he made him a general, and the
young commander proved incompetent. Giovanni thought a beautiful woman
more precious than a captured city. On June 14, 1497, he supped with
his brother Caesar and other guests at the home of his mother Vanozza.
As they were returning, Giovanni parted from Caesar and the rest,
saying that he wished to visit a lady of his acquaintance. He was
never seen alive again. When his disappearance was noted the anxious
Pope sent out an alarm. A boatman confessed that he had seen a body
thrown into the Tiber on the night of the 14th; asked why he had not
reported it he replied that in the course of his life he had seen a
hundred such disposals, and had learned not to trouble himself about
them. The river was dragged, the body was found, stabbed in nine
places; apparently the young Duke had been attacked by several men.
Alexander was so broken with grief that he shut himself up in a
private chamber and refused food, and his moans could be heard in
the street.
He ordered a search for the murderers, but perhaps he soon
reconciled himself to letting the case remain a mystery. The body
had been recovered near the castle of Antonio Pico della Mirandola,
whose pretty daughter had allegedly been seduced by the Duke; many
contemporaries, like the Mantuan ambassador Scalona, ascribed the
death to thugs hired by the Count; and this is still the likeliest
explanation. `051649 Others, including the Florentine and Milanese
ambassadors at Rome, attributed the crime to some member of the Orsini
clan, then at war with the Pope. `051650 Some scandal-sippers said
that Giovanni had made love to his sister Lucrezia, and had been
killed by retainers of her husband Giovanni Sforza. `051651 No one
at the time accused Caesar Borgia. Caesar, now twenty-two, had
apparently been on the best terms with his brother; he was a cardinal,
and was moving in his own line of advancement; not till fourteen
months later did he turn to a military career; he derived no advantage
from his brother's death; he could hardly have anticipated that
Giovanni would leave him on the way home from Vanozza. Alexander, so
far from suspecting Caesar at this time, appointed him Giovanni's
executor. The first known mention of Caesar as the possible murderer
occurs in a letter written by the Ferrarese ambassador Pigna on
February 22, 1498, eight months after the event. Not till Caesar had
shown his character in all its ruthless force did popular opinion
connect him with the crime; then Machiavelli and Guicciardini agreed
in laying it at his door. He might have been capable of it at a
later stage of his development, had Giovanni opposed him in some vital
policy; but of this particular murder he was almost certainly
innocent. `051652
When the Pope had recovered his self-control he called a
consistory of the cardinals (June 19, 1497), received their
condolences, told them that he had "loved the Duke of Gandia more than
anyone else in the world," and attributed the blow- "the heaviest that
could have befallen" him- to God as a punishment for his sins. He went
on: "We on our part are resolved to amend our life, and to reform
the Church.... Henceforth benefices shall be given only to deserving
persons, and in accordance with the votes of the cardinals. We
renounce all nepotism. We will begin the reform with ourselves, and so
proceed through all ranks of the Church till the whole work is
accomplished." `051653 A committee of six cardinals was appointed to
draw up a program of reform. It labored earnestly, and presented to
Alexander a bull of reform so excellent that if its provisions had
been put into effect they might have saved the Church from both the
Reformation and the Counter Reformation. But when Alexander faced
the question how the revenues of the papacy, without the fees paid for
ecclesiastical appointments, could finance the papal government, he
found no acceptable answer. Meanwhile Louis XII was preparing a second
French invasion of Italy, and soon Caesar Borgia proposed to recapture
the Papal States from their recalcitrant "vicars." The dream of a
powerful political structure that would give the Church a physical and
financial leverage in a rebellious and fluent world absorbed the
spirit of the Pope; he deferred the reforms from day to day; at last
he forgot them in the exciting successes of a son who was conquering a
realm for him and making him every ounce a king.
IV. CAESAR BORGIA
-
Alexander had many reasons to be proud of his now oldest son. Caesar
was blonde of hair and beard, as many Italians wanted to be; keen of
eye, tall and straight, strong, and a stranger to fear. Of him, as
of Leonardo, the story was told that he could twist a horseshoe with
his bare hands. He rode with wild control the spirited horses
collected for his stable; he went to the hunt with the eagerness of
a hound sniffing blood. During the jubilee he astonished a crowd by
decapitating a bull with one stroke in a bullbaiting contest in a
Roman square; on January 2, 1502, in a formal bullfight arranged by
him in the Piazza San Pietro, he rode into the enclosure with nine
other Spaniards, and attacked singlehanded, with his pike, the more
ferocious of two bulls let loose there; dismounting, he played
torero for a while; then, having sufficiently proved his courage and
skill, he left the arena to the professionals. `051654 He introduced
the sport into the Romagna as well as at Rome; but after a few amateur
matadors had been gored it was sent back to Spain.
To think of him as an ogre is to miss him widely. One contemporary
called him "a young man of great and surpassing cleverness and
excellent disposition, cheerful, even merry, and always in good
spirits"; `051655 another described him as "far superior in looks
and wit to his brother the Duke of Gandia." `051656 Men noted his
grace of manner, his simple but costly garb, his commanding glance,
and air of one who felt that he inherited the world. Women admired but
did not love him; they knew that he took them lightly and lightly cast
them aside. He had studied law in the University of Perugia, enough to
sharpen the natural shrewdness of his mind. He spared little time
for books or "culture," though like everybody he wrote verses now
and then; later he flaunted a poet on his staff. He had a
discriminating appreciation of the arts; when Cardinal Raffaello
Riario refused to buy a Cupid because it was no antique but the work
of an unknown Florentine youth, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Caesar gave a
good price for it.
He was clearly not made for an ecclesiastical career, but Alexander,
having bishoprics rather than principalities at his disposal, made him
archbishop of Valencia (1492), then cardinal (1493). No one took
such appointments as religious; they were means of supplying income to
youths who had influential relatives, and who might be trained for the
practical management of ecclesiastical property and personnel.
Caesar took minor orders, but never became a priest. Since canon law
excluded bastards from the cardinalate, Alexander, in a bull of
September 19, 1493, declared him the legitimate son of Vanozza and
d'Arignano. It was inconvenient that in a bull of August 16, 1482,
Sixtus IV had described Caesar as the son of "Rodrigo, bishop and
vice-chancellor." The public winked and smiled, accustomed to see
legal fictions veil untimely truths.
In 1497, shortly after Giovanni's death, Caesar went to Naples as
papal legate, and had the thrill of crowning a king. Perhaps the touch
of a crown stirred his blood. On his return to Rome he importuned
his father to let him renounce his ecclesiastical career. There was no
way of releasing him from it except through Alexander's frank
admission to the college of cardinals that Caesar was his illegitimate
son; it was so done, and the appointment of the young bastard to the
cardinalate was duly declared invalid (August 17, 1498). `051657 His
illegitimacy restored, Caesar turned with zest to the game of
politics.
Alexander hoped that Federigo III, King of Naples, would accept
Caesar as husband for his daughter Carlotta, but Federigo had
different tastes. Deeply offended, the Pope turned to France, hoping
to secure its help in reclaiming the Papal States. An opportunity came
when Louis XII asked for the annulment of a marriage that had been
forced upon him in his youth, and which, he claimed, had never been
consummated. In October, 1498, Alexander sent Caesar to France bearing
a decree of divorce for the King, and 200,000 ducats with which to woo
a bride. Pleased with the divorce, further pleased by a papal
dispensation to marry Anne of Brittany, widow of Charles VIII, Louis
offered Caesar the hand of Charlotte d'Albret, sister to the king of
Navarre; moreover, he made Caesar duke of Valentinois and Diois, two
French territories to which the papacy had some legal claim. In May,
1499, the new Duke- Valentino, as he was henceforth called in Italy-
married the good, beautiful, and wealthy Charlotte; and Rome, told the
news by Alexander, lit bonfires of rejoicing over the marriage of
their prince. The marriage committed the papacy to an alliance with
a king who was openly planning to invade Italy and take Milan and
Naples. Alexander was as guilty in 1499 as Lodovico and Savonarola had
been in 1494. This alliance undid all the work of the Holy League that
Alexander had helped to form in 1495, and it prepared the scene for
the wars of Julius II. Caesar Borgia was among the notables who
escorted Louis XII into Milan on October 6, 1499; Castiglione, who was
there, described Duke Valentino as the tallest and handsomest man in
all the King's stately retinue. `051658 His pride matched his
appearance. His ring bore the inscription, Fays ce que dois, advien
que pourra - "Do what you must, whate'er betide." His sword was
engraved with scenes from the life of Julius Caesar, and bore two
mottoes: on one side, Alea iacta est - "The die is cast"; on the
other, Aut Caesar aut nullus - "Either Caesar or nobody." `051659
In this bold youth and happy warrior Alexander found at last the
general he had long sought to lead the armed forces of the Church in
the reconquest of the Papal States. Louis contributed three hundred
French lances, four thousand Gascons and Swiss were recruited, and two
thousand Italian mercenaries. It was a small army with which to
overcome a dozen despots, but Caesar was eager for the adventure. To
add spiritual to military weapons, the Pope issued a bull solemnly
declaring that Caterina Sforza and her son Ottaviano held Imola and
Forli- Pandolfo Malatesta held Rimini- Giulio Varano held Camerino-
Astorre Manfredi held Faenza- Guidobaldo held Urbino- Giovanni
Sforza held Pesaro- only by usurping lands, property, and rights
long pertaining in law and justice to the Church; that they were all
tyrants who had abused their powers and exploited their subjects;
and that they must now resign or be expelled by force. `051660
Possibly, as some charged, Alexander dreamed of welding these
principalities into a kingdom for his son; it is unlikely, for
Alexander must have known that neither his successors nor the other
states of Italy would long tolerate a usurpation more illegal and
unwelcome than any that it would have replaced. Caesar himself may
have dreamed of such a consummation; Machiavelli hoped so, and would
have rejoiced to see so strong a hand unite all Italy and expel all
invaders. But to the end of his life Caesar protested that he had no
other aim than to win the States of the Church for the Church, and
would be content to be governor of the Romagna as a vassal of the
pope. `051661
In January, 1500, Caesar and his army marched over the Apennines
to Forli. Imola surrendered at once to his deputy, and the citizens of
Forli threw open the gates to welcome him; but Caterina Sforza, as she
had done twelve years before, bravely held the citadel with her
garrison. Caesar offered her easy terms; she preferred to fight. After
a brief siege the papal troops forced their way into the rocca,
and put the defenders to the sword. Caterina was sent to Rome, and was
lodged as an unwilling guest in the Belvedere wing of the Vatican. She
refused to resign her right to rule Forli and Imola; she tried to
escape, and was transferred to Sant' Angelo. After eighteen months she
was released, and entered a nunnery. She was a brave woman, but
quite a virago. `051662 "She was a feudal ruler of the worst type, and
in her dominions, as elsewhere in the Romagna, Caesar was regarded
as an avenger commissioned by Heaven to redress ages of oppression and
wrong." `051663
But Caesar's first triumph was brief. His foreign troops mutinied
because Caesar had insufficient funds to pay them; they were hardly
appeased when Louis XII recalled the French detachment to help him
recapture the Milan that Lodovico had for a moment regained. Caesar
led his remaining army back to Rome, and received almost the honors of
a victorious Roman general. Alexander gloried in his son's success;
"the Pope," reported the Venetian ambassador, "is more cheerful than
ever." `051664 He appointed Caesar papal vicar for the conquered
cities, and began to lean fondly on his son's advice. The receipts
from the jubilee and from the sale of red hats replenished the
treasury, and Caesar could now plan a second campaign. He offered a
convincing sum to Paolo Orsini to join the papal forces with his armed
men; Paolo came, and several other nobles followed suit; with this
clever stroke Caesar enlarged his army and protected Rome from
baronial raids during the absence of the papal troops beyond the
Apennines. Perhaps by similar inducements, and the promise of
spoils, he enlisted the services and soldiers of Gianpaolo Baglioni,
lord of Perugia, and engaged Vitellozzo Vitelli to lead the artillery.
Louis XII sent him a small regiment of lancers, but Caesar was no
longer dependent upon French reinforcements. In September, 1500, at
Alexander's urging, he attacked the castles occupied by hostile
Colonna and Savelli in Latium. One after another surrendered. Soon
Alexander was enabled to make a tour in safety and triumph through
regions long lost to the papacy. He was received everywhere with
popular acclaim, `051665 for the feudal barons had not been loved by
their subjects.
When Caesar set out on his second major campaign (October, 1500), he
had an army of 14,000 men, with a retinue of poets, prelates, and
prostitutes to service his troops. Anticipating their arrival,
Pandolfo Malatesta vacated Rimini, and Giovanni Sforza fled from
Pesaro; the two cities welcomed Caesar as a liberator. At Faenza
Astorre Manfredi resisted, and the people supported him loyally.
Borgia offered generous terms, Manfredi rejected them. The siege
lasted all winter; finally Faenza surrendered on Caesar's promise of
leniency to all. He behaved handsomely to the citizens, and was so
warm in praising Manfredi's resolute defense that the defeated
apparently fell in love with the victor, and remained with him as part
of his staff or retinue. Astorre's younger brother did the same,
though both were free to go wherever they wished. `051666 For two
months they followed Caesar in all his wanderings, and were treated
with all respect. Then suddenly, on reaching Rome, they were thrown
into the Castel Sant' Angelo. There they remained for a year; then, on
June 2, 1502, their bodies were thrown up by the Tiber. What made
Caesar- or Alexander- condemn them is not known. Like a hundred
other strange events in the history of the Borgias, the case remains a
mystery that only the uninformed can solve.
Caesar, now adding duke of Romagna to his titles, studied the map,
and decided to complete the task assigned him by his father.
Camerino and Urbino remained to be taken. Urbino, though doubtless
papal in law, was almost a model state as politics then went; it
seemed a disgraceful thing to depose so loved a couple as Guidobaldo
and Elisabetta; and perhaps they would now have consented to be
papal vicars in fact as well as name. But Caesar argued that the
city blocked his easiest avenue to the Adriatic, and might, in hostile
hands, cut off his communications with Pesaro and Rimini. We do not
know if Alexander agreed; it seems incredible, for about this time
he persuaded Guidobaldo to lend the papal army his
artillery. `051667 It is more likely that Caesar deceived his
father, or changed his own plans. On June 12, 1502, now with
Leonardo da Vinci as his chief engineer, he set out on his third
campaign, apparently headed for Camerino. Suddenly he turned north,
and approached Urbino so rapidly that its invalid ruler had barely
time to escape, leaving the city to fall undefended into Caesar's
hands (June 21). If this move was made with Alexander's knowledge
and consent, it was one of the most despicable treacheries in history,
though Machiavelli would have been thrilled by its subtlety. The
victor treated the inhabitants with feline gentleness, but
appropriated the precious art collection of the fallen Duke, and
sold it to pay his troops.
Meanwhile his general Vitelli, apparently on his own authority,
seized Arezzo, long since an appanage of Florence. The shocked Signory
sent the bishop of Volterra, with Machiavelli, to appeal to Caesar
at Urbino. He received them with successful charm. "I am not here to
play the tyrant," he told them, "but to extinguish tyrants." `051668
He agreed to check Vitelli and restore Arezzo to Florentine
allegiance; in return he demanded a definite policy of mutual
friendliness between Florence and himself. The bishop thought him
sincere, and Machiavelli wrote to the Signory with undiplomatic
enthusiasm:
-
This lord is splendid and magnificent, and is so bold that there
is no enterprise so great that it does not seem to him small. To
gain glory and dominions he robs himself of repose, and knows
neither danger nor fatigue. He comes to a place before his
intentions are understood. He makes himself well liked among his
soldiers, and has chosen the best men in Italy. These things make
him victorious and formidable, with the aid of perpetual good
fortune. `051669
-
On July 20 Camerino surrendered to Caesar's lieutenants, and the
Papal States were papal again. Directly or by proxy Caesar gave them
such good government as seemed to vindicate his claim to be a
deposer of tyrants; later all of them but Urbino and Faenza would
mourn his fall.- `051670 Hearing that Gianfrancesco Gonzaga
(Elisabetta's brother and Isabella's husband) had gone with several
other prominent men to Milan to turn Louis XII against him, Caesar
hurried across Italy, confronted his enemies, and quickly regained the
favor of the King (August, 1502). It is deserving of note that up to
this point, and even after his most questionable exploit, a bishop,
a king, and a diplomat later famous for subtlety, should have joined
in admiring Caesar, and accepting the justice of his conduct and his
aims.
Nevertheless Italy was dotted with men who prayed for his fall.
Venice, though it had made him an honorary citizen ( gentiluomo di
Venezia ), was not happy to see the Papal States so strong again,
and controlling so much of the Adriatic shore. Florence fretted at the
thought that Forli, only eight miles from Florentine territory, was in
the hands of an incalculable and unscrupulous young genius of
statecraft and war. Pisa offered itself to his rule (December,
1502); he politely refused; but what if he changed his course- as on
the way to Camerino? The gifts that Isabella sent him were perhaps a
blind to disguise the resentment she and Mantua felt against his
rape of Urbino. The Colonna and Savelli, and in less degree the
Orsini, had been ruined by his victories, and merely bided their
time to raise some coalition against him. His own "best men," who
had led his cohorts brilliantly, were not sure but that he might
attack their territories next, some of which were also claimed by
the Church. Gianpaolo Baglioni trembled for his hold on Perugia,
Giovanni Bentivoglio for his rule in Bologna; Paolo Orsini and
Francesco Orsini, Duke of Gravina, wondered how long it would be
before Caesar would do to the Orsini clan what he had done to the
Colonna. Vitelli, raging at being forced to relinquish Arezzo, invited
these men, and Oliverotto of Fermo, and Pandolfo Petrucci of Siena,
and representatives of Guidobaldo, to meet at La Magione on Lake
Trasimene (September, 1502). There they agreed to turn their troops
against Caesar, capture and depose him, end his rule in the Romagna
and the Marches, and restore the dispossessed lords. It was a
formidable plot, whose success would have brought to a sorry issue the
best-laid plans of Alexander and his son.
The conspiracy began with brilliant victories. Revolts were
organized in Urbino and Camerino, with the support of the people;
the papal garrisons there were expelled; Guidobaldo returned to his
palace (October 18, 1502); everywhere the fallen lords raised their
heads and planned to return to power. Caesar suddenly found that his
lieutenants would not obey him, and that his forces were reduced to
a point where he could not possibly hold his conquests. In this crisis
Cardinal Ferrari opportunely died; Alexander hurriedly appropriated
the 50,000 ducats left by him, and sold some of the Cardinal's
benefices; he turned over the receipts to Caesar, who rapidly raised a
new army of six thousand men. In the meantime Alexander negotiated
individually with the conspirators, made them fair promises, and won
so many of them back to obedience that by the end of October they
had all made their peace with Caesar; it was an astonishing feat of
diplomacy. Caesar received their apologies with silent skepticism; and
he noted that though Guidobaldo again fled from Urbino, the Orsini
still held the duchy's strongholds with their troops.
In December Caesar's lieutenants, at his bidding, besieged
Senigallia, on the Adriatic. The town soon yielded, but the governor
of the castle refused to surrender it except to Caesar himself. A
messenger was sent to the Duke at Cesena; he hastened down the
coast, followed by twenty-eight hundred soldiers especially devoted to
him. Arriving at Senigallia he greeted with apparent cordiality the
four leaders of the conspiracy- Vitellozzo Vitelli, Paolo and
Francesco Orsini, and Oliverotto. He invited them to a conference with
him in the governor's palace; when they came he had them arrested; and
that very night (December 31, 1502) he had Vitelli and Oliverotto
strangled. The two Orsini were kept in prison till Caesar could
communicate with his father; apparently Alexander's views agreed
with his son's; and on January 18 the two men were put to
death. `051671
Caesar prided himself on his clever stroke at Senigallia; he thought
Italy should thank him for ridding it so neatly of four men who were
not only feudal usurpers of Church lands but had been reactionary
oppressors of helpless subjects. Perhaps he felt a qualm or two, for
he excused himself to Machiavelli: "It is proper to snare those who
are proving themselves past masters in the art of snaring
others." `051672 Machiavelli fully agreed with him, and considered
Caesar, at this time, the bravest and wisest man in Italy. Paolo
Giovio, historian and bishop, called the quadruple extinction of the