Cesare, Juan and Lucrezia had their place in Alexander’s overall plan for his family, altered in its scope, but not in its main essentials, by his accession to the Papacy. The two elder sons were to play a dual role in the interests of the family and the Church; Cesare, the churchman, was to become a cardinal, the first step towards the Papacy, while Juan, as the sword arm, would be appointed Gonfalonier and Captain General of the Church, commander of the papal armies. Rumours of Alexander’s intentions were current in diplomatic circles as early as February 1493, when the Mantuan envoy Fioramonte Brognolo wrote to Isabella d’Este, wife of Francesco Gonzaga: ‘Many say that the Pope will make Captain General or Gonfalonier the Duke of Gandia [Juan] … and that they will appoint Cardinals among whom is nominated a brother of this Duke.’ Meanwhile Lucrezia was approaching marriageable age, and a suitable match had been found for her. On 12 February 1493 she was betrothed to Giovanni Sforza, lord of Pesaro, in a formal ceremony in the Vatican. Negotiations for the marriage had been going on in secret since the previous October, complicated by the fact that Lucrezia, according to her father’s previous Spanish dynastic schemes, had been betrothed to first one and then another young Spanish nobleman. In fact the last of the two, the Count of Aversa, had arrived in Rome to claim his bride almost simultaneously with Sforza. ‘There is much gossip about Pesaro’s marriage,’ the Ferrarese envoy reported. ‘The first bridegroom is still here, raising a great hue and cry, as a Catalan, saying he will protest to all the princes and potentates of Christendom; but will he, nil he, he will have to submit.’ Eventually the angry Spaniard, recognizing the inevitable, was bought off with a gift of 3000 ducats, and the thirteen-year-old Lucrezia was safely betrothed to Giovanni, a widower of twenty-six, and as nephew to Ludovico il Moro and Cardinal Ascanio, a member of the Milanese house of Sforza.
The match was a political one, and must be seen against the background of the rapidly disintegrating situation of Italy which Alexander inherited on his accession. Relations between two of the major states, Milan and Naples, were nearing breaking-point in a quarrel caused by Ludovico Sforza’s ambitions for the dukedom of Milan, and by his treatment of the rightful heir, his nephew Duke Gian Galeazzo, whom he had confined to the gilded cage of the castle of Pavia, while he managed Milanese affairs in his stead. Gian Galeazzo, an indolent youth, seemed quite content to spend his days hunting and leave business to his domineering uncle, but his spirited wife, Isabella d’Aragona, granddaughter of King Ferrante of Naples, wrote bitter letters to her grandfather complaining of Ludovico’s treatment of her husband and herself, and warning of his ambitions for the dukedom. Ferrante was roused to an absolute determination to thwart Ludovico’s ambitions at all costs, and the two states were now at loggerheads – with the Pope, for whose favours they intrigued, very-much the man in the middle.
Beyond the frontiers of this internal Italian dispute loomed the shadow of two foreign powers, France and Spain, both with dynastic claims to the kingdom of Naples, ruled since 1442 by a branch of Ferdinand’s own house of Aragon. The dynastic claims of the dukes of Anjou to Naples had now passed to the crown of France, whose present holder the young Charles VIII dreamed of glory, and thanks to the successes of his predecessor Louis XI had the resources of a great army and a united country to enable him to fulfil his dream.
The glamour of Italy, economically rich and politically weak, was once again exercising the irresistible fascination it had held for foreign invaders since the days of the Roman Empire. Guicciardini, writing his great History of Italy in the next century, saw the years up to 1490 as the golden age of the Italian state system:
Italy had never enjoyed such prosperity, or known so favourable a situation as that in which it found itself so securely at rest in the year of our Christian salvation 1490, and the years immediately before and after. The greatest peace and tranquillity reigned everywhere; the land under cultivation no less in the most mountainous and arid regions than in the most fertile plains and areas; dominated by no power other than her own, not only did Italy abound in inhabitants, merchandise and riches, but she was also highly renowned for the magnificence of many princes, for the splendour of so many most noble and beautiful cities, as the seat and majesty of religion, and flourishing with men most skilful in the administration of public affairs and most nobly talented in all disciplines and distinguished and industrious in all the arts. Nor was Italy lacking in military glory according to the standards of that time, and adorned with so many gifts that she deservedly held a celebrated name and a reputation among all the nations.
It was a rose-coloured picture, but not entirely untrue, of a country whose peace was soon to be brutally shattered in a catastrophe for which the ambition of Ludovico Sforza of Milan was very largely responsible. In order to rid himself of his enemy Ferrante of Naples. Ludovico had conceived the plan of inviting the King of France to invade Italy to assert his claims to the kingdom of Naples, and to that end his agents were bribing and intriguing at the court of France.
Initially Alexander had inclined to alliance with the Sforzas, but as Pope he could hardly encourage the destruction of Naples and the invasion of Italy in the furtherance of Ludovico Sforza’s ambitions. Moreover the cause of the house of Aragon in Naples was that of his old ally Ferdinand. Lucrezia’s wedding to Giovanni Sforza was celebrated in the Vatican on 12 June 1493, but within a very short time of her marriage there were signs that her father was preparing to switch his allegiances.
Eight days after her wedding, Don Diego Lopez de Haro, the envoy of the Spanish sovereigns Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, arrived in Rome to inform the Pope that Ferdinand considered the Aragonese cause in Naples as his own. His mission initiated a new round of negotiations between Alexander and Ferdinand, described by a Venetian envoy as ‘bargaining between Catalan and Catalan’. From Alexander Ferdinand needed not only his support for the Aragonese cause in Naples, but also a decision in Spain’s favour over the sovereignty of the new worlds across the Atlantic opened up for Spain by Columbus’ voyage of 1492. In return Ferdinand was prepared to receive Juan Gandia at court and to give him Maria Enriquez, his own cousin, fiancée of the late Pedro Luis, to wife. At the same time Ferrante backed up his protector’s offer with another Borgia – Aragon marriage: Jofre was to be betrothed to Sancia, a natural daughter of Ferrante’s son, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.
These were offers of the kind which Alexander found irresistible. The famous Alexandrine bulls which assured Spanish New World expansion in the face of Portugal’s anterior privileges were dispatched in the beginning of July, one month before Juan, gorgeously equipped, left to claim his Spanish bride. On 6 August the Mantuan envoy Cattaneo reported: ‘The Duke of Gandia, nephew of the Pope, has been three days at Ostia … and this Duke leaves very rich and full of jewels, money and other moveable goods and precious silver. They say he will return within a year, but will leave all that in Spain, and come for another harvest.’ A fortnight later Jofre, speedily if somewhat belatedly legitimized by Alexander on 6 August, was married by proxy to Sancia of Aragon. A few days after Gandia’s departure, the envoy of Charles VIII of France, Perron de Baschi, arrived in Rome to claim the investiture of the crown of Naples for his master. Alexander answered him in the vaguest possible terms, and he departed empty-handed.
Meanwhile Alexander’s plans for Cesare too were nearing fruition. Preparations for the removal of the main stumbling block to the cardinalate, his illegitimacy, had been going on since early February, on the basis that he was not illegitimate but the lawful son of Domenico da Rignano and his wife Vannozza. In line with this pretence, Alexander issued a bull on 20 September 1493 declaring Cesare to be the legitimate son of Domenico and Vannozza (in a second, secret bull issued on the same day he testified that Cesare was his own son). Cardinals Pallavicini and Orsini, who had been charged with the examination of Cesare’s status, were thus enabled to conclude that he was legitimate, and therefore eligible for admission to the Sacred College.
Cesare’s nomination caused a furore; when Giuliano della Rovere heard the news he gave a bellow of rage and took to his bed with a fever, muttering that he would not allow the Sacred College to be thus ‘profaned and abused’. The appointment of Cesare, barely eighteen and not yet in Holy Orders, was certainly scandalous, as was that of Ippolito d’Este, who was only fifteen, and Alessandro Farnese, Giulia’s brother, whom the Romans from now on called ‘the petticoat cardinal’. But the other appointments were men of worth, including two Frenchmen, one Englishman, John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the eminent Venetian theologian Domenico Grimani. The real reason for the rage of Giuliano and his followers among the cardinals was because they rightly interpreted the new nominations as a move by Alexander to pack the College with non-Italians and papal partisans in order to stifle their opposition.
The proposed list was put to the cardinals for approval on 18 September. ‘Such discord has never been seen,’ wrote the Mantuan envoy, who reported that Alexander was furious at the attitude of the opposition cardinals and told them ‘that they wanted to slander him and put him in travail, but that he would show them who Pope Alexander VI was if they persisted, and that at Christmas he would make as many again despite them, and nonetheless they would not chase him from Rome …’ When the nominations were put to the vote in consistory on 20 September, the final decision was a close one; Cattaneo reported that ten cardinals opposed, and eleven agreed with the Pope, ‘some only by their presence, saying neither yea nor nay …’ Alexander had won by the skin of his teeth.
Cesare received the news of his nomination to the cardinalate at Caprarola, where he had gone with Vannozza and Canale to escape the late summer heat and the plague which was rampant in Rome. Described at this time by the Florentine chancellor Ser Antonio da Colle as ‘very young in all his actions’, he had been spending his time hunting and writing aggressive letters to the councillors of Siena about the disputed result of a race for the Palio. The race had taken place on 16 August, and had been won by Cesare’s horse as the result of a trick by his jockey, who threw himself off at the crucial moment, thus lightening the horse and enabling it to win. Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, whose horse came second, not unnaturally lodged a protest which was upheld by the judges. Cesare, who could not bear to be beaten at anything, immediately sat down to write a letter to the governors of Siena enlisting their support, in which he did not fail to hint that his friendship could be more useful to them than that of a simple Marquis of Mantua: ‘Have respect to our honour, commanding that the Palio should be given [to us], in which you will give us singular pleasure and we will remain obligated to do things which will be to the pleasure and honour of your Magnificent persons and most noble commune.’
History has not recorded the outcome of the Palio row, but the time had now arrived when Cesare would have more important affairs to attend to than quarrels involving crooked racing; from now on he could no longer afford to be ‘very young in all his actions’. On 17 October he made his formal entry into Rome to take up his new appointment as Cardinal of Valencia, prince of the Church and counsellor to his father the Pope. Cattaneo reported: ‘This morning they will give the ring and title to the new cardinals and the nephew of the Pope, who was outside Rome in a castle, despite the plague came to the gate and was received by all the cardinals with great pomp, something outside their custom …’ At the same time a testimony to his new importance in the eyes of the world reached him in the form of a letter from Charles VIII of France, invoking his influence with Alexander to obtain a cardinal’s hat for his confidential minister Briçonnet, Archbishop of Saint Malo. The letter was emblematic of the future; Cesare’s political initiation and his new role as his father’s lieutenant were to develop against the threatening background of the French invasion of Italy.
The protagonist of the impending invasion, Charles VIII of France, was neither physically nor intellectually impressive. The Venetian ambassador Contarini described him in 1493 at the age of twenty-two as ‘small and ill-formed in person, with an ugly face, large lustreless eyes which seem to be short-sighted, an enormous aquiline nose, and thick lips, which are continually parted; he stutters, and has a nervous twitching of the hands which is unpleasing to watch. In my opinion … he is not of much account either physically or mentally.’ Guiccardini was even more severe on the young King, calling him ‘more like a monster than a man’. Not only, he continued:
… was he without any learning or skill but he hardly knew the letters of the alphabet; a mind yearning greedily to rule, but capable of doing anything but that, since he was always surrounded by courtiers over whom he maintained neither majesty nor authority … Desirous of glory but more open to impulse than advice, generous but inconsiderate and acting without measure or distinction, sometimes immutable in his decisions but often on the basis of a poorly founded stubbornness rather than constancy …
Guicciardini was naturally prejudiced against the man who brought so much unhappiness to his country. In fact Charles was not entirely lacking in good qualities; contemporary French chroniclers, and especially Philippe de Comines, agreed on his unfailing kindness, his excessive softness of heart. He was not unintelligent and had a capacity for the appreciation of beauty which was aroused when he saw the cities – and the women – of Italy. He was young and naive, with a pathetic desire for glory upon which the ambassadors of Ludovico il Moro had played in their intrigues to entice him to Italy. The French court was divided as to the feasibility of invasion, and feeling as a whole ran against it – except, that is, among those who had been encouraged by Milanese bribes – but the conquest of Naples had become an idée fixe with the young King. Ludovico was surprised and somewhat taken aback by Charles’ resolution. With his changeable disposition he now began to have second thoughts about the desirability of having a large French army on his doorstep. However, having set events in motion it was too late to turn back; Charles’ mind was made up. Having made peace with his three principal enemies, the Empire, England and Spain, he was now intent on the Naples expedition.
The attitude of the Pope was central to the whole question of the invasion and its objective. To reach Naples the French army would have to pass through the Papal States, and it needed a friendly Pope to give them free passage. If Charles succeeded in conquering Naples, the attitude of the Pope was still vital to him, since Alexander alone had the right of investiture to the Kingdom. The Aragonese marriages of Alexander’s children, and the diplomatic rebuff he had administered to Perron de Baschi, worried the French, who were nonetheless confident that a combination of force and spiritual blackmail would bring him to heel. As early as September 1493 the King’s councillors told the Milanese envoys that there were two ways by which the King, without so much as stirring from his palace, could make the Pope change his tune. One was the threat of a Council, in which the Emperor could easily be induced to cooperate; the other was a refusal of obedience and of the disposition of benefices in France which were worth a considerable revenue to Rome. In other words, if the might of the French armies did not make Alexander tremble, the threat of a Council, which would have the power to depose him, would. But as it turned out they underestimated both Alexander’s strength of will and his firmness of purpose in defence of what he believed to be the interests of the Church and of Italy.
Alexander was indeed worried by the threat to his position. The opposition in the College of Cardinals was strong, led of course by Giuliano della Rovere, a personal enemy whom he did not underestimate, and of whose single-minded ambition for the papal chair he was well aware. Such hostility, with the added force of a French army, could indeed mean danger – and moreover there had been mutterings of a schism and of appeals to a Council against him at the time of the cardinals’ nominations in September.
During these anxious times Cesare was at his father’s side, and at the end of October he accompanied Alexander on a tour of Viterbo and Orvieto. This was in fact a politico-military reconnaissance, since
they were key cities of the Papal States through which the French would pass in the event of an invasion. He supported his father too in family affairs; Alexander was deeply worried by reports from Spain of Juan’s misbehaviour, and above all that he had not consummated his marriage. He wrote angrily to Juan, reproving him for his ‘disorders and excesses’, his bad behaviour to his wife, and his alleged non-consummation, accusing him of spending the money he had taken with him ‘in gambling and dissolution’ and of trying to lay hands on the family revenues in Valencia. Although the charge of non-consummation proved to be unfounded, the other allegations concerning Gandia’s behaviour were all too true. From Orvieto Cesare seconded his father with a series of brotherly missives to Juan, saying that although he did not believe the charges made against him, he besought him that his conduct should be such that only good reports reached the ears of the Pope: ‘Try to fulfil the hope which His Holiness has always founded upon you, if you wish him a long life, in which is all our good, our life and exaltation; and if you have compassion for me, see that these reports that give His Holiness so much pain should cease …’ The period of Cesare’s immaturity was over; as French pressure on the Pope over Naples hardened through the winter of 1493 and the spring of 1494 he became increasingly involved in politics; privy to all his father’s negotiations.
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