But Cesare was his father’s son, and any pangs of inferiority were camouflaged behind a screen of dazzling display. His entry into Chinon, wrote the Genoese ambassador, surpassed in pomp the triumphal progress of a Roman emperor. An ancestor of the chronicler Brantôme was so impressed by the scene that he left an eye-witness account in the family archives which Brantôme later transcribed:
The Duke of Valentinois entered thus on Wednesday, the eighteenth day of December 1498. Before him marched the Cardinal of Rouen, M. de Ravestain, the Seneschal of Toulouse, M. de Clermont, with many Lords and Gentlemen to the foot of the bridge; he was preceded by twenty-four handsome mules carrying trunks, coffers and chests, covered with cloths bearing the Duke’s arms, then again came another twenty-four mules with their trappings halved in red and yellow … the colours of the King, then twelve mules with coverings of yellow striped satin. Then came six mules with trappings of cloth of gold, of which one stripe was of cloth of gold cut, the other smooth, which made seventy in all …
And after came sixteen beautiful great chargers, led by grooms, covered in cloth of gold, crimson and yellow … after these came eighteen pages, each one on a fine charger, of whom sixteen were dressed in crimson velvet, the two others in cloth of gold. These, the people said, must be his two favourites. Then came six fine mules richly equipped with saddles, bridles and trappings in crimson velvet, accompanied by grooms dressed in the same. Then two mules carrying coffers and all covered in cloth of gold. The people said that those two must be carrying something more exquisite than the others, either beautiful rich jewels for his mistress, and for others, or some Bulls and fine Indulgences from Rome, or some Holy Relics. Then after came thirty gentlemen [Cesare’s Roman noblemen] clad in cloth of gold and silver, followed by three musicians, two tambours and one rebec, dressed in cloth of gold according to the style of their country, and their rebecs had strings of gold. They marched between the gentlemen and the Duke of Valentinois, playing all the while. Then came four with trumpets and clarions of silver, richly dressed, playing their instruments without ceasing. There were also twenty-four lackeys all clad in crimson velvet halved with yellow silk, and they were all around the Duke; beside him rode the Cardinal of Rouen, conversing with him.
As to the Duke, he was mounted on a great tall horse [one of the Gonzaga corsieri] very richly harnessed, with a covering of red satin halved with cloth of gold (in truth I am not very sure what stuff it might be) and embroidered with very rich gems and large pearls. In his bonnet were two double rows of five or six rubies, as large as a big bean, which gave out a great light. On the brim of his bonnet there were also a great quantity of jewels, even to his boots, which were all adorned with chains of gold and edged with pearls.
The collar he wore, wrote Brantôme’s anonymous ancestor, was worth a good thirty thousand ducats, and featured a great pendant blazing with diamonds. Even his horse was laden ‘with leaves of gold and covered with works of the goldsmith’s art’ and he had besides ‘a beautiful little mule for promenading in the Town which had all its harness … covered with roses of fine gold the thickness of a finger …’
While the people lining the narrow streets of the little town were dazzled by the jewels and strange, glittering materials of Cesare’s retinue, the more sophisticated courtiers mocked at this ostentatious display. The King and his nobles, watching Cesare’s arrival from the windows of the castle, made jokes at his expense, saying ‘it was all too much for a little duke of Valentinois’.
At the castle Cesare dismounted, walked past the royal guard of 200 archers drawn up in his honour, and went into the great hall where the King was waiting with Giuliano and the lords of his court. The Venetian diarist Sanuto reported the scene: ‘entering the hall he made a most profound reverence to the ground to His Majesty; then half way across the hall another reverence; and then the King took off his cap; and the Duke, coming up to the King, bent to kiss his foot, but the King preventing this, he kissed his hand, as did the gentlemen of his suite.’ After conversing with the King, he was accompanied to his apartments, which were near the King’s own, by the Cardinal of Rouen, Georges d’Amboise, attended by lords and gentlemen of the court whom Louis had sent to honour him. After dinner the King sent his guard to escort him to the royal apartments, and ‘il Valentino returned to the King, with whom he remained to the fourth hour of night, and was much caressed by him’. At Chinon, the centre of attention of the French court, flattered by the King, and attended by his confidential minister, the great Cardinal of Rouen, it could be said that ‘the little duke of Valentinois’ had arrived.
The court’s stay at Chinon, the historic medieval fortress where Joan of Arc had her famous interview with Charles VII urging him to save France, was a temporary one. In fact the court was always on the move, rarely staying in one place for more than a fortnight, causing great inconvenience to the foreign ambassadors who complained bitterly, comparing themselves to gypsies. They wandered from château to château through the beautiful valley of the Loire, from Chinon to Louis’ favourite Blois, where he was making extensive additions, to Amboise, which his predecessor Charles had loved, and where workmen brought from Italy were still finishing the masonry, decorations and gardens of the palace, sometimes returning to Paris, even going as far afield as Lorraine, Provence, Burgundy, Auvergne. ‘When the court descends upon a place,’ wrote an irritated ambassador, ‘it stays as long as the herons last, and they don’t last long, for between the King and the great men in his suite they have more than five hundred falcons.’
The new ruler of France, Louis XII, as the Venetian envoys described him at this time was a tall, thin man of thirty-six, of pleasing appearance, with a large face and nose, and a wiry, athletic body, well conditioned by his passionate devotion to falconry, which he pursued from September to April, and to hunting the red deer in the summer. Wild as a youth, turbulent and rebellious as a young man, as King, Louis seemed to have settled down, and was to lead a blameless private life when he married the strong-minded Anne of Brittany. He was, said the ambassadors, gracious and kindly, and of a merry disposition; he was also more intelligent than his predecessor – although that was not saying much. He was not a fool, but neither was he a very clever man, and lacked the essential capacity to take the long view in politics; he was therefore easily outwitted by his intellectual superiors, Alexander VI and Ferdinand of Aragon. He was abstemious, and almost invariably ate only boiled meats; he dressed simply in black velvet, and was prudent and economical, which earned him the reputation with Italians of being ‘avaricious and niggardly’. He was extremely obstinate, with a stubbornness that would allow nothing to deflect him from an object once he had decided upon it; similarly he lacked flexibility and found it difficult to change his plans once made, or to shape them to changing circumstances. In 1498 his somewhat narrow mind was obsessed with the idea of gaining Milan.
The people who exerted influence over Louis were the Queen, Anne of Brittany, and his first minister, Georges d’Amboise, Cardinal of Rouen, one of a long line of ecclesiastical powers behind the French throne. D’Amboise, two years older than Louis, had shared his troubled experiences as Duke of Orleans. Now that he was King, he shared his power. Wise, able, a great administrator and an excellent businessman, he was, by the standards of the times, honest, and personally agreeable. As Machiavelli remarked with surprise, he had ‘shown himself to be more pleasant and easy than could have been expected of one who is both a great lord and a Frenchman’. D’Amboise’s one weakness, which the Borgias were quick to seize upon and turn to their advantage, was a burning ambition, first for the cardinalate – Cesare brought the cardinal’s hat for him in his baggage to Chinon, as the quid pro quo for his own duchy of Valentinois – secondly for the Legateship of France, which the Borgias were now dangling as bait for him, and lastly for the papal tiara.
While the influence of d’Amboise was paramount as far as Louis’ Italian policy was concerned, that of the Queen was strongest at home. Anne, h
eiress of Brittany, had been devoted to her hideous husband, Charles VIII, despite his rampant infidelities. She was grief-stricken when he died, and at first refused Louis, whom she believed to have rejoiced at the death of her son by Charles. Then suddenly in August 1498 she had changed her mind, and agreed to become Queen of France if Louis could obtain from the Pope the annulment of his marriage to Jeanne and a dispensation to marry his predecessor’s widow. Anne, as the Venetian envoys sent to congratulate her upon her marriage immediately remarked, had no pretensions to beauty, but she was intelligent, cultured and elegant. Under her guidance, rather than that of her less educated husband, the French court developed the first glimmerings of the Renaissance splendour which illuminated the glamorous reign of Louis’ successor, Francis I. Anne’s taste and liberality redeemed the court from the shadow of Louis’ ‘niggardliness’; she dressed well, and gathered round her the musicians, painters, poets, jewellers and men of letters, also the inevitable crowds of clowns and buffoons, without which no court of the Renaissance would have been considered complete. The nobility of France sent their daughters to Anne, as to a finishing school, to learn taste, manners and the usual court accomplishments, music, singing and dancing – and to find a suitable husband. As Père Hilarion de Coste wrote in his Éloge d’Anne de Bretagne: ‘The Queen, like another Vesta or another Diana, kept all her nymphs under very strict discipline, but remained nonetheless full of sweetness and courtesy.’
It was among the Queen’s circle of ’nymphs’ that Cesare met for the first time his intended bride, Carlotta of Naples, daughter of King Federigo. The encounter cannot have been encouraging for him; Carlotta was both plain and determined, making no secret of her repugnance at the idea of marrying Cesare, openly declaring that she had no intention of being known as ‘La Cardinala’. Moreover she was in love with a Breton nobleman. But if Cesare failed to alter Carlotta’s view of him as a husband, he soon won over the rest of the court, and particularly Louis, over whom from then on he seems to have exercised a potent fascination. As he began to feel at home in his surroundings, his self-confidence returned, and the charm and conviviality which Boccaccio had noted in him aged seventeen conquered the initially bad impression created by his ostentation. His looks and intelligence, fondness for feasting and dancing, skill at hunting and expert horsemanship made him a brilliant and agreeable companion. Moreover he seems to have had an ability, rare among his Italian contemporaries, for getting on well with the French. ‘In war he was a good companion and a brave man,’ a French fellow officer later wrote of him. Indeed Louis regarded him as a considerable asset to his court, as Giuliano wrote to Alexander on 18 January 1499, in a letter designed to gladden the fond father’s heart: ‘I cannot refrain from informing Your Holiness that the most illustrious Duke Valentino is so endowed with modesty, prudence, ability and every virtue of mind and body, that he has conquered everybody; he has found so much favour with the King, and all the princes of this court, that everyone holds him in esteem and honour, of which fact I willingly and gladly give testimony.’
Social success, however gratifying, was not enough; Cesare needed concrete results to show for his mission to the French court, and they were not immediately forthcoming. The first cards in the diplomatic game had been already exchanged: Cesare had had his duchy, Louis his divorce, and d’Amboise his cardinal’s hat. Cesare’s triumphal entry into Chinon was followed by a hiatus as far as the Borgias’ plans were concerned, and the early months of 1499 were anxious times for them. For Cesare’s sake, Alexander had covertly abandoned his traditional friendships and risked making a number of enemies who, if they should combine against him, could threaten his very position as Pope. Only the positive assurance of a bride, troops and money for Cesare could make the gamble worth while. And Cesare’s position at court, despite his outward success, was difficult, even dangerous. He was the target both of secret resentment from those who were jealous of his favoured treatment, and of the concealed hostility of the pro-Milanese faction opposed to the policy he represented. On arrival he had, perforce, to hand over the dispensation for Louis to marry Anne. With this card dealt, how far could Louis be depended upon to carry out his promises? As Cattaneo reported in a dispatch of 10 January: ‘The King caresses him extraordinarily and often takes him on his crupper on horseback, according to his letters. All the same a Spaniard who is with him, a man of wit, writes to a Cardinal relation of his, that he is afraid that within a few years it may be like the honours done to Christ on the day of Olives when later on Thursday they placed him on the cross …’
Louis married Anne of Brittany on 6 January in the castle of Nantes, and in his gratitude bestowed upon Cesare the valuable lordship of Issoudun. But Cesare’s own matrimonial prospects seemed uncertain, if not hopeless. Carlotta remained obdurate, despite all Louis’ efforts to persuade her. As Giuliano reported to the Pope on 18 January: ‘Either on her own impulse or through the persuasion of others, she has until now refused to marry the Duke, unless her father wills it.’ Louis, he said, ‘seems so perturbed by this feminine perversity, that he has declared that nothing else at the moment is so much on his mind,’ while the Bishop of Melfi, sent by Alexander to press Louis over the marriage question, wrote that the King ‘has not failed to make every effort that this marriage should come about, having shown signs of wishing to exile her from court’. On 4 February Alexander wrote gloomily that if the marriage failed to take place they would be the laughing stock of Italy, since it was well known that Cesare’s main purpose in going to France was to take a wife. Early in February Cesare too seemed to despair, and showed signs of wishing to return to Rome, but he knew that he could not return empty-handed – too much was at stake for the indulgence of offended pride. So he hung on, hoping against hope, relying on Louis’ evident good faith in the matter. Louis’ treatment of the Neapolitan envoys who arrived at the end of the month seemed to justify his confidence. To the ambassador’s offered pledge, in Federigo’s name, of his person and realm, Louis answered shortly that the King of Naples could not offer what did not belong to him, that it was already his by right, adding menacingly that when he wanted it he would go and take it. When he then pressed the envoys on the subject of Cesare’s marriage, they replied bluntly that ‘to a bastard son of the Pope, the King not only would not give his legitimate daughter, but not even a bastard child’, and began to speak ill of Alexander. Furious at such impertinence, Louis dismissed them on the spot. To calm the scandal caused by this scene, he made Carlotta dine alone with himself, the Queen and Cesare, in a last public effort to persuade her to yield. News of this dinner raised hopes in Rome to such a point that Burchard reported: ‘It was also reported by some that Cesare, son of the Pope, formerly Cardinal Valentinus, had contracted matrimony with the daughter of the King of Naples in France where she now lives.’ A few days later, however, Alexander learned the unpleasant truth from Giuliano. ‘The marriage of Duke Valentino with the daughter of the King,’ he wrote, ‘was now totally excluded.’
Cesare’s bitterness and disappointment at the definitive collapse of his hopes can only be imagined. Once again he talked of leaving, but this may have been a feint to put pressure upon Louis. He had set his heart upon the French alliance, and in his privileged proximity to the King he could see how firmly Louis had fixed his mind upon the assertion of his Italian claims, and how anxiously he desired a formal alliance with the Papacy. On 9 February, a league between France and Venice was signed at Blois, which it was left open to the Pope to join. Cesare was astute enough to see that the King’s obvious need for the Borgias’ friendship could only turn to his advantage. His main worry was that before he could achieve his objectives in France his father might weaken under the pressures being exerted upon him at home.
Alexander, holding the Borgia fortress alone at Rome, was beleaguered by enemies, besieged by doubts and anxieties. The announcement of Cesare’s journey to France, with its clear implications of a Franco-Papal alliance, had brought a storm of protest down
upon his head. The question of a new French invasion of Italy was uppermost in everybody’s mind, and the attitude of the Papacy was of vital importance not only to the two threatened states, Naples and Milan, but also to Ferdinand of Aragon. Any formal alliance between Alexander and Louis would involve an open breach with Ferdinand, Federigo, and the Sforza brothers, Ludovico and Ascanio. In Rome itself, Alexander had succeeded in winning over the pro-French Orsinis, but the Colonnas leagued with Federigo in support of Ascanio, and their attitude was so menacing that on All Saints’ Day and other public occasions Alexander appeared with a strong armed guard.
The concerted diplomatic onslaught on Alexander by the anti-French powers began in November, when the Portuguese envoys at an audience with the Pope berated him violently for his nepotism, simony and above all for his French policy, which they said endangered the peace of Italy and of all Christendom. Ascanio reported the incident to Ludovico with malicious satisfaction: ‘The demeanour of the Portuguese envoys is all the more unpleasant to the Pope in that he believes Their Spanish Majesties to be at the bottom of it, and that the Spanish envoys, who are daily expected, will say the same things or worse. He thinks that the King of the Romans [Maximilian] also has a hand in it, as he has made similar representations.’ In December Alexander and Ascanio had a sharp interchange in consistory after Ascanio declared that in sending Cesare to France the Pope was bringing ruin on Italy. ‘Are you aware, Monsignore,’ Alexander replied dryly, ‘that it was your brother who invited the French into Italy?’ The Venetian ambassador was of the opinion that Ascanio intended, with the help of Ferdinand and Maximilian, to convene a Council to dethrone Alexander, on the grounds of simony of which he himself had been the principal beneficiary. On 19 December the Spanish envoys finally arrived and in a stormy interview with the Pope three days later they threatened him with a Council and accused him of gaining the tiara through simony, while he riposted by calling his erstwhile patrons, the Catholic Kings, usurpers. No holds were barred: the Spaniards reproached him for his nepotism, and even went so far as to refer to the death of Gandia as a divine chastisement. Not to be outdone, Alexander hit back well below the belt, retorting ‘that the Spanish monarchs were more severely punished than he was, for they were without direct successors …’ – a strange boast for a pope!
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