Cesare Borgia

by Sarah Bradford

  Despite his brave words, Alexander was deeply worried. He was well aware of the dangerous nature of the game he was playing, and in the early months of 1499 the French connection upon which he had gambled so much appeared to him increasingly as a risky and profitless speculation. The threat to his position as Pope was a real one, with the possibility that Germany and Spain would renounce their obedience to him being openly discussed in Rome. Moreover the alliance with the house of Orleans against the house of Aragon went against his Spanish nature; at heart he could not bring himself to trust Louis, whom he regarded as a foreigner and a barbarian. By February the Venetian ambassador thought that he was losing his nerve, repenting of his alliance with France and wishing to be friends with Ascanio again. At this point the ever-ready Ludovico intervened with a proposal of alliance between the Papacy, Milan and Naples, with the promise of money and lands in Italy for Cesare. On 12 March the Venetian envoy wrote that if Cesare had not been in France he believed Alexander would have allied himself with Milan. It is unlikely that Alexander would seriously have considered binding himself to the losing cause of Ludovico Sforza in the face of the combined forces of France and Venice. More probably his negotiations with Ludovico were intended to gain time and to avoid a breach until the success of the French venture made it inevitable. But there was truth in the Venetian ambassador’s reading of the situation to the extent that Alexander suspected Louis of holding Cesare as a hostage, as Ferdinand had Juan. Cattaneo wrote on 26 March: ‘In France they joke that the son of God will not be able to escape as he did from Velletri’.

  These tense months of 1499 marked a new stage in the development of Cesare’s relationship with his father. It was the first time in his adult life that he had been apart from his father, and in playing the diplomatic game on his own at the French court he seems to have been flexing his new-found political muscle independently of him. Cesare, not Alexander, seems to have been the driving force behind the French alliance; it was he who wrote strongly urging his father to reject Ludovico’s advances, he who accepted Louis’ new proposal of a French marriage for himself with enthusiasm and delight. Perhaps at the distance he was from Rome he did not appreciate the dangers to his father’s position; in any case he was always single-minded in the pursuit of his own ambitions. Alexander seems to have suspected his son’s independence and resented it; on 27 March, after receiving the announcement of the negotiations for Cesare’s French marriage, the Venetian envoy reported him as discontented with Cesare and distrustful of Louis. Perhaps he felt that Cesare was throwing himself too wholeheartedly into the arms of France and dragging the Papacy thoughtlessly in his wake. Almost certainly he would have preferred an Italian bride for his son. In any event the letter which he wrote to Louis on 28 March, giving his consent to the negotiations, was grudging and ungracious. Carlotta’s refusal had stung his pride, and he could not refrain from expressing his bitterness. The affair had caused, he said, in the eyes of the world:

  a diminution of our honour and standing, but also that of Your Majesty… . May Your Sublimity consider what targets of ridicule are we ourselves and the Duke who, having laid down the honour of the cardinalate and renounced all benefices and revenues, remains excluded from that marriage which the Princess, as Your Majesty writes, from her own perversity and induced by perverse counsels, has refused. However, since Cesare has written that ‘that cousin of yours pleases him …’ willingly we consent to the will and judgement of your Majesty …

  Cesare had every reason to be pleased with the bride Louis had chosen for him, another Charlotte at the court of France, Charlotte d’Albret. Born about 1483 at Nerac, the feudal castle of the d’Albret family in Gascony, she was the daughter of Alain, nicknamed ‘Le Grand’, Duke of Guyenne, Count of Dreux, Penthièvre and Périgord, Viscount of Tartas and Limoges, and lord of Avesnes. Her mother, Françoise de Bretagne, was kinswoman to the Queen, while her eldest brother Jean had inherited the crown of Navarre from his brother-in-law François Phoebus, who had died without heirs. At sixteen she was an acknowledged beauty: even the critical Italian envoys called her ‘the loveliest daughter of France’ and ‘unbelievably beautiful’, while a later chronicler, Arnold le Feron, wrote that Cesare married her with enthusiasm, ‘de grand cœur’, not only for her relationship with the royal family but for her beauty, her goodness and the gentleness of her manners. Charlotte’s own feelings are unrecorded, but it seems that under the concerted pressure of her father, anxious for Louis’ friendship in the interests of the hard-pressed kingdom of Navarre, and from the King and Queen themselves, she cannot have had much choice in the matter.

  Negotiations for the marriage dragged on for six weeks, as Alain d’Albret showed himself to be an avaricious, foxy, mistrustful old man, determined to screw all he could out of Louis and the Borgias in return for his daughter’s hand. He demanded to see the dispensation allowing Cesare to marry, wanted the 100,000 livres which Louis promised as a royal dowry for Charlotte paid in ducats, and insisted on all sorts of guarantees. Finally, at the end of April, by agreeing to most of Alain’s conditions, offering on the Pope’s behalf a cardinal’s hat for Charlotte’s brother Aymon, and suborning his chief representative, the Sieur de Calvimont, with the offer of an office in the Parlement of Bordeaux, Louis brought the negotiations to a successful conclusion. In a letter of 27 April informing the Pope of the impending signature of the marriage contract, he announced his own early arrival south of the Alps. Alexander was to be under no illusions as to the quid pro quo of his son’s marriage.

  Indeed the political background to the match was made quite clear in the contract, signed at Blois on 10 May 1499 in the presence of the King and Queen, d’Amboise, and other high officials of the court. The preamble declared that the King consented to Cesare’s marriage with Charlotte, being ‘duly informed of the great and commendable services which the high and powerful prince don Caesar de Bourga [sic], Duke of Valentinois, has rendered to him and to his crown, and hoping that the aforesaid Duke, his relatives friends and allies will render them unto him in the future, and likewise for the conquest of his kingdom of Naples and of his duchy of Milan …’

  The wedding took place two days later in the chapel of the Queen’s apartments at Blois. A simple private ceremony was followed by a magnificent wedding breakfast given by Cesare to the court. Since his own apartments were not large enough, he had great tents of silken cloth set up in the meadows below the castle for the feast. The marriage was consummated that afternoon, and again in the evening, with the usual lack of privacy enjoyed by important couples of the time. Charlotte’s ladies spied on them through the keyhole, and reported that Cesare, victim of an embarrassing practical joke, spent an unusually disturbed night. Robert de la Marck, seigneur de Fleurange, wrote: ‘To tell you of the Duke of Valentinois’ wedding night, he asked the apothecary for some pills to pleasure his lady, from whom he received a bad turn, for, instead of giving him what he asked for, he gave him laxative pills, to such an effect that he never ceased going to the privy the whole night, as the ladies reported in the morning.’ Nonetheless, between dashes to the privy, Cesare did his duty valiantly, as he hastened to inform his father the next day. News of his performance reached Rome by special courier on 23 May, and Burchard noted to his diary: ‘A courier from France arrived in Rome, who announced to Our Most Holy Lord that his son, the former Cardinal Valentinus, had contracted matrimony with the magnificent lady, and on Sunday the twelfth of this month, had consummated it: which he did eight times in succession.’ Not quite in succession: Louis, who had supplied the Pope with details of his own wedding night with Anne of Brittany, wrote to Alexander informing him that Cesare’s performance had surpassed his own. ‘Valencia has broken four lances more than he, two before supper and six at night, since it is the custom there to consummate the marriage by day,’ reported Cattaneo. Such public relevations of intimate details were a combination of boasting and business. While Cesare naturally prided himself on demonstrating his exception
al virility, he was anxious to record that his marriage had been consummated and therefore could not be nullified, and to assure his father that he had done his duty in the Borgia dynastic interest. Meanwhile Charlotte wrote a more modest letter to the Pope, declaring herself to be his devoted daughter, expressing her wish to come to Rome to see him, and saying that she was very satisfied with her husband. Alexander was beside himself with delight. He had all the letters from France read out in public consistory, and wrote effusively to Louis thanking him for the good news and for the hundred bottles of excellent claret which the King had sent him. He had every reason to be content; the long months of anxiety were over, and the French gamble had turned out to be a winning throw.

  The young couple spent their honeymoon with the court at Blois. Cesare, who wrote to his father that he was ‘the most content man in the world’, lavished gifts on Charlotte, ‘brocades, silks and jewels worth 20,000 ducats’, wedding presents that he had brought with him from Rome intended for Carlotta of Aragon. An inventory later made of Charlotte’s belongings undoubtedly included some of the things which Cesare gave her upon their marriage – a great pear-shaped pearl set in gold, a ruby clasp and five emeralds set in gold, a gold chain, a ‘great long emerald’ in gold, a pendant of rubies, a collar of twenty rubies and eight pearls, a diadem of twelve rose diamonds and thirty pearls, and quantities of unset pearls, diamonds and other precious stones. Apart from jewels, there were table services in massive gold, silver gilt, enamels, rock crystal, all richly worked: salt cellars, plates, spoons, forks, dishes, jugs, basins, sauceboats, flagons and other vessels, vases for spices and for wine. There were also fine tablecloths and elaborate table centres – miniature warships in mother-of-pearl, a citadel with four towers in silver, and a fountain worked in silver gilt and enamel in the form of a bell tower which issued forth jets of rose water.

  Cesare’s wedding was the subject of ribald comment. The Milanese envoy Cesare Guaschi reported to Ludovico that the students of Paris University ‘on the subject of this marriage had put on a farce which tended to the great ignominy of the pontiff”; the King had sent the Chancellor and M. de Ligny to Paris to punish them and there had been a great riot. But at court Louis continued to lavish honours upon him. On 19 May, a week after the wedding, he invested him with the Order of St Michael, the highest order of chivalry in France, while a few days later he formally adopted him and his future descendants, authorizing them to use the name and arms of the royal house of France. From then on Cesare proudly signed himself ‘Cesare Borgia of France, Duke of Valentinois, Count of Diois, lord of Issoudun, captain of a hundred lances of the King’s ordinance’. It was, he must have reflected, a higher and more exciting-sounding title than the simple ‘Cardinal Valentinus’ of a year before.

  Cesare, as commander of a squadron of heavy cavalry, was to accompany Louis to Italy. By mid-July French military preparations for the attack on Milan were nearing completion, and as the news filtered through to Italy the pro-Milanese casualties the Borgias’ French policy fled from Rome. Ascanio was the first to go, leaving precipitately on 13 July, on the pretext of a hunting trip, for the Colonna stronghold at Nettuno. A week later, Ludovico captured one of Cesare’s servants en route from Rome to Lyons with secret letters from the Pope, and communicated their contents to his allies. Ascanio immediately took flight from Nettuno to Milan to join his brother, while on 2 August Alfonso Bisceglie left Rome secretly and took refuge with the Colonnas at Gennazano, leaving Lucrezia in tears and six months pregnant. In the same month Sancia also departed for Naples, abandoning Jofre, who was shut up in the castle of Sant’Angelo and in high disfavour with the Pope on account of a skirmish with the city police in which he had been severely wounded. Alexander, wrote Cattaneo of the affair, ‘is much displeased because of his honour, not because he is true son … he has already said concerning a certain matter that that last one is not his son.’ However, by 8 August Jofre had recovered enough to accompany the disconsolate Lucrezia to Nepi. Among the last of Alexander’s opponents to leave the city was the Spanish ambassador Garcilaso de la Vega, who departed ‘biting and ferocious as ever against the Pope, warning him that he would become the chaplain of the French’.

  For Cesare and Charlotte in France, the brief period of their married life together was already over. Towards the end of July, he left his wife and joined Louis at Lyons, prepared to ride the tide of a new French invasion of Italy which, he hoped, would sweep him to fortune.

  VII

  Valentino and the Virago

  ON 6 October 1499 Louis rode into Milan as a conqueror, with Cesare and Giuliano in his train. The victory had been easy; Ludovico Sforza had fled from his capital at the beginning of September, as the strongholds of the duchy fell like ninepins before the advancing French, while the Venetians pressed in from the east, capturing Cremona and Ghiara d’Adda. The great lords of Italy, among them Ludovico’s father-in-law Ercole d’Este, had hastened to join Louis as they had flocked to Charles VIII five years previously, and rode in his train into Ludovico’s capital.

  Louis’ entry was a splendid one; the French and Italian lords in his suite vied with one another to impress the notoriously luxury-loving Milanese. Baldassare Castiglione, future author of The Courtier, and thus no mean authority, noted approvingly that Cesare stood out as ‘very gallant’. But despite the magnificence of the occasion, the population received their conquerors coolly. The Venetian ambassadors who rode with Louis noted that there were few cries of ‘France’, while the populace vented their anger on the hated representatives of Venice, calling them dogs, and warning them: ‘We have given the King dinner, you will provide him with supper.’ Louis entered the Castello Sforzesco, the great Sforza fortress, where he found the oaken jewel chests with their special locking devices designed by Leonardo da Vinci empty. Ludovico had taken with him 240,000 ducats in gold and the best part of his famous collection of jewels and pearls, but enough remained to impress the French with the splendour of the ducal court. The two things which Louis admired the most in Milan were Ludovico’s stables with their frescoed portraits of his horses, and Leonardo’s Last Supper in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which he visited, accompanied by Cesare and the other princes, the day after his arrival. But if the French were impressed by the riches of Milan, the Milanese themselves were contemptuous of their conquerors, whom they soon found justifying their opinion of them as ‘barbarians’. Castiglione wrote with disgust that the French had filled the superb rooms of the Castello with drinking booths and dung hills; a Venetian reported: ‘The French captains spit upon the floors of the rooms, while their soldiers outrage women in the streets.’ French archers used Leonardo’s marvellous clay model for an equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza for target practice, and soon reduced it to a heap of rubble.

  The ruin of Leonardo’s great statue, crumbling under the impact of French arrows, was an apt symbol of the fall of the Sforza dynasty; it was also significant of the future fate of the Italian political system. If the shock of the first French invasion had revealed the cracks in the edifice, the second was to shatter it. None of the Italian princes who crowded round Louis at Milan had time to spare a thought for Ludovico’s fate – indeed he could be considered to have brought about his own fall. They were all too preoccupied with the effect that French possession of Milan, and above all a permanent French presence on Italian soil, might have on their own fortunes. And so the endless round of court amusements, the feasting and dancing at Milan, hunting in the park at Pavia, went on against an undercurrent of fear, suspicion and intrigue. The ambassadors and princes of every state in Italy, with the natural exception of Naples, who were on the alert for any sign that might portend the future, could not fail to note the exceptionally favourable treatment which the King of France accorded to the Pope’s son, Cesare Borgia. Everyone knew the Pope’s ambitions for a state for his son. It was only a question of the precise direction they would take.

  Indeed, the Borgias’ Grand Design
for a state for Cesare in central Italy had been maturing since the early summer of 1499, and was now ready to be put into execution. A Florentine cardinal who knew both Alexander and Cesare well once remarked of them that, among the attributes of great men which they shared was the supreme ability to recognize an opportunity and to make the best possible use of it. The guiding spirit of Borgia policy was a planned opportunism. Alexander and Cesare were experts in the art of political camouflage, at concealing their real aims while making use of others, in this case Louis, to achieve them. These characteristic features of Borgia policy began to reveal themselves at the time of the French invasion in 1499. Alexander had immediately recognized the opportunity offered by Louis’ obsessive desire for Milan, and launched his son’s career upon it. Later, the failure of the Neapolitan marriage project had caused a shift in the direction of the Borgias’ objectives, and their moves after Cesare returned to Italy were a natural development of that situation. With Naples now out of the question as the base for a Borgia dominion in Italy, their eyes turned towards the Papal States, and to the Romagna in particular.

  The Romagna, or rather the Romagna and the Marches (Le Marche), the specific area in which the Borgias were interested, stretched from the borders of the Duke of Ferrara in the north to those of the March of Ancona in the south, bounded by the Apennine mountains to the west and the Adriatic to the east. It was a rich countryside of vineyards, orchards and arable fields, rolling down from the foothills of the Apennines to the flat coastal plains by the sea. Through the heart of these lands, straight as a die, ran the great Roman road, the Via Emilia, and most of the important cities lay along it: Bologna, the most important city of the Papal States after Rome, with a population of around 50,000, which was under the control not of the Church but of the Bentivoglio family; Imola and Forlì, held as vicariates in the name of the Riarios by Girolamo’s widow, Caterina Sforza Riario; Faenza, where the Manfredis were exceptional in commanding the loyalty of their subjects; Cesena, under the direct rule of the Church; and Rimini, ruled by Pandolfo Malatesta, worthless grandson of the wicked Sigismondo. To the south lay Pesaro, lordship of Lucrezia’s ex-husband Giovanni Sforza, and Camerino, ruled by the Varano family, with the mountain duchy of Urbino under Guidobaldo da Montefeltro to the south-east. All these towns had an extensive contado, or countryside, and were essentially agricultural, all trade being in the hands of the Florentines or Venetians. Their lords ruled as apostolic vicars or lieutenants of the Church, which obliged them to pay a yearly sum, known as the census, to their overlord the Pope. In practice they acted quite independently of the Pope, and all politics centred round them and the groups of families supporting them, whose power was based on a mixture of land and local office.