Cesare Borgia

by Sarah Bradford

  But Cesare was soon in no mood for pleasure. On 26 January, as he was heading for Pesaro, where the nervous Giovanni Sforza had already packed his baggage and was poised for flight, he received news of a serious check to his plans. Ludovico il Moro with 8000 Swiss and 500 Burgundians was marching on Como. From Milan Trivulzio ordered the urgent recall of d’Alègre and the French troops, who left for Lombardy the following day. The departure of the French was a blow for Cesare; he had intended to round off his Romagna campaign by expelling Sforza from Pesaro, and then going on to take Rimini and possibly also Faenza. Now, left with only a thousand infantry and 500 horse, he could not hope to proceed. Like the successful gambler that he was, he knew when to cut his losses and keep what he had already won. Leaving small bodies of troops to garrison the Romagna, he assembled his six remaining companies of German, Gascon and Spanish infantry and a body of 500 horse under Vitellozzo Vitelli, and took the road south for Rome with Caterina in his train.

  Rome, in the last week of February 1500, was in the throes of its Carnival, a time when, as a puzzled Turkish envoy reported to the Sultan, ‘all Christians go mad’. It was also Jubilee year, and the city was crowded with pilgrims from all over the Christian world, who had journeyed to Rome to receive the special indulgences decreed by the Pope to ease their passage from this world to the next. On the morning of 26 February the city was astir with excitement. The Via Lata, the broad street running from the gate of Porta del Popolo to the Piazza Venezia, was lined with people. The entire population, pilgrims and natives, had come to see the triumphal entry of the Pope’s son into the Eternal City. From loggias, windows and balconies the women of Rome, respectable matrons and their daughters, rich courtesans with their dwarfs and Moorish pages, craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the handsome young Duke whom they had known as Cardinal Valentino. Eighteen months after he had crossed his personal Rubicon to the secular life, Cesare, like his namesake, was to make his triumphal entry into Rome.

  Even before the appearance of the principal character, the spectacle was worth seeing. Down the street from the Porta del Popolo marched a colourful and varied procession: the city dignitaries and officials of the Roman Curia in their best robes, the cardinals in purple and ermine, with their numerous retainers spectacularly dressed, the ambassadors of every country in the Christian world. The organization of the procession at the Porto del Popolo had driven the precise papal master of ceremonies, Burchard, almost to despair. People had joined the cortège from every village it had passed through from Civita Castellana down to Rome, a milling horde of unruly gawpers. Naturally they had no regard for protocol, and neither had Cesare’s foreign mercenaries. Burchard complained bitterly that the Swiss and Gascons, who were grouped in five companies under standards bearing Cesare’s arms, refused to recognize his authority, and ‘indecently’ occupied a rank in the procession which did not properly belong to them. Poor Burchard had trouble too with the diplomats, always touchy on questions of precedence. The ambassadors of England and Naples quarrelled with the envoys of Cesare’s brother-in-law, the King of Navarre, and the proud Navarrese withdrew in disgust.

  But the people lining the streets had come to see ‘the Duke’, and at the first appearance of his train, excitement mounted. First came his baggage waggons, including doubtless that silver-lined personal privy, and the mules clad in his colours; behind them marched two heralds, one in the colours of France, the other emblazoned with Cesare’s own arms. Then came a thousand infantry in full campaigning gear, and a hundred hand-picked grooms and mace-bearers of his personal guard with ‘cesar’ embroidered in letters of silver on their chests. Fifty gorgeously dressed gentlemen of his general staff preceded the cavalry, headed by Vitellozzo Vitelli. Then came Cesare himself, riding between Cardinals Orsini and Farnese, followed by Jofre and Alfonso Bisceglie (who had rejoined Lucrezia at Spoleto in September 1499), one hundred lackeys in black velvet with black batons in their hands brought up the rear, and behind them the confused mass of camp followers, peasants from the villages, gypsies and townsfolk, struggling for a glimpse of the Duke.

  Cesare was simply dressed in a robe of black velvet down to the knees, his only ornament the gold collar of the Order of St Michael. The stark black cloth set off his looks more dramatically than the coloured silks he used to wear. From now on, with a growing confidence in himself, he showed an increasing fondness for dressing in black, a colour which with its outward connotations of drama, its inward feeling of narcissism and introversion, was a reflection of his own personality. The watchful ambassadors to the papal court who remembered the flashy young Cardinal must have noted the difference eighteen months’ experience had wrought in him with some disquiet.

  The procession marched past the castle of Sant’Angelo, where from the great new tower built by Alexander floated huge standards bearing devices alluding to his son’s exploits, while the garrison drawn up on the ramparts saluted him with thunderous salvoes of artillery. Taking the broad new road which had been especially opened up for the Jubilee, they then proceeded to the Vatican, where Alexander waited, leaning anxiously over the balcony of the open loggia of the palace to catch a first glimpse of his son.

  Alexander was beside himself with delight at Cesare’s triumphal return. Ambassadors reported him as so moved that he cried at one moment and laughed the next. He received Cesare publicly, enthroned in the Sala del Pappagallo, but even here passionate affection and paternal pride overcame papal dignity. Cesare advanced solemnly to the foot of the throne, making a low ceremonial bow, and spoke to his father in Spanish, to which Alexander replied in the same family language. Then, as Cesare bent to kiss the pontifical foot, Alexander, unable to contain himself, raised him and clasped him warmly to him. In his joy, the Pope even received his enemy Caterina with a show of cordiality, and lodged her, in comfort but still a prisoner, in the beautiful villa of the Belvedere in the Vatican gardens.

  The celebrations continued the next day when the people of Rome were treated to the spectacle of an allegorical procession whose inspiration so nearly corresponded to the motifs on Cesare’s sword that he himself must have had a hand in it. The theme was, of course, the Triumph of Caesar, and among the eleven decorated waggons bearing montages designed and executed by the artists of the papal court were tableaux representing the Crossing of the Rubicon, while in the last chariot Caesar sat enthroned, crowned with the victor’s laurels. Cesare accompanied the procession on horseback, as it wound its way from Piazza Navona to the Vatican, where Alexander was so childishly delighted by it that he had it pass twice under his windows. Cesare did not, as some writers would have it, go to the ridiculous lengths of representing Caesar himself, but his identification with his great namesake must have been more than ever in his mind as he rode through the familiar streets of Rome with the shouts of the crowd ringing in his ears. Very soon he was to adopt the proudly revealing motto Aut Caesar, aut nihil – ‘Either Caesar or nothing’.

  Indeed he had good reason to be satisfied with the results of his experiences in the time he had spent away from the city. During his time in France he had married a beautiful, well-connected wife, whom he now knew to be pregnant, and he had gained valuable firsthand experience of the French army and court. He now had a personal insight into the mind and character of Louis, the man who decided the destiny of Italy, and of the most influential men who surrounded him, like d’Amboise. As far as his military career was concerned, he had a working knowledge of French artillery and had marched with most of the principal French captains, such as Yves d’Alègre. Above all he had learned how to operate on his own, independently of his father, and how to achieve his objectives by navigating the treacherous waters of international intrigue.

  Success in France had been followed by achievement in Italy in his chosen career. Although the campaign in which he had been engaged had been a minor one, and his victories easily predictable, he had displayed those qualities of prudence, caution and cleverness which his contemporaries considere
d essential in a military commander. Fifteenth-century Italians, regarding themselves with some justification as the most intelligent and highly educated people in Europe, esteemed cleverness above all things and looked on the use of brute force as a last resort. The acquisition of a town by negotiation and intrigue was sensibly viewed as infinitely preferable to an assault with its attendant sackings and expensive casualties. Cesare’s mode of operation at Imola and Forlì, which was to be the pattern for many of his future campaigns, would have been considered admirable by his contemporaries, as too his careful use of his troops, evidenced in a letter which he wrote to Ercole d’Este from Forlì: ‘The delay has been caused not so much by the undoubted strength of the fortress, as much as by the need to arrange things so as to lose as few men as possible.’ Cesare had deployed his artillery in order to spare the lives of his assault troops; those of the wretched 400 defenders who died did not count. Also he had drawn several useful conclusions from his experiences that winter: the indiscipline of the French at Forlì, and the abrupt conclusion of his campaign caused by their departure, had convinced him of the necessity of raising his own forces with commanders directly answerable to himself. And although he had not gained all that he had hoped for, as acknowledged lord of Imola and Forlì and de facto ruler of Cesena he had made a promising beginning, and at twenty-four was clearly a coming man. A new star was rising in the Italian political firmament.

  VIII

  Roman Summer

  JUST over a month after Cesare’s return to Rome, on Sunday, 29 March 1500, Alexander conferred upon him the offices and insignia of Gonfalonier and Captain General of the Church, in a solemn ceremony attended by the representatives of all the Italian and foreign powers. The symbolism of the occasion cannot have escaped the watchful envoys: the Pope’s nomination of his son as official commander of the papal armies implied nothing less than a total Borgia takeover of the Church. With the father wielding the spiritual and temporal authority, and the son in control of the papal forces, the beginnings of a Borgia state already laid, who could predict where this move might lead them?

  From the moment Cesare returned to Rome after his successful campaign in the Romagna, the objectives uppermost in the Borgias’ minds were first to establish Cesare as ruler of a major Italian state, secondly to ensure that he should keep it in the event of his father’s death. As regards the first objective, they counted for the present on the continuing support of France and their own daring and skilful opportunism. It was perhaps the second goal that caused them the greatest concern, for two obvious dangers threatened Cesare’s maintenance of a future state. They were the election of a pope hostile to him after his father’s death, and attack by the most powerful Italian state whose interests, like his, lay in the Romagna – the Republic of Venice. If Cesare could be made hereditary Captain General of the armies of the Church, with secure possession of a great state founded upon Church lands, both dangers might well be avoided, since neither a future pope nor Venice would be powerful enough to harm him. And there was something of a precedent for this plan: in 1434 Pope Eugenius IV had made Francesco Sforza Captain General of the Church and Marquis of the March of Ancona for life. The Borgias, characteristically, were carrying this idea a good deal further; the ceremony of 29 March was the first step towards putting it into practice. A few days later Cesare added the pontifical keys to his personal arms, on which the Borgia bull was quartered with the lilies of France, symbolizing the three sources of his power: his own wit, skill and courage, supported by France and the wealth and authority of the Papacy.

  For the moment, however, Cesare could do nothing to further his plans; in that spring of 1500 everything turned on the outcome of events in Milan, where the French under Trivulzio were locked in a struggle for Lombardy with Ludovico, who had returned to his capital in triumph on 5 February. This forced inactivity seems to have thrown Cesare into one of those fits of nervous, almost superstitious, depression which tended to afflict him at such periods. He had presentiments of an early violent death, perhaps brought on by the prospect of his approaching investiture as Gonfalonier, which raised the spectre of his murdered brother Juan, invested with the same insignia only four years before. On 17 March Cattaneo reported: ‘Valencia speaks thus, half joking with his companions: “I know that in my twenty-sixth year I stand in danger of ending my life in arms and by arms.” ’

  Cesare, like most of the men and women of his day, was a believer in astrology. While the new education had swept away the old fear of the power of God as the limiting factor in human action, it had substituted the idea of fortune and fate. A man might combat fortune with all his ingenuity, only to be swept away by the evil stroke of a capricious fate. Kings, popes and princes consulted astrologers in an effort to avoid an evil day or to catch fortune at the flood. It is known that Cesare asked the German humanist Lorenz Behaim to cast his horoscope, and that this chart must have predicted a swift rise to power leading to a violent end. This fear in the back of his mind, coupled with the knowledge that his father might die at any time, drove him on with a desperate desire to seize all before a maleficent fate might deprive him of it. And there were other reasons for an uneasiness which he failed to conceal. He was well aware that at this point in his career, with no sizeable army of his own, only Louis’ protection stood between his nascent state and predatory, secretly hostile Venice. If Louis failed to recover Milan he would be unable to help Cesare. Cattaneo noted his anxious state of mind on 17 March: ‘Whether it is because his state depends on the outcome of events in Milan, or whether it is that, although he will keep those lands for some time, nonetheless he has to be slave to the Venetians, and when it does not suit them, he will be overturned in one blow …’

  And there were signs that Louis, although he liked Cesare personally, did not trust him; still less did he trust Alexander, whom he rightly suspected to be at heart pro-Spanish and anti-French. For Louis, Cesare was the key to the Borgia combination, and while his wife Charlotte remained at the French court she could be used as a hostage for his good behaviour, and as a reminder that he was bound to the crown of France. While it was natural that Charlotte should not have accompanied her husband to Italy on his first military campaign, it seems clear that the Borgias expected her to join him once the campaign was over. On 22 January 1500, ten days after the fall of Forlì, the Venetian envoy reported that Alexander had contracted a loan of several thousand ducats to send to France to pay for the Duchess of Valentinois’ journey to Rome. Charlotte refused to travel on the grounds of her pregnancy – a reasonable enough excuse. However, the Venetian envoy added significantly that the real opposition to her journey came from the court of France, which had forbidden her to go. Therefore ‘the Pope, seeing matters beyond the mountains going on in such a manner that he is not without suspicion that she will be forbidden to come’, had given orders that the money should not be handed over until permission for the journey had been granted. In May Charlotte gave birth to a daughter, Luisa, and her father Alain d’Albret sent a messenger to Rome inviting Cesare to join his wife in France. Cesare, said the Venetian ambassador, returned him fair words, ‘but he cares little for returning to France’.

  For by that time Cesare had neither the time nor the inclination to leave Italy, where events had once again turned in his favour. On 10 April 1500 Ludovico Sforza had been captured at Novara while attempting to escape disguised as a Swiss soldier. He was sent captive to Louis at Lyons, and died eight years later in strict confinement in the castle of Loches in Touraine. It was a sad end for the once magnificent Duke of Milan, born as much for his own ruin as that of his country. Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his notebook an epitaph on his former employer: ‘The Duke has lost fortune, state and liberty, and not one of his works has been completed.’

  Ludovico’s downfall and the definitive victory of the French in Lombardy meant that the way now lay open for Cesare to renew his plans for further conquests in the Romagna. The period of enforced inactivity was over, as the B
orgias threw themselves into action on the diplomatic front. Their military objectives were Rimini and Faenza; the two main targets for their diplomatic pressure France and Venice, for without the support of the former and the consent of the latter, Cesare could not hope to extend his operations in the Romagna. In France the Borgias’ envoys held out the bait of Naples for Louis and the Legateship for Amboise. The Venetians, who were under increasing military pressure from the Turks, were to be offered papal support for an international crusade against their enemies in return for the withdrawal of their protection from Rimini and Faenza, a declaration of friendship and a condotta, or contract for troops, and money for Cesare. It was the beginning of an obsessively uneasy relationship between Venice and the Borgias, marked by mutual fear, suspicion and hostility, as the Borgias pursued the Republic’s friendship with increasing anxiety on the one hand, and Venice watched Cesare’s meteoric rise with growing resentment on the other. Pressure on Venice had commenced as early as April, when their envoy in Rome reported ‘the Duke of Valentinois has persuaded the Pope to make provisions against the Turks for love of the Signoria’, and continued with growing insistence through the summer months of 1500. Venice was extremely reluctant to give Cesare the go-ahead in the Romagna, and above all determined not to make him her captain and give him troops and money to act against her own interests, while Louis, involved in war with Pisa on behalf of Florence, and in negotiations with Ferdinand over the partition of Naples, was at first lukewarm in his support. Nonetheless the Borgias continued their relentless diplomatic campaign, backed by a conviction that events were going their way.