Cesare Borgia

by Sarah Bradford

  Throughout Italy Cesare’s trapping of his condottieri was regarded not only as a justifiable punishment for their treachery but as a masterstroke, a supreme example of intelligence and subtlety. Machiavelli called it ‘an admirable deed’, while Louis of France is reported to have exclaimed that it was ‘an act worthy of a Roman hero’. Even Paolo Giovio, a historian bitterly hostile to the Borgias, described Sinigallia as ‘a most beautiful deception’. Everyone, even the Venetians with bitterness at heart, hastened to congratulate Cesare on his great coup. Isabella d’Este sent him a hundred carnival masks, ‘because we believe that after the strains and fatigues which you have undergone in these your glorious undertakings, you should also find time to amuse yourself …’ Isabella’s timely gift reached Cesare when he was already far away from Sinigallia on the road to Rome. Her envoy found him in light-hearted mood: ‘He insisted on examining them one by one with his own hand, saying how fine they were, and how much they resembled many people he knew …’

  For Cesare, the elimination of the condottieri was but a necessary step along the road he had planned for himself. Even before the cords of the garrotte had choked the life out of Vitellozzo and Oliverotto, he was making political capital out of their downfall, and preparing to reap the material gains of his success. Cesare was an expert at propaganda; in his letters to the governments of various cities he had represented himself as a public benefactor, in that he had liberated them from these ‘public pests … that swarm of troublesome insects who were ruining Italy’. In an interview with Machiavelli on the evening of the 31st, ‘his face lit up with delight, he bade me rejoice at the happy event’, and urged the envoy to represent to his government how they too should rejoice at the defeat of her bitterest foes, ‘men indeed, who were … enemies of order and peace throughout Italy’. Two days later he returned to the theme he had introduced at Urbino in June, that his purpose was not to play the tyrant, but to extinguish tyrants. It was in this guise, as the enemy of tyrants, that Cesare, in the name of the Church, proposed to continue his campaign and reap the benefits of the coup at Sinigallia by annexing Fermo, Città di Castello, Perugia and, if possible, Siena.

  Cesare was a man in a hurry, and had no time to waste. By noon on 1 January, having received the surrender of the citadel, he had left Sinigallia with all his army ‘in the worst weather imaginable in which to make war’, and was on the road to Perugia. By the 5th, he was at Gualdo Tadino on the Via Flaminia, where he received news of the submission of Città di Castello – Fermo had capitulated on hearing of Oliverotto’s death – and a deputation from Perugia, offering him the city, from which Gian Paolo had already fled. On the 7th he was at Assisi, where he informed the Sienese envoys that they must exile Pandolfo Petrucci and return their city to the lordship of the Church. Cesare was determined to catch Pandolfo, whom he regarded as the brains of the conspiracy against him. He told Machiavelli during a long interview at Torgiano on the 10th: ‘Knowing his brains, the money he can get, and the place where he is, he would be, as long as he was in power, a spark from which one would fear great conflagrations … I want to have him in my hands, and for this the Pope plans to sedate him with Briefs … meanwhile I move forward with the army: and it is well to deceive those men, who have been masters of deception.’ In the case of Siena, as with the other cities, Cesare was careful to stress that he did not want them for himself, but only, in his role as Captain General of the papal army, to rid them of the ‘tyrants’ and return them to obedience to the Church. Nonetheless Pandolfo proved a harder nut to crack than his fellow conspirators. He was a cunning, tough, self-made man who had forged his way to power through the ruthless use of brains, money, and the elimination of competitors, including his own father-in-law. He had a strong hold on Siena, where his rule was popular, and it was only after a ferocious ultimatum from Cesare on 27 January that Pandolfo, weeping, and accompanied by Gian Paolo Baglioni who had taken refuge there, finally left the city.

  The expulsion of Pandolfo was the last in the train of successes that followed Sinigallia. Cesare, always sensitive to political atmosphere, discerned warning signs that the time had come to halt his triumphant progress, or rather to postpone it until the way was again clear. For, as he told Machiavelli at Torgiano on 10 January, he knew that Louis, who was ‘the master of the shop’ in Tuscany, would not let him have Siena for himself. The pious claim that he sought the lordship of these cities not for himself but for the Church had not deceived Louis, who sent messages to Alexander ordering him to restrain his son. Moreover Alexander, nervous at the outcome of the Siena enterprise, and intent on pursuing his vendetta against the Orsinis, repeatedly and angrily ordered him to return to Rome, orders which Cesare up till now had deliberately ignored.

  At Rome Alexander complained passionately in public about his son’s disobedience. On 22 January he declared: ‘We have done everything in our power to make him give up the enterprise of Siena … nonetheless he is absolutely resolved to disregard us … we promise you, that since we have sat in this chair, we have never heard of anything which causes us greater displeasure. And nonetheless we must have patience: he wills it thus, and it seems to him that he can do to us with impunity that which he is doing.’ Indeed never had the divergence between Cesare and his father been so apparent. Cesare was by now, Machiavelli was convinced, determined to make himself ruler of Tuscany, and he was unwilling to leave the area until he had pressed his luck as far as it would go, and assured himself of his most dangerous enemy there, Pandolfo. Moreover, although he had Paolo Orsini and the Duke of Gravina strangled in the castle of Sarteano on 18 January, that was for him the final act in the tragedy of Sinigallia. He was not interested in the execution of his father’s vendetta. While Alexander, with the temporal interests of the Papacy at heart, saw the final destruction of the remaining Roman barons not only as an act of personal revenge for Juan’s death but as essential to his pontifical authority, Cesare was obsessed by his own ambitions and his own career. As always he looked to the future, not the past; the events of that long-dead Roman summer of 1497 no longer aroused any emotion in him. He had been jealous rather than fond of Juan, the favourite son, whose death had brought him all the advantages he now enjoyed. Interested as he was only in himself, his vendettas were reserved for men who had injured him personally or might do so in the future. The remainder of the Orsini clan had not threatened him personally, and moreover, as Machiavelli had remarked perspicaciously the previous November: ‘When the Pope dies, he will still need to have some friends in Rome.’

  And so it was only at the end of January, when it became clear that his home base in Rome was being seriously menaced by the Orsinis, who attacked the Ponte Nomentana on the 21st, that he reluctantly turned southward, giving his troops free rein to plunder and burn Sienese territory as a warning to anyone who might defy him. Even then, he did not hurry to obey his father; the mere news of his approach was enough to send the Orsinis scurrying back to their castles, which they put in a state of defence. He lingered for ten days at Viterbo, reorganizing his forces and attempting to win over the Savellis and some of the Colonnas, while Alexander bombarded him with angry letters and even sent him a brief threatening him with excommunication if he did not attack and destroy all the Orsinis. He was furious at Cesare’s negotiations with the Savellis, which, he told Giustinian, had been done without consulting him, ‘because these men were traitors and enemies, and could never be trusted … and he said that the enmities against all these houses have gone so far that one must see the end of them, and remove all cause for fear.’

  The real bone of contention between them was Cesare’s stubborn refusal to obey his father’s order to attack Bracciano, stronghold of Giangiordano Orsini. The eccentric Giangiordano, who was contemptuously described by the rest of his clan as a ‘public madman’, had refused to take part in the original conspiracy against Cesare at Todi in September. He, like Cesare, was a knight of the Order of St Michael, whose rules forbade its members to bear arms again
st each other. In Cesare’s complex nature, the concept of honour as an intrinsic part of a man’s personal pride and public reputation was of immense importance; even the hostile Paolo Giovio wrote of him that ‘he regarded his public honour more than his private interest’. Alexander sneered at this exhibition of chivalry, and announced his intention of carrying out the attack without Cesare if necessary, but his bold words were empty ones – Cesare had the upper hand, and Alexander knew it. The papal army was under Cesare’s command, and the Pope could rely on no one else to carry out the campaign. In the face of his son’s determined independence Alexander was forced to give in and be content with the siege of another Orsini stronghold, Ceri, defended by Giulio Orsini.

  Even then, Cesare initially did not seem to be taking the siege of Ceri very seriously. On 25 February he returned to Rome in time for Carnival, and appeared to be spending the following three weeks occupied with his private pleasures. Giustinian reported that he was never seen without a mask, although he was perfectly recognizable, and grumbled that his caprices were unintelligible: ‘Every day he goes hunting, although he does not let himself be seen in the city …’ He spent a brief two days at the siege in mid-March with a team of engineers, while in Rome Alexander anxiously observed the preparation of a huge machine held to be capable of carrying 300 men up to the ramparts, and it was only at the end of the month that he returned to Ceri to direct a prolonged bombardment which resulted in its surrender on 5 April. Palombara, Vicovaro, Cerveteri and the other Orsini castles, with the exception of Bracciano, gave themselves up to Cesare at the same time. On 11 April, through the medium of the French ambassador, a truce was signed between the Borgias and the Orsinis.

  But Alexander, despite his public rejoicing at the surrender of Ceri, whose siege, he told the Venetian ambassador, had cost him 40,000 ducats, was far from satisfied with the outcome of his vendetta against the Orsinis. Louis’ influence, which he blamed, probably rightly, for Cesare’s half-heartedness in the affair, had saved the Orsinis from total destruction. Although their power in the Roman Campagna had been shattered and their estates surrendered, many of the leaders remained unharmed. Cardinal Orsini had died in Castel Sant’Angelo on 22 February, amid strong rumours that Alexander had had him poisoned; Paolo and Francesco Orsini had been strangled on Cesare’s orders at Sarteano; but Giangiordano, Giulio, Niccolò of Pitigliano and the others remained very much alive to form a potentially dangerous threat for the future. Alexander spoke very bitterly of Louis in public; Cesare, as usual, held his tongue. ‘The Duke shows more reserve than his father,’ Giustinian commented. But in private, there is little doubt that he was now in agreement with Alexander. Louis, the man who had helped him win the Romagna, was now the main obstacle to his plans.

  XIII

  Son of Fortune

  ‘ASTROLOGERS and necromancers called him the Son of Fortune,’ the chronicler Matarazzo wrote of Cesare in the summer of 1503. And indeed it seemed to Cesare himself that he was riding the crest of an irresistible wave which would lead him to even greater goals than those which he had already attained. As the year opened Machiavelli had noted his exalted state of mind. ‘Duke Valentino’, he wrote, ‘exhibits a fortune unheard of, a courage and confidence more than human, believing himself capable of accomplishing whatever he undertakes.’ While others preferred to attribute his astonishing success to good luck rather than his own abilities, Cesare knew that the seeming ease with which his coups had been achieved was due to intelligent planning, careful preparation, and an instinctive grasp of the realities of politics which enabled him to foresee events and adopt his plans to changing circumstances, so that, in his own words, when the occasion came he knew how to use it well.

  During the spring and early summer of 1503, the political outlook in Italy was being transformed by the outcome of the conflict between France and Spain in Naples, where Spain was emerging as the dominant power. Through the autumn and winter of 1502, things had been going badly for Spain in the Kingdom, but early in 1503 Ferdinand’s determination to win showed itself in massive reinforcements for his gifted commander, Gonsalvo de Cordoba, who thus felt himself strong enough to take the offensive. On 21 April, d’Aubigny was routed and captured at Seminara, and a week later Gonsalvo won a crucial victory over Nemours at Cerignola. The result of these victories was to lock up the French in isolated units in difficult country, while Gonsalvo reaped the benefit of carefully prepared negotiations with anti-French partisans throughout the Kingdom. Encouraged by his successes, sixty fortified towns offered themselves to him, followed by the key cities of Capua and Aversa. On 13 May he entered Naples, and by the end of the month only the two Neapolitan castles, dell’Uovo and Castel Nuovo, and Gaeta on the coast, held out for Louis. As the star of Spain rose and that of France rapidly dwindled, Alexander became ever more openly pro-Spanish in his public pronouncements. On 23 June he told the Bolognese envoy that if the French would do nothing to help themselves in the Kingdom, ‘if they stand looking and want us to make war for them, we are resolved not to lose what we have acquired,’ adding piously: ‘because we see that it is the divine will that the Spaniards have been victorious; and if God wills it thus, we must not wish it otherwise.’

  Cesare, more cautious than his father, made no public commitments. Officially he was in a delicate position, bound as he was by his promise of the previous August to assist Louis in person, should he make an attempt to reinforce the French in Naples. Privately, however, he also regarded the Spanish successes as providential from his own point of view. As Machiavelli was to write of him later in The Prince:

  When the Duke had become very powerful and in part secure against present perils, since he was armed as he wished and had in part destroyed those forces that, as neighbours, could harm him, he still, if he intended to continue his course, had before him the problem of the King of France, because he knew that the King, who too late had become aware of his mistake, would not tolerate further conquest. For this reason the Duke was looking for new alliances and wavering in his dealings with France …

  It had become obvious to Cesare that wherever he turned, and whatever new project he attempted, the hand of the King of France, ‘the master of the shop’ as he had put it to Machiavelli, was the limiting factor. Louis’ power alone had prevented him from taking Siena for himself; Louis’ protection had enabled Florence to resist his pressure for an alliance and a condotta. France stood between himself and Tuscany, the prize on which he had set his mind. That very spring he had had concrete evidence that France was actively working against him. Too late, as Machiavelli said, Louis had realized that in encouraging il Valentino he had sown dragon’s teeth which were now springing up as armed men to harm his interests. During March he had unsuccessfully attempted to repair the situation and cut Cesare down to size by encouraging a league of the Tuscan cities. The only outcome of this intrigue was the return of Pandolfo Petrucci to Siena on 29 March, which was nonetheless a serious blow to Cesare’s interests in the area. If Cesare wanted Tuscany, he would have to abandon Louis, and by midsummer there were strong rumours of an understanding by which Cesare would attack Tuscany in league with the victorious Spaniards once they had taken Gaeta.

  This drastic reorientation of alliances involved considerable danger for Cesare, but he had never been the man to be daunted by the risk if the prize was big enough. Gaining Tuscany could mean endangering the Romagna; Louis was still the dominant power in northern Italy, where the French forces in Lombardy were well placed to carry out reprisals against Cesare’s Romagnol states. Moreover, fear of France was the one restraint on Venice, ‘the bold winged Lion of St Mark’, as Ariosto called her. Having made her peace with the Turks, Venice was no longer dependent on the Pope for help, and the lion was once more flexing its gilded claws landward in the direction of the Romagna. Cesare had hoped for an alliance with Florence to counteract Venice, but the Florentines had been consistently cool to his approaches. In any case, should he abandon Louis and attack Tuscany, th
eir friendship would be out of the question. Cesare had no illusions as to Venetian hostility towards himself and his states: he had envisaged the possibility that Venice would openly join the condottieri the previous autumn, and although she had not dared publicly to show her support, there had been no doubt of her secret sympathy for the rebel captains. It was probably a Venetian agent who had warned Gian Paolo Baglioni to have no part in the Sinigallia enterprise, and while dispatching official congratulations to Cesare on the success of his coup, a secret letter from the Senate to a Baglioni partisan showed their true attitude. ‘Truly,’ it ran, ‘we have always loved all of the houses of Orsini and Baglioni and all the others of those lords …’ And Venice gave political asylum to Cesare’s enemies, including Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, whom he had succeeded in dislodging from Mantua through pressure on the Gonzagas. In February they had encouraged the two remaining Varano sons to attempt a return to Camerino, but the young men were caught at Rimini and strangled by a nephew of Michelotto’s at Cattolica. Recently, during the Orsini war, they had sent Giambattista Caracciolo and Bartolomeo d’Alviano, both Cesare’s sworn personal enemies, to the borders of Romagna.

  Nonetheless, Alexander and Cesare hoped that political logic would bring the Venetians round. Through the winter of 1502, while Cesare was occupied with the condottieri, Alexander had pressured Venice for an alliance with himself and Cesare. As he constantly pointed out to them, such an alliance would form an Italian bloc strong enough to maintain the independence of Italy between the aggressive intentions of the two rival foreign powers, France and Spain. Alexander was right, but paradoxically the fear which he and his son inspired drove the Italians to mortgage their own freedom to the foreign powers. As the Cardinal of Siena, Piccolomini, told Giustinian bitterly one day that summer: ‘The bankrupts of Italy find themselves constrained to help either France, as the majority do, or Spain, in order not to be prey to the wolf …’ The great Venetian Republic could hardly be included among the ‘bankrupts of Italy’, but the same distrust of the Borgias, and of Cesare in particular, and her greed for his territories, blinded her to her real long-term interests – a lesson which she finally learned six years later on the field of Agnadello, defeated by the army of the League of Cambrai. Early in the spring Alexander proposed an alliance between Venice, the Papacy and Spain, but the Venetians still refused to be tempted. On 26 March, Cesare attempted to exert his charm on Giustinian, who had hitherto succeeded in dodging his invitations to an interview for fear, as he wrote, of the ‘blandishments of the marrano duke’. It was to no avail; the Venetian attitude to the Borgias was mirrored in the dispatches of their Roman envoy, full of a patrician contempt for these men whom he regarded as dangerous upstarts, to be destroyed at all costs.