On the fringe of the inner core of Spanish confidants was the usual colorful, evanescent court of poets and artists, diplomats, writers and professional courtiers who would be attracted to any rising man. Cesare shared the prevailing Renaissance pretensions to universal culture. At Cesena he was building up a superb library, largely furnished by robbery. He patronized sculptors and painters— mandatory for any prince who desired to pass as civilized, but a patronage which he exercised with discernment. Scholars gravitated to his court—but not many and few very great scholars, if for no better reason than that the restless, peripatetic nature of the court was hardly conducive to learning. This accounted, too, for the curiously shadowy picture posterity received of Cesare himself. Humanist scholars were a sedentary breed, preferring the comforts of the city to the rigors of campaigns and whirlwind rides across half of Italy. Thus, reports of the duke's activities tended to be transmitted by illiterate or inarticulate men more accustomed to using a sword than a pen and were picked up at second or even third hand by those who would eventually record them in permanent form.
Cesare himself seems to have had small interest in the current passion for the classics. Despite his ecclesiastic training he had little knowledge of Latin. Italian he spoke when he had to; Spanish continued to be his preferred tongue among intimates.
But if scholars received little encouragement from him, architects and engineers were certain of lucrative employment. Bridges, roads, water supplies, forts—these were the nerves and sinews of his dukedom and their maintenance was vital. It was as engineer that Leonardo da Vinci entered Cesare's service sometime following the year 1500. After the fall of Milan and the destruction of his patron Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo sought another purchaser for his more marketable talents and found immediate employment with Cesare. Da Vinci's tasks were the repair of the siege-battered fortresses in the Romagna and the establishment of fortifications for the siege of Piombino. Throughout, he maintained his voluminous notebook, recording what his selective, inquisitive eye had rested upon. That eye must have regarded Cesare Borgia scores of times, but the duke of Romagna and his frenetic activities were, it seems, of no interest whatever to da Vinci. On the day when the murdered bodies of Astorre Manfredi and his brother were found in the Tiber, da Vinci recorded "In Romagna they use carts with four wheels, the two in front are small, the rear ones are large—which is an absurd construction according to the law of physics." The Manfredi murder precipitated a wave of speculation—but not in the notebook of Leonardo da Vinci.
The third group of men which formed Cesare's court were the condottieri—territorial lords who had placed their swords at his disposal for a limited period and a fixed sum; wolves temporarily harnessed by a great wolf—the men who fought his wars.
Apart from a doubtful incident at Capua when Cesare reportedly led the cavalry charge which broke the Colonna, there is only one recorded incident of Cesare actually fighting on a battlefield, and that was the skirmish in which he was killed. His major military talent lay in his ability to move with incredible speed, appearing before the walls of a town when his victims believed he was miles away. But even this was merely the necessary adjunct to a political talent, his ability to deceive the victim as to his intentions. The impassivity he adopted was perhaps his most valuable political weapon. "He turned the art of war into the art of deceit—and thereafter all others copied him," was the judgment of a Perugian diplomat. Cesare had little knowledge of conventional warfare because he had little use for it. He possessed the one ability vital for a military commander, that of controlling men in the mass. Behind Cesare's easily assumed charm lay a genuinely terrifying personality which seemed to exert an almost hypnotic influence capable of halting even the most predatory thief. On one occasion a group of Cesare's men panicked while crossing a river. The officers tried in vain to restore order; the chaos worsened; there was danger that hundreds might drown. The panic stopped, abruptly, when the duke rode his horse to the riverbank and sat totally silent, looking down on his men.
Ordinarily after the capture of a city, there would ensue two or three days of wild disorder while the victorious army plundered and murdered. It was the men's expected right, and any attempt to deprive them of it would usually lead to immediate mutiny. In the cities that Cesare captured, order prevailed within hours of the surrender— if it suited him.
But though his military talents were adequate for the civic dominance which was his objective, Cesare was hampered by lack of men. True, he had the troops lent him by Louis, but they possessed the weakness of all auxiliaries, as Machiavelli noted. "When defeated, the prince suffers the consequences; when victorious he lies at the mercy of such armies."68 At the beginning of his career Cesare had no territorial troops of his own; he therefore had to employ those of other Italian lords—and the lords themselves.
An ample pool of men upon which he could draw existed, for the trade of condottiere had long since passed into native Italian hands after its domination by foreigners for nearly a century. A local lordling, gathering together a few hundred mercenaries, would march out and offer his sword to the highest bidder. The chances of his being killed in battle were now somewhat higher than in the past, but the rewards still appeared to be immense. Cesare's difficulty lay neither in acquiring nor controlling the men themselves but in exerting his authority over their leaders, each of whom saw himself as an independent power and was merely using Cesare as a stepping stone to greater things.
His artilleryman, Vitellozzo Vitelli, had an additional and, in Italian eyes, honorable motive for joining Cesare. Vitellozzo wanted to revenge himself on the Florentines for their execution of his brother Paolo—a desire which was to place Cesare in considerable danger. His other condottieri were more of the ordinary type. Among them were members of the Orsini clan, Paolo and Francesco. The latter had no little opinion of himself; he had come forward and offered himself as a bridegroom for Lucrezia when she was in between husbands. The twists and turns of Alexander's policy had temporarily brought Borgia and Orsini together in an effort to break the hold of the Colonna in Rome and the Orsini now, foolishly, tended to regard themselves as being in a special relationship with the Borgia.
Cesare imposed good government on the captured cities of the Romagna. It was true enough that his leniency and justice were only means to an end, that if it suited his tactics he would as willingly obliterate a city as reform its government. But for the inarticulate mass of the people, the anonymous citizens who remained mostly indifferent to whose banner it was that happened to float over their fortress, the Borgia rule was the best they had known within living memory. Under that rule roads and bridges were repaired and, above all, policed. The bandits who had long infested the area, taking advantage of the fragmentation of power, were ruthlessly exterminated. In the cities themselves price regulations were established, controlling the cost of living. Justice was again available to all. It could still be manipulated in the prince's interest, but that interest was no longer petty, prepared to starve a province to furnish a mistress's bedchamber. Again, Cesare was fortunate in the enormous power that backed him. Amply supplied with funds drawn from the papacy itself, he could afford to be generous and not only refrain from increasing the burden on his new subjects but, in certain cases, actually reduce taxation.
It was this aspect of his career that attracted the attention of the Florentine secretary of state, Niccolo Ma- chiavelli, and for a time persuaded him that here was the messiah come to save Italy from herself. The Romagna could not have been better designed as a working model to demonstrate the evils that had afflicted Italy since the fall of the Roman Empire. Here was shown in miniature the results of the continual fragmentation of power—minor lordlings with high titles uneasily tyrannizing minute states, compromising with and against each other solely to maintain their sterile power. In the ensuing chaos foreign nations could invade and force their will unchecked. "If Italy must be under the sway of a despot, let it be an Italian despot" was the burden o
f Machiavelli's argument. In that context the aggrandizement of the Borgia seemed a small price to pay.
That conflict should eventually arise between such men as the condottieri and their temporary overlord was inevitable, and the first indications of trouble appeared when Cesare was absent on the Neapolitan campaign. Vitellozzo Vitelli went off on a freebooting expedition of his own; he crossed into the Florentine state and successfully produced a rebellion in the subject city of Arezzo. Florence immediately protested to Louis of France that Cesare was violating her territory—a reasonable protest, for a condottiere was assumed to be acting under the orders of his principal. On the previous occasion when Cesare had threatened Florentine safety, King Louis's reaction had been unequivocal. "We have twice told our captains in Italy that if Valentino should threaten either Bologna or Florence, they were to attack him without warning." The promise was now fulfilled and French troops began to march toward Arezzo.
Meanwhile, Cesare had returned to the Romagna. The news from Tuscany caused him some perplexity. In principle he had no objection to harassing Florence; sooner or later a clash between himself and the republic was inevitable. But that must come only when he was prepared for it. His condottieri were threatening his vital relationship with France—but on the other hand he had no intention of going to war against his own hired soldiers to protect Florence. In the situation, he temporized, sending an urgent message to Florence requesting that they despatch an envoy with whom he could discuss the matter.
The Florentine Signoria were still suspiciously debating the request when Cesare, the object of those justifed suspicions, executed the neatest piece of treachery that even he had yet achieved, gaining thereby the entire duchy of Urbino without the loss of a man.
Guidobaldo Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, had good reason to suppose himself secure in his beautiful home in the hills. He was not merely a paper ally of the Borgia but a fighting partner. When Cesare himself was a seventeen- year-old cardinal, Montefeltro had fought in the disastrous expedition against the Orsini, bearing the brunt of the fighting and ending imprisoned. He seems to have held no grudge for Alexander for letting him languish in prison instead of paying his ransom and was now actually a member of the Borgia matrimonial network. Montefeltro's wife was the sister-in-law of Isabella d'Este—and Isabella d'Este was now the sister-in-law of Lucrezia. Cesare, throughout his Romagna campaign, had been careful to treat Guido- baldo with the greatest respect and later with that familiar alfection due even distant relatives by marriage. Hence, when Guidobaldo received requests for supplies and troops to reinforce Cesare's he was ready to oblige. Cesare told him he was marching to attack Camerino and asked for one thousand men—a substantial part of Urbino's defense. But Guidobaldo, anxious to maintain his good relations with the Borgia, sent them off. Any doubts he quieted with the knowledge that Cesare was far away, and if danger threatened there would be ample time to call out the militia remaining.
Guidobaldo was at supper three nights later when news was brought that Cesare, traveling with his phenomenal speed, had entered the duchy in the south; simultaneously, two other groups were advancing from the north and east: a total of some six thousand men were converging upon Urbino itself—an Urbino denuded of troops.
Guidobaldo had no other choice but to flee. He was a brave man, and also that rarity, a good Romagnol prince. Urbino, set high on its steep hill and with massive retaining walls, could have held out for some time. His people would have fought for him. But he saw little point in subjecting them to the horrors of street warfare merely to delay the inevitable for a week or two. He escaped, making his way with considerable difficulty through a countryside swarming with enemy soldiers, and ultimately reached the protection of his brother-in-law's court at Mantua. From there he wrote a pathetic letter to Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, begging him to inform King Louis of the incredible treachery. "I cannot understand why I have been so treated, for I have always sought to please both the Pope and Duke Valentino. Indeed, two Spanish noblemen came to me from His Holiness, bearing a letter in which His Holiness assured me that always he had held me to be a good son of the Holy See and therefore asked me to aid the Duke in his enterprise." Guidobaldo was particularly indignant at the rumor that his own people had rebelled. "They say that Valentino claims that my people drove me out. I swear, they wept when they heard of my plight."69
Giuliano della Rovere stored the treachery in his memory for attention when the time was more propitious. There was nothing he could do about it now, for Cesare and the Borgia were too high in the esteem of the French king. There came, too, another piece of news which told della Rovere, if he needed telling, that Italians were their own worst enemies—that he who could exploit their callousness to each other's sufferings might yet indeed make himself master of the country. Isabella d'Este, marchesa of Mantua, sister-in-law of the deposed Guidobaldo, hastened to contact his despoiler—not to protest and threaten Cesare with vengeance but to make a request. In the priceless art collection in the palace of Urbino was a beautiful piece of marble statuary which she had long coveted. Would the duke of Romagna be so graciously pleased as to. . . . Cesare acceded to the request, promptly despatching the statue to her and receiving, in equally graceful return, a collection of one hundred fantastic carnival masks for his special delight.
A few hours after Guidobaldo had fled Urbino, Cesare was installed in his place, that beautiful palace of the Montefeltri which had been a cradle for the infant culture of the Renaissance. And it was there that the Florentine embassy waited upon him at two o'clock on the morning ofjune 25, 1502.
The leader of the embassy was an ecclesiastic, Francesco Soderini, bishop of Volterra. His secretary was a pale young bureaucrat of thirty-three, Niccolo Machiavelli, now meeting for the first time the man whose name had predominated in so many anxious debates of the Signoria. Soderini did the talking but it was from the secretary's letters that the Florentine Signoria—and posterity—gained an insight into the character and possible motives of the duke of Romagna. That night Machiavelli wrote his first, necessarily hurried assessment of Cesare Borgia, one intended as political guidance for embassy principals and yet ending as a glowing tribute. "His soldiers love him and he has chosen the best in Italy. Good fortune follows him. Altogether he is a successful man, and one to be feared.'"70
The first embassy ended inconclusively, as Cesare intended. He had opened it with a sweeping, almost petulant attack upon the Florentine Signoria itself. He did not approve of it, he declared, and if the Florentines sincerely wanted his friendship they would have to change their method of government. The attack invited, and received, a retort that the Florentines had no intention of meddling with their constitution in order to please Cesare Borgia. Soderini then swung over to the direct attack himself. If Valentino was really anxious for Florentine friendship he would order Vitelli to surrender Arezzo. Cesare riposted with a skillful two-pronged return. He had no control over
Vitelli, who was carrying out a private vendetta—with King Louis's consent and encouragement.
The reply alarmed Soderini. Louis might, indeed, be engaged in double-dealing; the whole pattern of Florentine alliances might have changed within the past few days—or hours. It was well known that Cesare had means of gaining swift, accurate information denied others. The duke pressed home his advantage, knowing that it might very well prove possible to wring concessions from Florence during this period of doubt. He gave the Signoria exactly four days to decide whether they would have him for friend or enemy, and permitted Machiavelli to depart immediately with his message. Soderini remained with Cesare.
Louis had his own problems, for the neat carving up of the Neapolitan state between himself and Spain had not gone according to plan. Spain's demands were increasing, as Machiavelli had foreseen, and a full-scale war between the French and Spanish armies in southern Italy was threatening. Louis apparently was to be forced to choose between Florence and Cesare Borgia, between the wealthy Tuscan bankers and the descen
dant of a Spanish house who might suddenly remember blood ties and throw in his lot with Spain. Louis temporized too. The army group en- route to Arezzo continued its march and hurled itself upon Vitellozzo Vitelli's company, thus demonstrating that France was honoring its promise. But simultaneously, French ambassadors hastened to Florence and to Cesare urging each to give concessions to the other. The king himself was coming into Italy at the head of a large army when he would, in person, smooth out the differences between his ill-assorted allies.
Cesare decided he had pushed his defiance of France about as far as he safely could, and accordingly ordered Vitelli to agree to an immediate armistice and withdraw from Tuscany. He backed up the order with the threat that, should Vitelli not immediately obey, his own city of Citta di Castello would be sacked. Vitelli obeyed, but reluctantly and in fury, his attitude an ominous and accurate index to the state of mind of his fellow condottieri.
The Fall of the House of Borgia Page 26