But Don Juan of Beaumont was a brave, resourceful man. The castle was separated from the city, which Cesare had taken over as his headquarters, by an area of rough scrubland, and Beaumont decided it would be possible to sneak a convoy of provisions in under cover of darkness. It could have been a foolhardy attempt but, fortunately for Beaumont, a violent storm broke during the night (March 11), and the guards who should have been patroling the city walls sought shelter. Beaumont left the main body of the escort in a ravine some distance from the city and sent on the convoy. It succeeded in entering the castle, but the detachment of soldiers who had accompanied it, on returning collided with a detachment of royalist troops who were marching to Viana as reinforcements. Dawn had not yet broken and in the uncertain light the royalists believed they had been trapped by a major force. The alarm was sounded and confusion swept the city. Cesare leaped out of bed, armed himself hastily with the aid of a young squire, and without giving any orders whatever he, the commander of the garrison, hurled himself on horseback and galloped alone out through the city gate. His horse slipped on the wet pavement as it passed through. He wrenched it upright and "screaming blasphemies," continued his headlong ride into the dawn. To some of the watchers in the city, his horse seemed actually out of control and bolting with him.
Outside the city, Cesare encountered the detachment of Beaumont's men who were returning from the castle, and rapidly killed three of them. The rest retreated and he followed, galloping farther and farther from the city that was his charge and support until at last he came to the ravine where the main part of Beaumont's force was temporarily camped. It is probable that the soldiers in the camp had no idea who he was in the first moments, but reacted instinctively as a screaming, quite berserk horseman erupted in their midst. One man thrust a lance under Cesare's armpit, badly wounding him and tumbling him from his horse. He fought on against an unknown number of men until at last he was killed. A rescue force was now pouring out of the city and, hurriedly, the men in the ravine began to withdraw, taking Cesare's armor with them. As they were retreating they encountered his squire, who had ridden out to search for his master, and showed him the armor. He burst into tears, saying that it was indeed the armor of the duke and, satisfied, they released him and continued on to safety. By now the sun had risen, and those who came out of the city found Cesare's corpse easily enough, naked and covered with twenty-three dreadful wounds.
The testimony as to what happened during that twenty minutes or so between Cesare's exit from the city and death in the ravine was inevitably confused, for that testimony was mostly the accounts of men who had been fighting a figure that was already legendary. But piecing together the evidence provided by the actual killers, by those who had seen Cesare ride out of the city, and by those he had pursued, it appeared to many that Cesare Borgia, late duke of Valentinois, late duke of the Romagna, late captain-general of the Roman Church, had, in effect, committed suicide. Never before had this cold, collected young man been known to scream and curse as he rode into battle. Never before had this superb horseman ever lost control of his mount. Never before had this brilliant general ever committed the elementary error of letting himself be cut off from all lines of support. It may have been that his reason went awry momentarily; that the shame of being outwitted and surprised by an inferior enemy, falling atop all he had experienced during the past four years, culminating with the vicious rejection of Louis of France—released the Spanish bloodlust and so provided a way out of an intolerable situation.
Cesare was buried in Viana in the church of Santa Maria. An epitaph was composed that managed to distill, in part, a truth about its subject:
Here, buried in a little earth, lies one who held the world in fear, one who held peace and war in his hands. Oh, you that go in search of things deserving praise, if you would praise the worthiest, then let your journey end here nor trouble to go further.
But his legend survived and grew, at last disturbing his bones for, two centuries later, the bishop of Calahorra, offended that such a man should lie in such a place, ordered the epitaph destroyed and the bones removed from the church and buried under the road outside.
In Italy the Borgia family survived the catastrophic events that destroyed Cesare but now, without his dynamism, it began to slide into respectable obscurity. The younger brother Joffre remained in Naples; ironically, the flighty Sancia, who had caused so much trouble in Rome, proved barren, and it was through a second wife that Joffre obtained an heir to his modest estates. The mother of the family, Vannozza Catanei, passed her remaining years fighting for her property in the law courts and amassing heavenly credit through pious works. She became something of a tourist attraction in Rome, but conducted herself with immense respectability and in her will left her considerable property to the Church. Giulia Farnese not only survived the loss of her protector, Alexander, but even managed to marry her daughter by him to the nephew of his bitterest enemy, Pope Julius II. In this matter, certainly, Julius was an excellent disciple of Machiavelli's, judging an action solely on the grounds of its expediency.
Lucrezia, too, survived. She had twelve more years remaining, time in which she would provide the last, ironic twist to the legend of her family. The news of her father's death prostrated her, not least because her husband and his family took little trouble to conceal their delight. Her grief was so great that, later, she confided to a friend that she thought she was dying. She dressed in complete black, dressed all her ladies in black, turned her private room into a black, hushed cavern. Pietro Bembo, the sprightly young Venetian poet who was first her admirer and then her lover, left a poignant description of her condition at that time.
I called upon Your Majesty yesterday partly for the purpose of telling you how great was my grief on account of your loss, and partly to try and console you, for I knew that you were suffering a measureless sorrow. I was able to do neither, for as soon as I saw you in that dark room, in your black gown, lying weeping, I was so overcome by my feelings that I stood still, unable to speak, not knowing what to say. Therefore I departed, completely overcome by the sad sight, mumbling and speechless as you noticed—or might have noticed.91
The shock of her father's death was followed not long after by the even more shattering news of the ignominious reversal of her invincible brother's fortunes. Suddenly, the Borgia family were in very real danger. She in Ferrara and Joffre in Naples were safe enough but scattered throughout Italy—and in Rome particularly—were blood relatives of the clan, who were likely to fall victim to the rage for vengeance against all Borgia. Apart from Cesare on his Roman sickbed, there was her own child, Rodrigo, as well as the mysterious little boy Giovanni in whom she displayed such curious interest. There were also her illegitimate half- brother—Alexander's last child—as well as two of Cesare's bastards, a girl and a boy. Lucrezia did what she could for the defenseless children, arranging their refuge in neutral areas. And under pressure of necessity she became a politician and a military organizer. She knew only too well that neither her husband nor her father-in-law would lift a finger to help Cesare merely because he was her brother; but she was shrewd enough to see that the Este would prefer even the Borgia as neighbors rather than the Venetians who would flood into the Romagna vacuum. Out of her own allowance she financed a troop of one thousand mercenaries, the money intended for perfumes, silks, and fine wines hastily gathered together and used to equip horsemen, crossbowmen and infantry. One of her brother's ex-companions, Pedro Ramirez, was given command. Lucrezia may not have known it at the time but the first opposition he would have encountered were the troops led by Giovanni Sforza, her ex-husband, intent upon reconquering his city of Pesaro. But the clash never occurred. Ramirez was marching toward the Romagna when news came that Cesare had been shipped to Spain, and the now pointless opposition collapsed. Yet she did not give up hope. How could she for whom Cesare had always been the very symbol of triumph? She made use of her father-in- law's ambassadors at the court of France to plead Cesare'
s cause and received back fair enough words from King Louis. But privately he wrote to Este, telling him not to make so much fuss about a priest's bastard. Finally, it seemed as though her wholly irrational faith in that splendid brother was justified when she heard of his escape. The person who brought her the news was one of Cesare's companions who had accompanied him during that incredible escape across Spain. The man was a priest and his news earned him a lifetime of pampered idleness at the court of Ferrara—that, at least, was what Lucrezia intended for him. But her in-laws thought otherwise and made their own plans.
After Cesare's escape, after that miraculous deliverance, the news of his death came like a ghastly shock in a nightmare. She said nothing at the time but retired immediately to her room, dismissing her attendants and all through that night the awed women heard her repeating, again and again as though in some magical incantation that would roll back the fact of death, the name of her brother.
Afterward there was nothing to be done by, or for the Borgia. Old Duke Ercole died and Lucrezia became duchess of Ferrara. Her husband, the duke, made sure she remained in a more or less continuous state of pregnancy so he could remain with his artillery and whores. He treated her correctly, coldly and gave no overt indication that he was aware of the passionate love affair with Pietro Bembo that filled her life after death had darkened it. Death seemed to move not far from her skirts during these middle years of her Este marriage. The priest who was her special protege was hacked down by unknown hands; so, too, was Ercole Strozzi, the poet who had praised her and her clan
Why? Perhaps, it was whispered, because he had acted as go-between for Bembo and Lucrezia.
Ercole Strozzi to whom was given Death
Because he wrote about Lucrezia Borgia
Such was the couplet whispered widely, and the grimly smiling duke of Ferrara did not trouble to track its source and punish the impious originator.
Her son by her beloved second husband, Alfonso of Bisceglie, also died, to her immense grief. Five of her children by the duke of Ferrara hastened from the cradle to the grave. But two survived and one ascended the ducal throne; so that it was only in Ferrara, and under another name, that some of Alexander's dynastic hopes were fulfilled in Italy. It was in Spain and through the implacable Maria Enriquez of Gandia, the murderedjuan's widow, that the house of Borgia continued in its own right, surviving until the eighteenth century and, incidentally, giving a saint to the Church. The fourth duke of Gandia, better known as St. Francis Borja—he was canonized in 1671—was also the great-grandson of Pope Alexander VI.
Lucrezia died in 1518 in childbirth, shortly before her fortieth birthday. In the last few years of her life, when all else had been eroded, her lovers and her husbands and her family drifting into the past or legend, she turned to religion, not with the ostentation of her mother but with a quiet, deep conviction, nowhere better expressed than in the letter she wrote Pope Leo X a few hours before her death. She knew she was dying and begged his high blessing on her passing—a passing which, she said, she yearned for as a tired person yearns for bed.
In France, Cesare's wife Charlotte retired to a convent and survived her husband by only seven years, dying while still a young woman. Their daughter Louise was twice married, the second time into the Bourbon family, but made no particular mark of her own. The two natural children of Cesare were raised in Ferrara under their Aunt Lucrezia's protection. The girl eventually became an abbess; the boy disappeared—to turn up nearly fifty years later in Paris, asking the king for aid on the grounds that his father Cesare had served France well. They gave the Borgia one hundred ducats and sent him away.
Bibliography
Bibliography
Index
Index
Index
Table of Contents
1 The Cardinal from Spain
2 The Path to the Throne
3 The Papal Monarch
4 The Court of Rome
5 The Dynast
6 The French Invasion
7 The Rise of Cesare Borgia
8 At the Court of France
9 Conquest of the Romagma
10 Lucrezia
11 The Prince
12 Lucrezia in Ferrara
13 The Duke of Romagna
14 The Fall of Cesare Borgia
The Fall of the House of Borgia Page 31