The Borgias

by Paul Strathern

  The following evening she suffered a further relapse and a priest was called so that she might be given the last rites. Unexpectedly, this led her to rally. Despite the situation, her brother Cesare decided that he could no longer afford to linger in Ferrara and rode off into the night. He would never again set eyes on his sister; though she, for her part, would in time do her utmost to assist Cesare, and even on occasion protect his life.

  Cesare Borgia’s apparently callous flight from Ferrara was in fact no such thing. Despite his success at the French court, Borgia knew that he, too, was now fighting for his life. Rumours that several of his senior commanders were continuing to plot against him continued to circulate. Borgia decided to set up his court in Imola, and began implementing a comprehensive plan for the governance of his new dukedom. In many of the larger towns he appointed talented local administrators who had not been tainted by corruption or links to their previous tyrants. For the most part, these figures were only too pleased to take part in the new administration, and willingly swore their allegiance to the new duke. Where insufficient talent or expertise was available, educated young priests were recruited from the local monasteries, mainly to occupy clerical posts. Although Borgia maintained garrisons at the major towns and cities, these initially met with little opposition from the citizenry. The people of the Romagna appeared hardly concerned with the treacherous methods Borgia had used to gain his territory, they were simply pleased that the days of tyranny and lawlessness seemed to be over.

  Meanwhile, Leonardo da Vinci was despatched on a tour of the local fortresses, sketching their fortifications and suggesting improvements. As already mentioned, his duties were not confined to military matters. Judging from the sketches of the region which appear in Leonardo’s notebooks, his plans for the improvement of the region’s infrastructure were ambitious indeed. During his previous stay in Milan, working for the now deposed Sforzas, he had undertaken a number of projects for the utilization of canals throughout the region. Now, it appears, he planned similar water-driven irrigation and transport projects for the Romagna. The ten-mile-long canal from Cesena to the sea at Cesenatico was but one of many similar projects he had in mind. However, apart from the hints and sketches extant in Leonardo’s remaining notebooks no comprehensive description of these schemes has come down to us. It is known that Borgia drew up a list of projects and undertakings, but this has been lost.

  Even so, the importance that Borgia attached to Leonardo’s role can be seen in the wording of the ‘pass’ which he personally issued to his resident master of all trades. This specifically states:

  All will allow [the bearer of this signed document] free passage . . . will welcome him in a friendly fashion and allow him to inspect, measure and examine anything he wishes . . . You will provide him with any men he requires and give him any help, assistance and favours he asks. It is our wish that for any work to be carried out within our states, beforehand each engineer be required to consult with him and conform to his judgement.

  This virtual carte blanche ends with the chilling words: ‘Let no man presume to act otherwise, unless he wishes to incur our wrath.’

  In a surprise move, on 14 August 1502 Borgia dismissed his tough and trusted Spanish commander Ramiro de Lorqua, whom he had previously left to administer the Romagna during his absence. Lorqua was downgraded from being governor of the Romagna territories, and instead appointed military governor of Rimini. This was a significant step. Lorqua was a stout, fifty-year-old Spaniard renowned for his arrogance and cruelty. Borgia had appointed him because he knew that under Lorqua there would be no question of any uprising amongst the turbulent people of the Romagna against their new rule. But things had changed. From now on, Borgia had no desire for the Romagna to be regarded as a conquered territory. By this stage he felt that he could trust his new subjects and wished them to regard themselves as citizens of an independent, self-administered state – though with himself as ultimate ruler. In place of the heavy-handed Lorqua, Borgia appointed the renowned humanist scholar Antonio di Monte Sansovino as governor. This was a popular choice throughout the region. Sansovino had been born nearby in eastern Tuscany, and was described by Machiavelli as ‘a most learned man of highest repute’. Sansovino, now named as ‘President of the Romagna’, was tasked with implementing a new justice system for the entire region, as well as selecting suitable magistrates to administer this new system. Guicciardini, in his contemporary history of Italy, would go so far as to record that Borgia ‘had placed in the government of those peoples, men who had governed them with so great justice and integrity, that he was greatly loved by them’.

  As we shall see, consequent evidence will tend to confirm this view. The local people had resented being governed by Borgia’s Spanish commanders, a bunch of uncouth hardmen who knew little of justice. For such military men, rule and civil order equated with the harsh realities of how to retain the loyalty of their own unruly soldiery, i.e. the likes of those who had shat in the wine barrels at Perugia. Yet despite Borgia’s efforts, the ever-perceptive Machiavelli noted how even Borgia tended to turn a blind eye to the unruly and lawless behaviour of the Spanish and French garrisons stationed at the main centres of population. Borgia relied upon these troops to defend his new Romagna dukedom. There still remained the threat from Borgia’s Italian commanders, who were strongly rumoured to be planning a coup against him. For the most part, the latter remained at home in their nearby territories – Vitellozzo at Città di Castello, Bentivoglio at Bologna, the Orsini brothers in their castles outside Rome, and so forth. All were ostensibly waiting on Borgia’s orders.

  Cesare Borgia now received an urgent secret message from Alexander VI. The Pope’s intention was to discuss further strategy with his wayward son. The two of them arranged to hold a clandestine meeting at Camerino. It was easy enough for Cesare Borgia to leave Imola, giving as an excuse his wish to make a round of inspection of his new domains. Meanwhile, Alexander VI slipped away from Rome on the pretext that he needed to take some rest at one of the papal estates in the countryside. The recently conquered city of Camerino provided an ideal meeting place. If it somehow got out that they were meeting here, they had a good excuse. It had been decided that Giovanni Borgia, the four-year-old Infans Romanus, should be appointed as Lord of Camerino – the initial step in bringing him up to be Cesare Borgia’s heir to the dukedom of the Romagna.

  In early September Alexander VI and Cesare Borgia held a series of covert consultations at Camerino. Sequestered alone in a private room at the castle, their conversation was conducted exclusively in Catalan, so that not even an eavesdropper could understand the gist of what they were saying. First of all it was necessary for the Pope and his son to patch up the differences that had emerged between them during the pursuance of their supposedly common policy. All his life, Alexander VI had believed in the pursuance of patiently executed, covert schemes: this was how he had managed to remain vice-chancellor to no less than five popes through thirty-five years. This was how he had learned to understand and manipulate the intricate workings of papal power. The Pope was now growing visibly older and his dissipations had left him tired. Now was not the time to change the slow but steady habits of a lifetime: years of patience and effort, murder and marriages, to establish his ultimate power base in Rome. Only now were his schemes finally approaching fruition. Only now was the full enormity of his ambitions becoming clear. Alexander VI was aware that he would soon die, and he intended nothing less than to pass on the papacy to his son.

  As Captain-General of the Papal Forces (by this time considerably reinforced with Spanish soldiers and French backing) Cesare Borgia ruled over much of the Papal Territories of the Romagna and the Marches. When Alexander VI died, his son would be in an unassailable position to take charge of Rome. He could then decide that owing to the seriousness of the unresolved position in Naples, it would not be possible to hold a conclave immediately. In the ensuing power vacuum, he would be obliged to take on the powers of the Pop
e on a ‘temporary’ basis. Having thus established himself, it would be all but impossible to dislodge him. He would receive the backing of the French king for supporting Louis XII’s claim to Naples. The papacy would then become a Borgia inheritance.*

  Alexander VI had spent years piecing together his strategy for a Borgia inheritance. Though in his early years as pope this had all but fallen apart, owing to the blundering invasion of Charles VIII. But now the French were his allies, and with sufficient guile this alliance could be manipulated to become an equal partnership. Alexander VI needed to stress this with the utmost urgency to his son. Cesare Borgia’s tendency to precipitate action – such as placing himself at the mercy of Louis XII – was liable to be the undoing of Alexander VI’s patiently developed strategy, which would only succeed if it was advanced step by step. Any rash move was liable to be the undoing of Alexander VI’s life’s work.

  In order to reinforce this point, Alexander VI decided to give his son a lesson in statecraft. For Cesare Borgia to defeat his enemies he needed to outwit them. Only cunning would enable him to overcome his untrustworthy Italian commanders. Alexander VI informed his son that when he returned to Rome he intended to send a despatch to Paolo and Giulio Orsini, ordering them as commanders in the Papal Army to report to their Captain-General. They were to join Borgia on a campaign to take Bologna. This would seek out their loyalties. Despite their treacherous machinations, the Orsini brothers remained unaware of precisely how much Cesare Borgia knew about or suspected their lack of loyalty. Bologna was the territory of Bentivoglio, one of the conspirators, and their reaction to the Pope’s orders would bring matters out into the open.

  Cesare Borgia attempted in vain to dissuade Alexander VI from taking this provocative action. For once, his strategy was ahead of his father’s: Borgia was by now a highly skilled military commander. Unbeknown to his father, Cesare’s apparent hesitation in taking Bologna had been for a good reason. Even if the Orsini brothers, along with Vitellozzo and Baglioni, had all joined him on the march to Bologna, Borgia knew that this would leave the southern Romagna exposed to an attack by forces that Vitellozzo and the others would leave behind to guard their territories and their castles, which remained exposed along the Florentine border.

  Despite the Pope’s planned action, Cesare Borgia decided to return to Imola and then wait to see what transpired. The longer he did nothing, the sooner the French troops promised to him by Louis XII would arrive to strengthen his own limited forces. At present he had just 5,000 men scattered in garrisons guarding the cities throughout the Romagna. Louis XII had promised him 3,500 mixed infantry and cavalry. Although these would be tough French troops, he knew they would be no match for the combined forces of the Orsini brothers, Vitellozzo, Baglioni and the others. In Borgia’s estimation these commanders could muster at least 9,000 foot soldiers and 1,000 cavalry.

  Despite Cesare Borgia’s decision to sit things out, it was Alexander VI’s despatch to the Orsini brothers from Rome that set things in motion. In a way, it was the combination of apparently contradictory strategies adopted by the Pope and his son which would bring things to a head. Prompted by the urgency of their situation, the Orsini brothers turned to the senior member of their family for advice. This was Cardinal Giambattista Orsini. Earlier, when he had been a close friend of Alexander VI, their dinner parties together had become notorious, on occasion featuring scenes reminiscent of Ancient Rome. However, Cardinal Orsini was more than just another louche, aristocratic senior member of the Church. He was in fact a man of considerable, if devious, intellectual capacity, who was characterized by Machiavelli as ‘a man of a thousand tricks’. In response to Alexander VI’s summons to the Orsini brothers, Cardinal Giambattista Orsini decided to call a clandestine meeting of all the conspirators at the Orsini stronghold of La Magione. This was a fortress on the eastern shore of Lake Trasimeno, some 100 miles north of Rome and within easy distance of the territory belonging to most of the conspirators. Those who attended were an unsavoury bunch of petty tyrants and condottieri. Paolo Orsini, the more prominent of the two brothers, was in fact illegitimate and known to be ‘vain, weak, credulous and mentally unstable’. The Orsini brothers’ close friend Vitellozzo arrived on a stretcher, suffering from such a painful bout of syphilis that he could do little but groan. Oliverotto, Lord of Fermo and a typical small-city tyrant, was notorious for his ‘infinite treacheries and cruelties’. He had gained his title by inviting all his relatives to a banquet and slaughtering them, including the kindly old uncle who had adopted him after his parents had died. Baglioni, who ruled the nearby city of Perugia, was if anything even worse, being described by Machiavelli as ‘a man of vicious heart . . . and great cowardice [notorious throughout Italy] for having committed incest with his sister, and killing his cousins and nephews in order to become ruler of Perugia’. Also attending this meeting was Ermes, son of Bentivoglio of Bologna, now married to an Orsini; as well as Guidobaldo, the ousted young Duke of Urbino.

  During the course of the conspirators’ discussions, a leader emerged in the form of the fifty-year-old Pandolfo Petrucci, the treacherous and vicious ruler of Siena, who had married into the influential Borghese family and would later assassinate his father-in-law in order to retain power. Petrucci had latterly come to realize the vulnerability of his state, now that Florence was under the protection of Louis XII, and Borgia’s Romagna was expanding to the east of his territory. While the other conspirators presided over small city states, Petrucci ruled a republic whose territory was almost comparable to that of its northern neighbour Florence. It was he who suggested to the conspirators that they should make secret approaches to both Venice and Florence, the two major states who had good reason to be suspicious of Borgia’s expansive policies in the Romagna. At the same time, Baglioni warned that his fellow conspirators must present a united front, for if not they ‘would be devoured one by one by the dragon’. All present at La Magione solemnly swore to trust one another, despite previous family differences.

  For once, it looked as if the Borgias were faced with a treacherous alliance capable of putting an end to all their territorial ambitions in central Italy. Inevitably, both Cesare Borgia and the Pope separately had their informants at La Magione. Just as they had both suspected, it soon became clear that the treacherous conspirators barely trusted one another and soon began splitting into factions, hatching their own plots against each other. Cesare Borgia seized on this opportunity and immediately sent a secret message to the man he considered to be the weakest character amongst the plotters: the unstable Paolo Orsini. Borgia offered Paolo Orsini generous terms: no loss of his properties, which would remain under the protection of the Pope, if he returned to fight at Borgia’s side. Inevitably, word of Borgia’s offer to Paolo Orsini soon spread amongst the other conspirators. Some even began to conclude that the best chance of retaining their territories, and their lives, lay in returning to Borgia and accepting the Pope’s protection. Baglioni of Perugia remonstrated against these appeasers, telling them that they could never trust the Borgias.

  Back in Rome, Alexander VI had begun to suspect that the conspirators held the upper hand, sensing that all his long-term plans for a Borgia heritage might yet come to nothing. News now reached the Holy City that on 7 October there had been a spontaneous uprising at San Leo, some twenty miles north of Urbino. The strategic hilltop town and fortress had declared itself independent of Borgia rule. This news threw Alexander VI into a paroxysm of anger, and the Venetian ambassador Giustinian described him as ‘raging like a bear’ and cursing the treachery of the Orsini family, whom he suspected had been behind this revolt.

  Meanwhile, Cesare Borgia quietly ordered some of his Spanish commanders to assemble their troops and march to join him at Imola. Then in the second week of October news reached Borgia that Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, aided by Vitellozzo and Orisini, was marching on Urbino. Two of Borgia’s most trusted hardmen – Ugo de Moncada and the notorious strangler Miguel da Corella – were comm
anding the city’s garrison, but Borgia ordered them and their troops to make a tactical withdrawal. Consequently Duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro entered the city unopposed, where he was received ‘with the love all the people had for the said duke, who was their ancient and rightful lord’. Cesare Borgia had decided against having his troops drawn into conflict where they were unwelcome. He felt sure that, given time, he would be able to turn the population of Urbino against the weak and indecisive Guidobaldo, who had previously abandoned them at the first sign of trouble. Borgia’s intention remained to make the whole of the Romagna into a united dukedom of loyal subjects.

  Yet when news that Urbino had thrown off the Borgia yoke began spreading through the countryside, it encouraged the citizens of Fossombrone, just ten miles to the east, to rise up of their own accord. This was a provocation which Moncada and Corella, whose troops happened to be passing nearby, felt unable to ignore. Expressly contravening Borgia’s orders, Moncada and Corella marched on Fossombrone, where the citizens had taken refuge in their local fortress. Moncada soon discovered a secret tunnel beneath the outer walls, and during the ensuing battle the citizens of Fossombrone – mainly peasants wielding sticks and farming implements – were put to the sword. Cesare Borgia was furious, and ordered Moncada and Corella to march post-haste to join him at Imola. In Urbino, Vitellozzo soon received word of this. Emboldened by his recent ‘victory’, he marched across country and succeeded in ambushing Moncada and Corella outside the village of Calmazzo a few miles south-east of Urbino. Vitellozzo routed the heavily outnumbered Spanish troops: Moncada was taken prisoner, and Corella just managed to escape with his life, heading with the few remaining Spanish troops to take refuge in Fano on the coast.

  By this time, Bentivoglio of Bologna, together with his son Ermes, had marched south-east down the Via Emelia with 2,200 troops. They soon overran Castel San Pietro, just seven miles up the road from Borgia’s headquarters in Imola. Borgia still remained in communication with Lorqua, commander of Rimini, over two days’ forced march away, but he realized that to all intents and purposes he was under siege. His situation was rapidly deteriorating. The conspirators were aware that the Venetians were studying the unfolding events closely. There was no doubt that Venice wished to see an end to Borgia’s territorial ambitions. The only thing holding them back was the risk of coming into conflict with Louis XII. In an attempt to bring about a final resolution, the conspirators again sent word to Florence, pleading with Gonfaloniere Soderini to join them. This was their chance, once and for all, to put an end to the scourge of Cesare Borgia. Alexander VI could only look on in horror from Rome. The entire edifice of all his ambitions appeared on the brink of collapse. It looked as if the days of his son Cesare were numbered: just one move by his enemies and all was lost.