Ten days later he reiterated his sentiments to Cavalleri, telling him the Pope had sent the Bishop of Elna, his nephew and apostolic commissioner at Cesare’s camp, to him to urge the marriage. The King of France, he argued, should not seek to gratify the Pope in this because the Pope had more need of him (for troops and money for Cesare) than Louis of the Pope. He urged Cavalleri to do all he could so that the King would act ‘to liberate us from this threat and peril’.7
Louis, in fact, was no keener on the marriage of Alfonso and Lucrezia than was Ercole. In trickery, if not in skill, he was Alexander’s equal and in principle he saw no advantage to himself in strengthening the Borgias’ position which might give them an advantage in negotiations with himself. In March he told Cavalleri that he thought Ercole would be unwise to consider the Borgia marriage since the Pope could die any day, and promised to give Alfonso any bride he chose.8 Through April and early May the King kept Ercole’s hopes of an advantageous French marriage alive, while the Borgias piled contrary pressure on the unfortunate Duke of Ferrara. Giovanni Ferrari, Cardinal of Modena, was deployed by Alexander to write Ercole letters stressing the advantages of the Borgia marriage because of the protection offered by the friendship of the Duke Valentino in Romagna as well as the friendship of the Pope.9 Alexander also sent his most trusted confidential agent, Francesco Troche, to the French court to ask Louis to press Ercole to accept the marriage with Lucrezia; as a result the powerful Cardinal de Rohan, who owed his cardinal’s hat to Cesare, told Cavalleri that he should write to his master encouraging him to entertain the Borgia engagement.10 Cesare for his part kept up the pressure on Duke and King, sending envoys to put the case for Lucrezia.
Ercole, still hoping that, if he could not have his first choice, Mlle de Foix, who was apparently now promised to the King of Hungary, Mlle d’Angoulême was still on offer, was overwhelmed to receive Cavalleri’s letter of 26 May which did not reach him until 9 June. The news that the King now supported the Pope’s wishes threw him into paroxysms of rage and panic which he expressed in a three-page letter to his envoy, repeating all his previous arguments plaintively: ‘And moreover having always affirmed to the messengers of the pontiff that this matter of ours was in the hand of the most Christian King, trusting as we have said above: and now His Majesty writing to me according to the desire of the Pope: we are reduced to such perplexity that we do not know how to act: because since the beginning we have never been in favour of making this relationship with the pontiff. It does not seem to me to be apt to tell him absolutely that we do not wish it: because such a hostile response would make him most inimical towards us . . .’ Ercole ended with a pathetic appeal for help to be transmitted to the King ‘given that it matters most greatly to us . . .’ In an anguished two-page postscript, he blamed Cavalleri for not preventing this, insisting he tell the King to inform the Pope that negotiations for a French marriage had gone too far and that the parties of the other part would not consent to their being broken off; therefore the marriage between Lucrezia and Alfonso was impossible. ‘And this must be done immediately because we think that the Pope will not hesitate to send us the Royal Letters and to insist that we conclude the matter . . .’ Cavalleri must act on the King so that the Pope ‘will not become more inimical towards us than he is already . . .’11
In vain: on 13 June, a few days after this letter was written, Cesare was in Rome, conferring with his father as to how to push Ercole further. As evidence of his usefulness to the King of France, he was on his way with the French Marshal d’Aubigny to execute a brief, brutal and successful campaign to expel the royal house of Naples. The result of the Borgias’ conference was immediately evident in Ferrara, where Ercole was subjected to a personal bombardment by representatives of the King, the Pope and Cesare, as he reported to Cavalleri: ‘Yesterday the Archdeacon of Châlons, procurator of the King at Rome, arrived in Ferrara, sent by M. de Agrimont, the royal ambassador and Don Remolins first chamberlain of Duke Valentino and with him a messer Agostino, the papal commissary in [Cesare’s] camp sent to Bologna by Duke Valentino, who presented us [Ercole] with letters from the King to the Duke Valentino and from M. de Agrimont, exhorting us to conclude the marriage [with Lucrezia] . . .’12 Ercole was outraged that these messengers should appear before him in disguise – ‘travestiti’ – as he complained to Cavalleri. Despite the pressure he was still determined not to give in over the Borgia marriage but equally he wanted Louis XII to take the responsibility for his refusal. He suggested a stratagem by which the King should write inviting Alfonso to the French court, upon which Ercole would immediately send him to find out the King’s true mind on the matter. ‘In this way time can be taken over this affair: the Pope will be kept in hope, knowing that Don Alfonso will have been called to France to discuss it. And His Majesty will be able to make use of the Pope, if at present he has need of him . . . and by this means perhaps God will inspire His Majesty to exercise some good and sound remedy to liberate us entirely from this difficulty in which we find ourselves.’ The King must understand that if he would not do this ‘the Pope will immediately become our enemy and always by every means will seek to ruin us and do us every evil he can . . .’ In a postscript he insisted on a French marriage for Alfonso, if not to either of the ladies suggested, then to another. Anyone, in short, but Lucrezia Borgia. And in a second alarmed letter of the same day he urged, ‘His Majesty should not reveal this to the Pope or to his own people . . . so great is the danger we run if the Pope understood what our disposition was . . . we are in very grave fear . . .’
Again, Ercole’s pathetic pleas were to no avail. On 22 June, Cavalleri sent a letter to Ercole more or less indicating that the game was up: Louis XII absolutely refused to write anything on Ercole’s behalf, although he had written four lines in his own hand endorsing the Pope’s messenger. The King riposted that Duke Ercole was old and wise and knew more while asleep than he [Louis] did while awake. His cynical advice was that if Ercole was really not minded to make this match, he should make such demands that the Pope himself would not want to go ahead with it. As a sweetener, Louis’s envoy to the Borgias, Louis de Villeneuve, Baron de Trans, told Cavalleri that to encourage Ercole to make this marriage he was to get 200,000 ducats and absolution from the papal census, an estate for his second son, Ferrante, plus benefices for Cardinal Ippolito and support for Ercole’s desire to regain his lost lands of the Polesine di Rovigo. The King, as if to underscore the difficulty of dealing with Alexander, pointed out that the Pope was asking 50,000 scudi in return for the investiture of the Kingdom of Naples for Louis, plus an income of 18,000 scudi for Cesare and a state for his ‘nephews’—presumably Giovanni Borgia and Rodrigo Bisceglie. Furthermore, he said, he himself might die any day and his successor might have no interest in Italy, and the money Ercole was now being offered by the Pope would provide for his future security and that of his state. To Cavalleri, these seemed, as he wrote to Ercole, ‘wise words’ which he hastened to transmit.13
Ercole had by now realized that further resistance was impossible: his resigned response to Cavalleri’s letter of the 22nd was that in view of Louis’s need of the Pope, and in order to do his Christian Majesty a service, he was prepared to agree to the marriage.14 Meanwhile Louis, involved in outrageously greedy negotiations with the Pope over the investiture of Naples, urged Cavalleri to advise Ercole to draw out the business with the Pope for as long as he could. On 7 July, Cavalleri reported that the Pope had told the King that he had given the Bull of Investiture to Cardinal Sanseverino and that in return Louis and the King of Spain had to pay 150,000 ducats within the space of three months. In order to keep up the pressure on the Pope, Louis repeated his advice to Ercole to prolong the marriage negotiations, even holding out the original prospect of Mlles de Foix and d’Angoulême for Alfonso. He excused his letter supporting the Pope in his pressure for the conclusion of Lucrezia’s marriage because of his present need of the Pope’s goodwill. If Don Alfonso came to France, Cavalleri added, he
hoped ‘everything would go well’.15
But the time for tergiversation was over: by early July, Ercole had lain down his arms and accepted his – and Alfonso’s—fate. Cavalleri informed Louis that in the Duke’s view ‘the practical overcame the honourable’, a sentiment which the King applauded, although he still held out the bait of a French bride should the Borgia marriage not come about. Louis added that if Alfonso did marry Lucrezia, he would understand that Alfonso was doing it unwillingly. Haggling and trickery continued on all three sides: Ercole reacted angrily to the accusation that he had made ‘impertinent demands’ on the Pope. He ordered Cavalleri to bring the negotiations to a conclusion on the agreement of 100,000 ducats of dowry, leaving the fulfilment of the other proposals to the Pope. He added, with some justification, that had it not been for his wish to serve the King, the matter could have been resolved three months earlier.16 Later that month Cesare’s man, Remolins, one of the chief negotiators, returned from Ferrara with a portrait of Alfonso to be presented to Lucrezia.17 The Mantuan envoy Cattaneo had already noted on 11 August that Lucrezia appeared to have abandoned her mourning (even though it was less than a year since the murder of Alfonso Bisceglie): ‘Up to now Donna Lucretia, according to Spanish usage has eaten from earthenware and maiolica. Now she has begun to eat from silver as if almost no longer a widow.’18
Early in August, Ercole wrote a note to the person who perhaps most influenced him in his decision and whose enmity he greatly feared – Cesare Borgia: ‘Your Lordship will have heard that we have come to the conclusion of the marriage between the Illustrious Madonna Lucretia, your Excellency’s sister, and the Illustrious Don Alfonso, our firstborn . . .’ This had been done, he said, because of the reverence he had for the Pope and the virtues of Lucrezia but ‘far more still from the love and affection we bear Your Excellency . . .’19
The Borgias now knew that they had won. The marriage contract was drawn up in the Vatican on 26 August, with Alexander writing out the terms in his own hand.20 The nuptial contract was concluded, and the marriage ad verba presente, took place in the Palazzo Belfiore on 1 September 1501. On 5 September Ercole wrote to Cavalleri to inform the King of the terms concluded for Lucrezia’s dowry: 100,000 ducats in cash, plus the castles and lands of Cento and La Pieve with an annual income amounting to some 3,000 ducats. While Cento and La Pieve could not immediately be handed over since they were part of the diocese of Bologna, Cesare had pledged his castles in the territory of Faenza until the deal could be concluded. Any shortfall in income, meanwhile, would be supplemented by the Pope – no wonder Alexander commented that the Duke of Ferrara ‘bargained like a tradesman’. Beyond this the Pope would reduce the census which Ercole paid the Pope for Ferrara and his lands in Romagna from 4,500 ducats to 100 ducats a year. Mentally rubbing his hands together, Ercole told Cavalleri that he estimated the total value of the deal at 400,000 ducats.
Nonetheless, Ercole wished it to be understood that only a desire to serve the King of France and preserve good relations between him and the Pope had induced him ‘to condescend to such an unequal relationship’, as he wrote to Cavalleri on 5 September.21 Because of his loyalty to the King of France, he added, he had resisted the angry opposition of the Emperor Maximilian to the marriage, and he had underlined the reason for his agreement to the marriage in the nuptial contract by specifying that it was the wish of the King of France. In a later letter he admitted that fear of the Borgias had played its part: ‘. . . we would have made His Holiness our greatest enemy if we had refused, and having the Lord Duke of Romagna [Cesare], with a great and fine State beside ours, there is no doubt that His Holiness would be able to damage us greatly . . .’22
To Lucrezia he wrote a graceful if wry letter announcing the completion of the marriage ‘per parola de presente’: ‘We rejoice for this with you whom first we loved uncommonly for your singular virtues and for our reverence for The Holiness of Our Lord and as the sister of the Most Illustrious Duke of Romagna who we hold as an honoured brother: now we love you intimately as more than daughter, hoping that through you there will come the continuation of our posterity: and we will operate so that you should be with us as soon as possible . . .’23
Lucrezia no doubt took this letter in the spirit it was intended. She cannot have been unaware of the difficulties her father and brother had encountered in pressing the reluctant Duke into acceptance of a marriage to which he had an extreme aversion. She had been entrusted by her father with the administration of the Vatican in July, while he toured Sermoneta and the lands recently acquired from the Caetani.24 As Burchard had reported: ‘Before His Holiness, our Master, left the city, he turned over the palace and all the business affairs to his daughter Lucretia, authorizing her to open all letters which should come addressed to him . . .’ This time she was no mere pawn in the process managed by her father and brother but an active participant in the negotiations for her proposed marriage, as Ercole himself acknowledged in a postscript to a letter he wrote her on 2 September: ‘Lady Lucretia. Because in the instrument drawn up concerning your dowry a certain article has been remitted to your decision and judgement and that of the Most Illustrious Lord Duke of Romagna. We would urge Your Ladyship not to come to any declaration until you have first discussed it with our representatives who are on their way to you.’
The historian Guicciardini, no friend to the Borgias, gave his verdict on the marriage:
Although this marriage was most unworthy of the house of Este, wont to make the most noble alliances, and all the more unworthy because Lucrezia was illegitimate and stained with great infamy, Ercole and Alfonso consented because the French King, desiring to satisfy the Pope in all things, made strong importunities for this union. Besides this they were motivated by a desire for securing themselves by such means from the arms and ambitions of Valentino (if, against such perfidy, any security whatever were sufficient). For Valentino, now powerful with the monies and authority of the Apostolic See and the favour which the French King bore him, was already formidable throughout a great part of Italy, and everyone knew that his cupidity had neither limit nor bridle.25
6. Farewell to Rome
‘His Holiness went from window to window of the Palace to catch the last glimpse of his beloved daughter’
– Beltrando Costabili, Ferrarese envoy in Rome, to Duke Ercole, describing Lucrezia’s departure from the city for Ferrara, 6 January 1502
The news of Lucrezia’s marriage became public in Rome on 4 September ‘around the hour of vespers’, celebrated by the firing of continual rounds of cannon from Sant’Angelo. The next day Lucrezia, wearing a dress of golden brocade ornamented with curled gold thread, rode from the Palazzo Santa Maria in Portico to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo accompanied by three hundred horsemen and preceded by four bishops and followed by her considerable household. ‘On the same day,’ recorded Burchard, ‘from the hour of supper until the third hour of night, the great bell of the Capitol was rung, and many fires and beacons lit on the castle of Sant’Angelo and all over the city, and lights on the towers of the castle and the Capitol and elsewhere, inciting everyone to celebrate with joy. The next day, two jesters to whom Lucrezia had given her golden dress worth 300 ducats and other clothing, went about the city shouting ‘Viva the most illustrious Duchess of Ferrara! Viva Pope Alexander!’
On 15 September, Cesare arrived back from the Naples campaign; the next day the Borgia family celebrations in the Vatican began in earnest. The Florentine envoy Francesco Pepi reported on the 17th: ‘Although yesterday and today I went to the Palace to see the Pope, he has given audience to no one because he was occupied all yesterday concerning the marriage and dowry of Madonna Lucrezia, and in dancing, music and singing . . .’1 Alexander adored the sight of beautiful women dancing and of his daughter in particular. One evening he called the Ferrarese ambassadors to him to watch her, joking ‘that they might see the Duchess was not lame’. Both Cesare and Lucrezia were exhausted by the constant round of entertainments orga
nized by their indomitable father. On 23 September, Gherardo Saraceni, one of the Ferrarese envoys, reported that Cesare had received them fully dressed but lying on his bed: ‘I feared that he was sick, for last evening he danced without intermission, which he will do again tonight at the Pope’s palace, where the illustrious Duchess (Lucrezia) is going to sup.’ Two days later he wrote of Lucrezia: ‘The illustrious lady continues somewhat ailing and is greatly fatigued . . . The rest which she will have while His Holiness is away will do her good; for whenever she is at the Pope’s palace, the entire night, until two or three o’clock, is spent at dancing and at play, which fatigues her greatly.’ Lucrezia may have inherited her father’s mental resilience but not his physical robustness: her health was never strong. Alexander on the other hand never tired; one day when he was suffering from a bad cold and had lost a tooth, he remarked to the Ferrarese ambassador: ‘If the Duke [Ercole] were here, I would, even if my face were tied up, invite him to go and hunt wild boar.’
Lucrezia Borgia Page 13