Cesare Borgia

by Sarah Bradford

  In August, after three years in Spain, Juan also returned to the Borgia family fold, leaving his pregnant wife and young son at the family palace in Gandia. Alexander had wished for his son’s return as early as May 1494, but Ferdinand, who did not trust his old ally, had preferred to keep Juan as a hostage for his father’s good behaviour as long as the French were in Italy. Juan made a splendid entry into the city on 10 August, received at the Porta Potese by Cesare himself at the head of a numerous retinue including all the cardinals – a signal honour – and their households, the ambassadors, Roman officials and nobility. At twenty, Juan had clearly not outgrown his fondness for ostentatious clothes; he wore a scarlet cap hung with pearls, a doublet of brown velvet the sleeves and breast of which blazed with jewels, black stockings embroidered with the golden crown and rays of Gandia, and a long Turkish mantle of gold brocade. His bay horse was adorned with gold fringes and silver bells which tinkled as he rode, and he was accompanied by six squires including a Moor dressed in gold brocade and crimson velvet, twelve splendid horses ridden by pages, and a crowd of dwarfs and buffoons. At the Vatican, Alexander welcomed the prodigal with open arms.

  What was Cesare’s reaction to the return of his father’s favourite son? In September 1496, only one month after Gandia’s arrival, Scalona reported to Isabella d’Este: ‘… every effort is made to conceal that these sons of the Pope are consumed with envy of each other …’ Certainly Juan was, as his stepfather Canale had described him to the Gonzagas in 1493, ‘the eye of His Holiness’. Yet there is no doubt that Alexander loved his eldest son; Scalona’s dispatches to the Gonzagas during that autumn and winter are testimonies to the depth of feeling for him. When Cesare, hunting near Tre Fontane, was nearly caught by the Orsinis, he reported: ‘If Valencia had been taken prisoner, we would have seen a new Pope in Rome …’ He recommended them to do everything they could to gain Cesare’s friendship because he, above all, ‘has the Pope in his hand’. And Cesare must have had the additional satisfaction of knowing that his father relied upon him as he could never rely upon Juan.

  Yet however sure Cesare may have been of Alexander’s loyalty, with his competitive nature and keen sense of his rights he must have resented his father’s doting preference for his younger brother, whose qualities of mind and character he felt to be so inferior to his own. Nor can he have relished the sight of that brother whom Zurita described as ‘a very mean young man, full of ideas of grandeur and bad thoughts, haughty, cruel and unreasonable’, caracoling in the place of honour before his father in public processions through Rome on a horse tinkling with silver bells. More perhaps than the open favouritism, he must have resented Juan’s association in Borgia affairs, where before he alone had been his father’s right-hand man. And there may have been other more private reasons for rivalry between the two brothers. Scandalmongers whispered that they competed for Sancia’s favours, and that Juan had replaced Cesare in her fickle affections. Competition there may have been, but certainly a year later Sancia was still known to be Cesare’s mistress. There were enough reasons for sibling rivalry between the two brothers, but no concrete evidence to show that the feeling between them was more dangerous than that. To talk of their being ‘consumed with envy of each other’ seems to be overstating the case.

  And Cesare knew the part he had to play in his father’s politico-dynastic plan. Scalona, reporting rumours that the Chamberlain, Raffaele Riario, might be poisoned in order to accelerate Cesare’s ecclesiastical career, wrote to Isabella d’Este: ‘Ascanio will then be Chamberlain, Valenza Vice-Chancellor, and thus he is preparing a way to the Papacy, to which he has already made great beginnings and by every means attends to it …’ The rumours about the liquidation of Riario were baseless scandal, but that they could be seriously entertained at all indicates that observers in Rome were already conscious of the Borgias’ boundless ambitions, and of the ruthlessness with which they were prepared to pursue them. For the moment, however, Alexander’s plans centred found Juan, who had been brought back to Rome to be his father’s instrument in the campaign he was planning against the Orsinis.

  Alexander was well aware that the Roman barons, the Orsinis and Colonnas, were the Achilles heel of the Papacy. Machiavelli, as a good Florentine, formed a very low opinion of them on his legation to Rome in October 1503. ‘These men here in the Roman Campagna,’ he wrote, ‘for the great hatreds between them, are robbers rather than soldiers. And being given up to their own private passions, they cannot serve a third party well. And these truces that they make, last only as long as the next occasion comes to injure each other …’ Indeed the enmity between the factions had traditionally been the weapon used by the popes to play one party off against the other. Nonetheless, since from their lands to the north and south of Rome they controlled the Roman Campagna and the access roads to the city, while leading powerful factions within Rome itself, they represented a perennial threat to the independence of the Papacy, while any power wishing to weaken and intimidate the Pope had only to take into its pay either the Colonnas or the Orsinis, whose swords were always for sale. Moreover, in calling them robbers rather than soldiers Machiavelli was generalizing to an unwarranted degree. Virginio Orsini, Bartolorneo d’Alviano (related by marriage to the Orsinis), and the Colonna chiefs Fabrizio and Prospero were amongst the most skilful and experienced condottieri of their day, and indeed Machiavelli himself was to make Prospero the hero of his Art of War. The feud between Borgias and Orsinis was a long-standing one, dating back to the days of Calixtus, and Alexander had not forgiven the family for their treachery in going over to the French in the last days of 1494. Now, in the temporary political lull that followed the departure of the French, it seemed to him that the opportunity had come to crush them once and for all. In July the remaining French troops in Naples capitulated at Atella, and Virginio Orsini, head of the clan, and his eldest legitimate son Giovanni Giordano, or Giangiordano, were thrown into the dungeons of Castel dell’Uovo at Naples.

  Alexander had chosen the right moment to move against the Orsinis, but the wrong instruments. The gentle, weakly Duke of Urbino, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, son of the great Federigo, who had inherited his father’s role as condottiere but not his talents, was to be overall commander. As second in command, and Borgia representative in a campaign that was also designed to acquire the strategic Orsini lands round Rome for the family, Alexander nominated the young and totally inexperienced Juan Gandia. Fabrizio Colonna was the only seasoned captain in the papal army intended to crush the fighting clan. On 26 October, to the sound of trumpets, Juan Gandia entered St Peter’s with Guidobaldo on his right to be invested respectively with the titles of Captain General of the Church and Gonfalonier. Alexander was quite overwhelmed with paternal affection and pride. As the Mantuan envoy wrote scornfully: ‘The Pope is so swollen up and inflated with this election [the Generalship] of his son, that he does not know what to do with himself, and this morning desired to set a feather in his cap with his own hands and sew on a jewel of great value.’

  The next day, 27 October, the papal army marched out to lay siege to the Orsini strongholds north of Rome. Initially the campaign was a success – within two months ten castles had fallen – but by mid-December things began to go wrong. The great Orsini fortress of Bracciano held out, commanded by the redoubtable Bartolomea Orsini, sister of Virginio and wife of Bartolomeo d’Alviano, the best of the Orsini captains. Guidobaldo was wounded early in the siege, which left Juan to carry on, with notable lack of success. The Orsinis made sallies up to the walls of Rome, and mocked Gandia, sending a large donkey into the papal camp with the message ‘I am the ambassador of the Duke of Gandia’ round its neck and a rude letter addressed to him under its tail. At Rome, Alexander, ill with chagrin and disappointment, absented himself from public appearances, and did not attend mass on Christmas Day. But worse was to come: after two futile and costly assaults, news reached the papal camp of the approach of a relieving force under Carlo Orsini, bastard son of Virgin
io, and Vitellozzo Vitelli of Città di Castello, another noted condottiere. Gandia raised the siege and marched north to intercept the enemy. At Soriano on 24 January the papal forces, in Burchard’s words, were ‘heavily defeated and in great dishonour’: Guidobaldo was captured, Juan, wounded in the face, saved himself by flight, 500 troops were killed and all the artillery lost.

  Alexander had no alternative but to make peace, on 5 February. The Orsinis, once more masters of the Campagna, regained all their castles, on payment of an indemnity of 50,000 ducats which they hoped to raise by ransoming Guidobaldo to the Pope. Alexander, always a tricky bargainer, retained the fortresses of Anguillara and Cerveteri against payment of the indemnity, and refused to ransom the unfortunate Guidobaldo. Publicly, at least, it appeared that his confidence in Juan was undimmed – within a fortnight of the Orsini peace Gandia was dispatched to besiege the fortress of Ostia – but this time the expedition was commanded by one of the greatest military leaders of the day, Gonsalvo de Cordoba, with a body of seasoned Spanish troops from Naples. The fortress capitulated on 9 March, and in the triumphal return of the papal troops to Rome the inept Gandia was accorded equal honours with Gonsalvo. Gonsalvo’s Spanish pride was offended; in the splendid Holy Week celebrations which followed he clearly showed his displeasure by refusing to take his appointed place at the ceremonies. ‘The cause of this …’ commented Burchard disapprovingly, ‘was the Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s son.’

  In that same Easter Week of 1497, Roman gossips were titillated by yet another Borgia family scandal; Lucrezia’s husband, Giovanni Sforza, left the palace of Santa Maria in Portico and fled precipitately and secretly to Pesaro. Stefano Taberna, the Milanese envoy, hinted at Lucrezia’s misconduct: ‘I suspect that something concerning the reputation of his wife might have led him into a serious quarrel and then to make a departure in this manner …’ Although the immediate cause of Sforza’s flight appears to have been that he had received direct or indirect warnings of threats made against him by Cesare, the probable underlying explanation was a change in the orientation of Borgia policy. In 1493 the Sforza–Milan connection had seemed a desirable one; by 1497 Giovanni was seen as an obstacle, even a dangerous one, to their dual objectives of papal independence and family advancement. No one doubted that the political lull was a temporary one, or that the French intended to return to Italy to assert their claims to Naples and now it seemed, through the Visconti inheritance, to Milan. Charles’ cousin, Louis of Orleans, had a dynastic right to Milan through his grandmother Valentina Visconti, and should the French decide to assert it Alexander had no wish to be tied to the Sforzas in the event of an invasion. The Borgias had therefore decided on divorce, so that Lucrezia should be free to find a more advantageous partner than the outworn Sforza connection. Giovanni’s recalcitrance in the face of Borgia pressure for the divorce was the cause of Cesare’s rumoured threats against him, and thus of his precipitate flight. Moreover, Alexander’s plans for the advancement of his family had now turned in the direction of Naples, where Ferrantino had been succeeded by his uncle Federigo.

  Alexander used the occasion of Federigo’s investiture to announce two important appointments for his sons. In a a secret consistory of 8 June, Cesare was nominated Legate for the coronation of the King of Naples, a blatantly nepotistic appointment in view of his youth and lack of seniority. But it was the investiture, in another secret consistory held the previous day, of Juan with the duchy of Benevento and the cities of Terracina and Pontecorvo which caused the greatest resentment. The alienation of these important papal cities as hereditary fiefs to Gandia was widely regarded as an intolerable scandal. Juan, whose arrogance had already earned him powerful enemies, became the primary target of anti-Borgia hostility.

  On Wednesday 14 June, exactly a week after his investiture, Gandia disappeared. On the afternoon of that day Juan and Cesare, accompanied by Cardinal Juan Borgia of Monreale, rode out to have supper with Vannozza in her vineyard, or country villa, near Monte S. Martino dei Monti. Returning as night was falling, they reached the bridge of Sant’Angelo leading to the Vatican, where Juan told his brother and his cousin that he must leave them as he must go somewhere alone. Both the Cardinals and Gandia’s servants, according to Scalona’s report, ‘did everything possible so that he should not go unaccompanied’: the streets of Rome at night were not safe for a rich young man alone, especially one with the enemies that Gandia had. But Juan was adamant; the most he would do for safety was to send one of his grooms back to his rooms in the Palace to fetch his light ‘night armour’, and then tell him to wait for him in the Piazza Judea. He took leave of Cesare and Cardinal Borgia and turned his mule in the direction of the Ghetto. As he did so, a masked man wrapped in a black cloak was seen to mount the mule behind him, and the two rode off together. Cesare and the Cardinal, uneasy, waited for some time by the bridge, hoping that he would return; when he did not, they reluctantly returned to the palace ‘with considerable anxiety and doubt in their minds’. Juan’s groom was attacked on his way to the Vatican to fetch the armour, and received slight stab-wounds. But ‘as he was a strong man’, says Scalona, he returned to the Piazza Judea to wait for his master. When Gandia did not return, he too went back to the palace, thinking that Juan was spending the night in the house of some Roman lady, as was frequently his custom. Neither the groom nor Cesare, for the same reason, reported Juan’s escapade to the Pope that night. On the morning of Thursday 15 June, Gandia’s servants reported to Alexander that he had not returned. The Pope was disturbed, but not seriously worried; he was used to his son’s amorous escapades. But as the day wore on and there was still no sign of Gandia, his alarm mounted, and in the evening he sent for Cesare and Cardinal Borgia and begged them to tell him where Juan was. They told him what they had learned from the groom, whereupon the Pope, according to Scalona, said ‘that if he was dead, he knew the origin and the cause’. Then ‘seized with mortal terror’, in Burchard’s words, he ordered a search to be made.

  As Alexander’s agents scoured the streets on the night of the 15th, the city was in an uproar; many citizens, fearing a wholesale vendetta, closed their shops and barricaded their doors. The Colonnas, Savellis, Orsinis and Caetanis fortified their palaces, while excited Spaniards roamed the streets with drawn swords. Finally, on Friday 16 June, feverish inquiries brought to light the report of Giorgio Schiavi, a timber dealer, who used to unload his wood near the Ospedale of San Girolamo degli Schiavoni, near the conduit used for discharging refuse into the Tiber. Schiavi was accustomed to keep a nightly watch on his timber to prevent it being stolen. When asked if he had seen anything on Wednesday night, he reported:

  That night about the hour of two, while I was guarding my wood, lying in my boat, two men on foot came out of the alley on the left of the Ospedale degli Schiavoni, onto the open way by the river. They looked cautiously about them to see that no one was passing, and not having found anyone, returned the way they had come into the same alley. Shortly afterwards, two other men came out of that same alley, also looking furtively round them; not seeing anybody, they made a signal to their companions. Then there appeared a rider on a white horse, carrying a body slung across its crupper behind him, the head and arms hanging to one side, the legs to the other, supported on the right by the two first men so that it should not fall off. Having reached the point from which refuse is thrown into the river, the horseman turned his horse so that its tail faced the river, then the two men who were standing on either side, taking the body, one by the hands and arms, the other by the feet and legs, flung it with all their strength into the river. To the horseman’s demand whether the body had sunk, they replied, ‘Yes, sir,’ then the horseman looked again at the river and saw the dead man’s cloak floating on the water, and asked what it was. They answered, ‘Sir, the cloak.’ Then he threw some stones at it and made it sink. This done, all five, including the other two who had come out of the alley to keep watch, went away by an alley which leads to the Hospital of San Giacomo.
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  When asked why he had not reported the incident to the authorities, Schiavi answered simply: ‘In the course of my life, on various nights, I have seen more than a hundred bodies thrown into the river right at this spot, and never heard of anyone troubling himself about them.’

  Following Schiavi’s report, all the fishermen and boatmen of Rome were called in to search the river with the promise of reward. First the body of an unjcnown man was discovered, then, about midday, near the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, a fisherman named Battistino da Taglia brought up in his net the body of a young man, fully clothed, with his gloves and a purse containing 30 ducats still hanging from his belt. Nine stab wounds were counted on the body, in the neck, head, body and legs; it was Gandia.

  Juan’s body was taken by boat to the castle of Sant’Angelo, where it was washed and richly dressed in brocade with the insignia of Captain General of the Church. At six o’clock on the same evening Juan was carried from the castle by the noblemen of his household to be buried in the family chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in a procession led by 120 torch-bearers, all the palace ecclesiastics, the papal chamberlains and shield-bearers, ‘all marching along weeping and wailing and in considerable disorder’, commented Burchard. He continued: ‘The body was borne on a magnificent bier so that all could see it, and it seemed that the Duke were not dead but sleeping,’ while another observer remarked that Juan looked ‘almost more handsome than when he was alive’.