Almost without exception, these Romagnol lords were a worthless lot, heartily detested by their subjects, whom they shamelessly exploited. Machiavelli wrote in the Discorsi:
Before those lords who ruled it were driven out by Pope Alexander VI, the Romagna was a nursery of all the worst crimes, the slightest occasion giving rise to wholesale rapine and murder. This resulted from the wickedness of these lords, and not, as they asserted, from the disposition of their subjects. For these princes being poor, yet choosing to live as if they were rich, were forced to resort to cruelties innumerable … and among other shameful devices contrived by them to extort money, they would pass laws prohibiting certain acts, and then be the first to give occasion for breaching them; nor would they chastise offenders until they saw many involved in the same offence; when they fell to punishing, not from any zeal for the laws they had made, but out of greed to realize the penalty …
But if the Romagna was a lawless, turbulent, disunited province, it was nonetheless a covetable possession. The soil of the Adriatic hinterland was extraordinarily fertile, and moreover, a factor of importance for a fifteenth-century military leader, the people were excellent soldiers. Since the Middle Ages, the condottieri who roamed Italy had drawn upon the Romagna, and particularly the area known as the Val di Lamone, as a source of recruits, and many of the most famous captains themselves, including Muzio Attendolo, founder of the Sforza dynasty, were Romagnols. If Cesare Borgia were able to wield the disunited province into a coherent whole, the strategic importance of the new state would not only put him among the first rank of the princes of Italy, but also offer interesting possibilities for expansion. The addition of Siena and Piombino, for example, would place him firmly astride the centre of Italy. Moreover, in dispossessing the Romagna vicars, Alexander was pursuing his favourite policy of killing two birds with one stone: not only would he thus provide Cesare with a rich lordship, but he would also be strengthening the temporal power of the Church by reasserting control over lands which had hitherto belonged to it in name only.
The opening round in the campaign against the lords of the Romagna was fired even before Cesare reached Italy, with the mission of Juan Borgia of Monreale as Cardinal Legate to Venice in September. The report of Monreale’s interview with the Signoria provides an interesting illustration of Borgia aims at the time, with the various alternatives they had in view:
The Legate said that he had a letter in cipher from Duke Valentino saying that he did not want Ferrara since it was a great state, and its lord old and loved by the people, and has three sons who would never leave him in peace if he had it, however he wanted Imola, Forlì and Pesaro, an undertaking which would be easy, or Siena and Piombino whichever our Signoria opined, and to chase out Messer Giovanni Bentivoglio from Bologna, and to reduce that city to the Church.
The Venetians’ cautious response to this feeler was to temporize, saying that they must first consult with the King of France.
Indeed Louis held the key to success for Cesare. To achieve their goals in the Romagna, Alexander and Cesare needed both the French King’s troops and the power of his name. The papal army was still relatively weak, and Alexander had no wish to employ Italian captains such as the Orsinis, who were unreliable and might make him too dependent upon them; he needed French soldiers and French commanders. On the diplomatic front he knew that the neighbouring powers, Florence and above all Venice, would oppose a direct papal attack on the Romagna, an area which each of them regarded as in their sphere of interest, and where most of the lords whom the Borgias intended to dispossess were under their protection. The enterprise would therefore have to be executed under the aegis of the King of France, whose name carried enough weight to compel both Florence and Venice to acceptance.
While the powers watched anxiously to see what the King would do, Alexander, sure of his man, came out into the open. In October he declared forfeit of their vicariates, on the grounds of non-payment of the census, the vicars of Rimini (Pandolfo Malatesta), Pesaro (Giovanni Sforza), Imola and Forlì (Caterina Sforza in the name of her son Ottaviano Riario), and Faenza (Astorre Manfredi). This two-pronged approach, the wielding of the spiritual weapons, deprivation or excommunication, followed by the temporal, physical attack, was to be the pattern of Borgia aggression. No one doubted that the attack would come, and Alexander’s announcement sent the threatened lords scurrying for protection. Giovanni Sforza journeyed to Venice to offer Pesaro to the Signoria, but Venice was prepared to sacrifice Pesaro to the Borgias in order to save Rimini and Faenza, which were both already under their umbrella. From Forlì Caterina Sforza, whose last husband had been a Medici, appealed to Florence for help, but the Signoria, fearful of offending Louis, decided on neutrality, thus tacitly abandoning her to her fate. No one was prepared to risk the King’s resentment by aiding any member of the doomed Sforza family, and Louis made his intentions quite clear. In a letter to Giovanni Bentivoglio of Bologna on 5 November he granted Bentivoglio the protection he had requested, but required him to give the Pope any assistance he might demand in recovering states for the Church. ‘In response to the request of Our Holy Father the Pope, and … wishing to aid him in the recovery of his lands and lordships of Imola and Forlì … we have constituted our dear and well-loved cousin the Duke of Valentinois as our lieutenant,’ he declared. Nor were they empty words: before he left Milan for France on 7 November, Louis ordered Yves d’Alègre with 300 lances and the Bailly de Dijon with some 4000 Swiss and Gascon infantry to place themselves at Cesare’s disposal.
For Cesare, just twenty-four, this was to be his first real military experience, the test of all the physical preparations he had put himself through since he had first decided to lay down the cardinalate. And it was taking place under the best possible circumstances: although he was personally in command of a company of a hundred French lances, overall responsibility for the expedition was shared with the other seasoned French captains. Moreover, as he had confidently informed the Venetian government, he expected the enterprise of Imola and Forlì to be an easy one. In the fifteen years that the Riario family had held the vicariates of those cities they had succeeded in making themselves almost exceptionally unpopular for the cruelty and rapacity of their rule, and Cesare was therefore well aware that the citizens would be unlikely to lay down their lives in defence of an extortionate dynasty. Moreover their ruler was a woman, Caterina Sforza.
But Caterina was no ordinary woman; admiringly known throughout Italy as ‘the virago’, she was noted not only for her beauty but for her courage and ruthlessness. She was in many ways as typical a figure of the Renaissance as Cesare himself. The descendant of the Sforzas, one of the great fighting families of Italy, she had had more experience of military affairs than the young man who was to face her. Aged only twenty-one she had held the Castel Sant’Angelo in the name of her husband, Girolamo Riario, during the violent days which followed the death of his uncle, Sixtus IV. Striding the battlements with a steel corselet over her satin dress, a falcon perched on her wrist, ‘she was. Much feared by her men, whether mounted or on foot, because when she had a weapon in her hand, she was proud and cruel’. She had taken a bloody revenge on the murderers of her first husband Girolamo Riario in 1488, and when the citizens of Forlì defied her before the citadel, threatening to murder her children, she is reputed to have raised her skirts and bluntly replied: ‘Look, I have the mould to make more.’ In time of war she wore a full suit of armour like a man’s except for the generously curved breastplate over her full bosom, and her son by Giovanni de’ Medici was to become one of the most famous – and the last – of the condottieri, Giovanni della Bande Nere.
And yet the fierce virago was at the same time totally feminine. She was a passionately sensual woman who had had three husbands, nine children and many lovers, three of whom were younger than herself. She was strikingly beautiful, tall, statuesque, naturally blonde, with a fine complexion of which she was particularly proud, and hands which were described as ‘soft
as sable’. She took great care of her beauty to the end of her life, even after imprisonment by the Borgias had prematurely aged her. In the year before her death she added a new formula for face lotion to her private book of recipes which included everything from sunburn remedies to abortifacients and slow-working poisons. She loved rich clothes and jewels, danced gracefully and spoke wittily with a charming eloquence which could degenerate into a storming tirade when she lost her temper. There was also a practical female side to her character: she was a good needlewoman and kept careful household accounts.
Despite her talents and formidable courage, Caterina’s position was precarious, as Cesare well knew. Abandoned by her ally Florence, she had no army to field against him, and was dependent on the doubtful loyalty of her subjects and the walls of her citadels of Imola and Forlì. Although the Rocca Ravaldino of Forlì had been considered in its time one of the strongest in Italy, it had been built in the mid-fifteenth century, was now outdated in terms of modern weaponry, and was unlikely to hold out for long against sustained bombardment by sophisticated French artillery of the type which Cesare had brought with him. In this desperate situation Caterina fought back with every weapon at her disposal. Even before Cesare reached Imola he was forced temporarily to abandon his march southward and make a precipitate dash to Rome – Caterina had attempted to assassinate the Pope. Her method was simple and ingenious and had nothing to do with the complicated formulas from her private book. Plague had been raging at Forlì; Caterina took a cloth that had been wrapped for several days round a corpse until sufficiently impregnated, she hoped, with the deadly germ, and placed it in a cane tube containing letters of surrender purportedly addressed by the citizens of Forlì to the Pope. Caterina’s messenger, one Tommasino of Forlì, who was employed at the Vatican, unwisely confided the plot to another servant, also from Forlì. The two Forlìvesi were arrested and thrown into the Castel Sant’Angelo, where, under torture, they made a full confession. On 18 November Cesare, according to Burchard, arrived ‘secretly’ at the Vatican and spent three days there conferring with the Pope before returning north. Eminent historians, including Gregorovius, Burckhardt and Caterina’s biographer Pasolini, have seen this story of the poison plot as a Borgia invention designed to justify their attack on Caterina and to blacken her in the eyes of potential allies such as Florence. But there seems to be no reason why such a further justification should have been necessary, and the evidence is that most contemporary chroniclers, including Burchard, Bernardi the historian of Forlì, Cattaneo, and Venetian diarists, believed it.
Whatever the truth of the story, Caterina’s machinations were of little avail. Her citizens of Imola and Forlì offered themselves to Cesare ‘like whores’, as the Venetian diarist Sanuto put it, even before his troops reached their walls. The one exception was the castellan of Imola, Dionigi da Naldo, member of a famous fighting family from the Val di Lamone, who was later to become one of Cesare’s most trusted captains, and his decision to resist was almost certainly based on the fact that his wife and children were hostages in the ferocious Caterina’s hands in the citadel of Forlì. Cesare entered Imola on 27 November; a week later, after bombardment by his artillery had knocked down part of the wall, the citadel surrendered. Following the example of Imola, the towns and strongholds of the contado yielded easily, and on 15 December Cesare left for Forlì, which he entered, lance at rest in the style of a conqueror, on 17 December, under torrential rain and continual bombardment from the citadel. From the rampart of Ravaldino Caterina must have watched with a certain malicious satisfaction the sufferings inflicted by the French soldiery upon her disloyal subjects, which Bernardi the contemporary chronicler of Forlì described as ‘similar to the pains of hell’. The Gascon infantry fully justified their reputation as riotous robbers, and the camp followers were if anything worse – ‘two thousand priests, friars, host-pickers, and prostitutes, and two thousand other rabble’ as Bernardi put it. The French mercenaries answered only to their own commanders, and Cesare was powerless to control them. He could only exhort the loudly complaining citizens to have patience, and told them ‘that if he lived to remain their lord, he swore on his word to make it up to them’. Cesare’s courteous treatment of the citizens of his towns, his tactful consideration for local officials whom he almost invariably reappointed to their offices, was, as Machiavelli later pointed out, an important factor in their continuing loyalty to him.
There remained the immediate problem of the defiant ‘Madonna’ in the citadel. The day after Christmas Cesare made two personal attempts to persuade her to surrender, riding ‘like a paladin’ to the brink of the moat to talk to her on the ramparts, but Caterina would have none of it, and even, according to a Venetian report, attempted to trap Cesare by luring him onto the drawbridge and raising it, but he escaped. So it was to be war to the bitter end between them. On 10 January Cesare set up his siege batteries, which, says Bernardi, he personally directed day and night; by the morning of the 12th a great breach had been opened in the wall and the order for the assault was given. The Swiss and Gascon mercenaries poured through the breach, and were soon engaged in fierce hand-to-hand fighting with the 2000 defenders hemmed in within the walls. In desperation Caterina ordered the stores and magazines to be fired, but the explosions and smoke hampered the defenders rather than the attackers. Caterina herself was seized by a Swiss constable in the command of the Bailly de Dijon, eager for the ransom money. Cesare, with Yves d’Alègre and the men-at-arms, rode through the gate of; the citadel to the keep where she was held. Several hours later she reappeared, supported by Cesare and d’Alègre; by the flickering light I of torches they waded through the water surrounding the keep, and led her down into the town, to the house of Luffo Numai where Cesare was lodged. For the Lady of Forlì the war was over. The assault, as Cesare reported to Ercole d’Este, had lasted only half an hour and 400 of the garrison had been killed.
Cesare’s pleasure in his victory was marred by news of the death of his friend and cousin, Juan Borgia of Monreale, of pneumonia at Urbino on 14 January, and he soon had other troubles on his hands arising from his possession of Caterina. Hearing that Caterina was to be sent to Rome, the Bailly de Dijon marched to the Palazzo Numai at the head of his Swiss mercenaries, seized her and took her back to his lodgings. The French, headed by Yves d’Alègre, who seems to have fallen under Caterina’s spell, clearly considered the holding of a woman as a prisoner to be against the rules of war, but the Bailly’s motive on this occasion was mercenary rather than chivalrous: he feared that if Caterina were sent to Rome he would lose the ransom due to his company for her capture. Meanwhile his Swiss took this opportunity to strike for a new contract, refusing to undertake the projected expedition against Pesaro unless this was done. After a furious row in the piazza of Forlì, during which Cesare threatened to call the people to arms to cut the foreign mercenaries to pieces, the affair was settled. Caterina was to be handed over to Cesare to be held at the instance of the King of France, and was to be given into the custody of the Pope on that condition. The Swiss got their new contract, and the Bailly 4000 ducats. In Machiavelli’s words, ‘Madonna was sold to il Valentino.’ Cesare was anxious to pursue his next objective, the dislodging from Pesaro of Giovanni Sforza, his erstwhile brother-in-law. On the afternoon of 23 January, having received the oath of fealty from the councillors of Forlì in his own name and that of the Pope, he left for Cesena in company with Yves d’Alègre, taking Caterina with him.
Cesare’s relations with his beautiful captive were naturally the subject of titillated speculation. There were rumours that he abused her; Bernardi, who was normally favourable to Cesare, wrote, without mentioning him by name, ‘of the injuries [committed] on the body of our poor and unfortunate lady, Caterina Sforza, who was possessed of great physical beauty …’ On the other hand, Sanuto, a persistently hostile source, made no mention of rape or outrage in his report dated 18 January 1500: ‘There is news that the lady of Forlì has been sent to Cesena; and
it seems that Duke Valentino has gone there [in fact Cesare at that time was still at Forlì], and, as I hear, was keeping the said lady, who is a most beautiful woman, daughter of Duke Galeazzo of Milan, day and night in his room; with whom, in the opinion of all, he is taking his pleasure.’ Given the reputation which both Cesare and Caterina shared for sensuality, the speculation is hardly surprising, and it is likely that there was a good deal of truth in the rumours concerning Cesare’s treatment of her. He was sensual, he also had a streak of cruelty in him, and the piquancy of having his beautiful enemy in his power would have appealed to his cruelty as well as his senses. Whether he actually raped and humiliated her as Bernardi seems to imply is impossible to establish – it certainly cannot be ruled out. He had none of his father’s tenderness for women, and his feelings for them never seem to have gone beyond the physical aspect. In a revealing remark to Bishop Soderini, discussing Caterina, he later said ‘that he took no account of women, nor did he esteem her, and if it had been up to him he would not have let her leave Sant’Angelo [where she was later imprisoned by the Borgias] …’ On the other hand, Caterina’s sexual record suggests that she may not have been an unwilling victim; the Milanese condottiere Trivulzio’s reaction when he heard of her capture by Cesare was ‘O good Madonna, now you will not lack for f…..f…..’ She was thirty-six, and had always had a penchant for young lovers, while Cesare, twelve years younger than she was, was acknowledged to be an exceptionally physically attractive man.
Cesare Borgia Page 14
