As the winter wore on the tone of Florentine government dispatches to their envoy Machiavelli, on special mission at the court of France, became increasingly hysterical. Louis, they insisted, must make the Pope understand that Florence was under his protection:
From all parts come reports of the ill intentions of the Pope and the Duke, having taken Faenza, to attack us and change our constitution, and because there was there a large army under captains most inimical to the city and the Duke full of pride for the taking of Rimini and Pesaro, and having such confidence in his fortune that every undertaking even the most difficult seemed easy to him, and without any respect to attempt everything which he had in mind.
Machiavelli’s report of Louis’ attitude to the Borgias can have given them little cause for comfort: ‘Concerning the matters which may arise in Italy, the King holds the Pope in higher esteem than any other Italian power.’ And there were further disquieting reports that Alexander was working on d’Amboise’s ambition for the Legateship of France to persuade him to pressure Louis into supporting the Borgias’ Italian plans. As early as 26 October Cappello, the Florentine envoy to Rome, wrote in cipher to his government:
It is said that the Cardinal of Rouen [d’Amboise] has agreed with the Pope that if he works to ensure that the King will send French troops to his aid, the Pope will make him Legate of France. And because he [d’Amboise] had a great desire for this, it is thought he will induce the King to give in to the Pope. And when this happens, Bologna can consider itself lost, and I understand from a trustworthy source that the Pope has great hopes of this.
Meanwhile, unknown to the anxious Italian powers, a momentous change had taken place on the international scene, which made the Borgias’ prospects of success even more favourable. On 11 November a secret treaty was signed at Granada which provided for the partition of the kingdom of Naples between France and Spain. Louis was to have Naples, Gaeta, the Terra de Lavoro and the Abruzzi, with the titles of King of Naples and Jerusalem, while Ferdinand took Calabria and Apulia with the title of Duke. This cynical treaty, by which Ferdinand of Aragon abandoned his ally and kinsman the King of Naples on the fatuous pretext of his having sought help from the infidel Turk, was yet another instance of Louis’ incapacity to take the long view in international politics. In order to assure himself the undisputed possession of half the Kingdom, he was giving away the other half to the one power who represented the greatest long-term threat to his own interests in Italy, Whether the Borgias had wind of this agreement or not, and with their excellent intelligence service it is feasible to think that they did, from their own point of view it meant that Louis’ havering with regard to Italy was over, that the Naples campaign was decided upon, and that he would have need of them.
In the second week of November, Cesare, with a train of easy successes behind him, moved on Faenza, to meet with his first rebuff. In his interview with Collenuccio at Pesaro he had shown himself uncertain whether Faenza would give up as easily as had Rimini and Pesaro. Indeed, in this case his usual methods of subversion had failed; in the first week of November the discovery of a plot to hand Faenza over to him had resulted only in the arrest of the castellan and four citizens. For at Faenza, unlike Imola and Forlì, Rimini and Pesaro, the ruling Manfredi family was popular with the citizens, and the present lord, the fifteen-year-old Astorre III, had been brought up by the city council since the murder of his father Galeotto by his mother Francesca Bentivoglio. Despite the encouraging news on 7 November that the di Naldo brothers, headed by Dionigi, had handed over to him their nine castles of the Val di Lamone, he was now faced with the dismal prospect of a long and expensive siege in exceptionally bitter winter weather, with the campaigning season drawing to a close.
Cesare arrived before Faenza on 17 November, and began bombardment of the town. On the 20th the unexpected fall of part of the bastion led his more zealous troops into a disastrous unplanned assault. Cesare wrote to Guidobaldo of Urbino making light of the affair – only four men, he said, had been killed – but it seems probable that the repulse was more serious than he let on, and its effect on morale disproportionate to the actual casualities. The severe winter favoured the defenders, snug within their walls, while the besiegers shivered in their bivouacs under snow. Food supplies were running short as the roads were blocked, and money too, so that pay was irregular and a steady trickle of soldiers deserted. The Umbrians under Gian Paolo Baglioni carried on a running vendetta against their Spanish colleagues in revenge for the Spaniards’ appalling behaviour as they had passed through Umbria en route for the Romagna, graphically described by Matarazzo: ‘The Spaniards washed the feet of their horses in wine, and what they could not use they threw away. And when they departed … they shat in all the tuns of muscatel wine, and where they ate, shat beneath the tables, and where they found vases of sweetmeats they emptied them and filled them with filth …’ He concluded in a phrase illustrative of the general Italian feeling about Spaniards: ‘There never was a filthier people than these Spagnuoli marrani, true enemies of the Italians.’ Under the circumstances, Cesare saw no alternative but to suspend the campaign for the winter; having sent a formal demand for surrender into the city which received the discouraging reply that the Faventines were resolved ‘to defend the rule of the Manfredi until death’, he marched back to Forlì on 26 November, leaving a skeleton force under Vitellozzo to blockade the town.
Cesare spent the winter establishing himself in his new Romagna lordships. His troops were billeted in the various towns, and this time there were no complaints of outrageous behaviour. He was determined to make his rule popular with his new subjects, and made strenuous efforts to maintain discipline, hanging his own men for looting, and issuing edicts that troops must pay for their provisions on pain of death. As usual his life was a mixture of secrecy and swift movement, interspersed with exuberant pleasure. During the first three weeks he spent at Forlì he hardly showed himself. Indeed when Giovanni Vera, Cardinal of Salerno, came to Forlì on 5 December and Cesare rode out to meet him, the local chronicler Bernardi noted: ‘This was the first time His Excellency had ever come out of his house to pass through our city … It seemed a great marvel, as he had always been a recluse.’ Bernardi himself had an interview with his lord on 21 December, when Cesare in front of his whole court granted him a laureate as historian, with exemption from taxes so that he could pursue his literary work. No doubt for Cesare it was a useful exercise in public relations and a nod to posterity, but one cannot help feeling that he and the elegant men of letters of his court, who in Rome formed part of Paolo Cortese’s literary circle, regarded the whole thing as a joke, and amused themselves secretly at the expense of the humble barber-historian of Forlì. The poet Francesco Sperulo composed a verse on the occasion, while Cesare’s secretary Agapito wrote a few punning lines on Bernardi’s skill with the razor and the pen.
Cesare spent Christmas at Cesena in openly festive mood. It was his favourite city, which he intended to make the capital of his new state. He set up court in the former palace of the Malatesta Novello overlooking the main square of the town, under the great citadel on the hill, and here on Christmas Eve he invited the Councillors, the Anziani, and leading citizens to dinner. On Christmas Day the palace was thrown open to the populace, who crowded through the magnificent apartments and even the ducal bedchamber. Afterwards games were held on the piazza, in which the noblemen of his suite took part. There was the giostra dell’anello, when a ring was set upon a lance, which the competitors, charging on horseback, attempted to carry away on their own lances, and the quintana, when they rode full tilt at a dummy figure of a Turk, points being awarded according to the part of the body struck by their lances. Christmas was followed by carnival and, as in Rome the previous summer, Cesare appeared outwardly intent only on enjoying the festivities, flinging himself enthusiastically into carnival pranks ill-suited to the ducal dignity: on one occasion, with two of his friends, masked and armed with spades, he went through the streets
of the town spattering the passers-by with mud. He liked to ride out to the local hill villages and make a show of his strength, running races and wrestling with the tough Romagnol peasants. The local chroniclers were impressed: ‘He ran as swiftly as a horse, and many times ran races with the youths, to whom he gave a start and passed them nonetheless. With his bare hands he could break a horseshoe and any thick cord.’
In February Cesare went on to Imola, where his continued round of pleasure was the despair of the podestà (mayor) of the Venetian town of Ravenna, whose job it was to spy on the dangerous Duke and to report any suspicious movement to his government. His intelligence reports were dutiful, if repetitive: ‘The Duke is at Imola, feasting and hunting …’ until in mid-February 1501 Cesare really gave him something to write about as he became once again the centre of a cause célèbre. On 13 February a beautiful young noblewoman, Dorotea Malatesta Caracciolo, travelling between Cesare’s town of Porto Cesenatico towards Venetian territory at Cervia with a considerable escort, was abducted by armed men and several of her retinue seriously wounded. The podestà of Ravenna gleaned what he could from the lady’s injured chancellor and hastened to set it down with a liberal admixture of his own imagination:
The attackers who committed the crime rode separate on that night, and found one of our peasants on foot, whom they made their guide. There were ten horsemen, well equipped, armed with crossbows, and well mounted; and there were two ladies, who were protesting and lamenting greatly, their hair dishevelled … They had themselves guided to Galiano, two miles from Cesena, to the house of Nicoluzzo di Galiano, and burst down the door, ordered the lady to dismount, the fire to be lit and the supper prepared. She asked: ‘Where are you taking me?’ They answered: ‘Do not seek to know; you are in good hands and will be going to better ones, where you are awaited with high desire.’ She said: ‘Who is it?’ They replied: ‘Enough my lady, do not seek to know more.’ And they set her, weeping and groaning, down to eat. She did not want to eat, they threatened her, and she was forced to take an egg; then she was put to sleep with her companion and the peasant’s wife, and she was not molested that night. In the morning, after daybreak, they mounted eight horses and led the mule on which she was riding, and went with a new guide … in the direction of Franpuollo on the road to Forlì. And they were all Spaniards.
News of the kidnapping roused a storm of indignation in Venice. Dorotea, the twenty-three-year-old natural daughter of Roberto Malatesta of Rimini, was the wife of Giambattista Caracciolo, a Neapolitan nobleman serving as captain of infantry in the Venetian army, whom she had met at the court of Urbino where she had been brought up as a protégée of the Duchess Elisabetta. The marriage had been celebrated by proxy at Urbino, and at the time of the kidnapping Dorotea had been travelling under Venetian protection to join her husband, who was commanding the garrison of Gradisca against the Turks. At the request of Venice, Cesare had provided an armed escort for the lady, and the abduction had taken place just after her company had crossed into Venetian territory.
Who then was the man who awaited Dorotea Caracciolo with such ‘high desire’ that he would go to the lengths of kidnapping her under the very nose of Venice? To the Venetians the effrontery of the deed pointed unmistakably to the one man in the Romagna powerful enough to defy them – Cesare Borgia. ‘All Venice,’ wrote Sanuto, ‘the following morning after the news was received, displayed great grief. Thus this Duke Valentino, if he has had it done, has been ill-advised.’ Furious, the Council of Ten resolved to send their secretary Aloise Manenti that same day to Cesare ‘to complain of the matter without making any other salutation’, and to demand Dorotea’s restitution. They complained to the Papal Legate and the French ambassador in Venice, and sent a strongly worded letter of protest to their envoy in Rome to be shown to the Pope. In its fury and resentment the Venetian government did not mince its words; describing Dorotea as ‘one of the most beautiful and notable women in Italy’, it referred to her abduction as: ‘a case so to be abominated, detested and horrible, that we know not in what part of Hell worse could be imagined. This injury has been openly effected against the person and whole of our State: which you can imagine how it has penetrated to our very soul, seeing this to be the first fruit we gather for the love and our deserts towards the said lord Duke.’
Cesare’s reaction was predictable: one of innocent ignorance. At Imola, Manenti was forced to kick his heels waiting for an audience, while Cesare slept late as was his custom, having spent the night ‘in pleasures’. He was then received with informal arrogance by Cesare, alone, leaning casually on a balcony, as he protested that he knew nothing as to Dorotea’s whereabouts, adding insolently that ‘he did not lack for women’. When Manenti’s protests were seconded by the French ambassador, he roused himself to a show of righteous indignation against the culprit, whom he declared to be Diego Ramires, one of his Spanish captains. Ramires, he said, had been formerly in the service of the Duke of Urbino, and had had an affair with Dorotea there during carnival time, and in fact Ramires had shown him some embroidered shirts given him by Dorotea, and boasted to him of his passion. Like all good liars, Cesare, in laying the blame on Ramires, was probably telling a story which approximated fairly closely to the truth. Fantaguzzi, the chronicler of Cesena, recorded that Dorotea ‘was attacked and abducted … by Messer Diego Ramirro, soldier of Duke Valentino and formerly courtier of the Duke of Urbino’. It is certainly believable that the young and beautiful Dorotea should have had an affair with a dashing Spanish officer during carnival time at Urbino while her middle-aged husband awaited the Turks at Gradisca. It is not, however, likely that a Spanish captain on his own would have risked offending both his master the Duke and the Venetian Republic. Nor is it credible that the powerful lord of the Romagna could not have laid hands on Ramires if he had wanted to; the inescapable conclusion is that he did not.
In Rome, Alexander’s reaction, as described by the Venetian envoy, was one of shocked indignation; it was, he exclaimed, ‘a brutal, horrible and detestable thing, and I do not know what punishment whoever did it deserves. If the Duke has done it, he has lost his mind.’ Alexander’s dismay was probably genuine. It seems unlikely that Cesare would have informed his father beforehand of the planned escapade, and if he had, Alexander would certainly have opposed such an unwarranted insult to Venice, with whom he wished to be on good terms. When the envoy showed him the Venetians’ letter, he covered his eyes with his hands, dismissed him without a word, and went into an inner room to confer with the Cardinal of Capua. Later, talking with intimates of Cesare’s, he must have learned the truth, and decided that the only action he could take was to cover up for his wayward son. He showed the envoy a strongly worded brief to Cesare demanding punishment of the culprit, and declared that his son could not have been responsible since he was at Imola on the night of the incident. However, the envoy reported, ‘despite his bold words, nonetheless he showed how it had upset him’.
Letters of protest rained down upon Cesare, from Venice, the Pope, the King of France, even Francesco Gonzaga entered the fray on behalf of his sister Elisabetta; but he did not punish Ramires, nor did he restore Dorotea, whose whereabouts remained a mystery. Searching frantically for information, the podestà of Ravenna picked up rumours that she was being kept in the Rocca of Forlì. One of his spies talked to a wood carrier who reported that he had seen ‘at a balcony in the Rocca of Forlì two most beautiful women, and few, only those with permission, were admitted there, and the Duke came there often in disguise with two or three horsemen and entered by the Schiavonia gate.’ As time went by and there was no definite news of her, the Venetian government were driven to appear to accept the Borgias’ story in order to save face, while they nursed a deep resentment against Cesare, biding their time for revenge. The virtual disappearance of Dorotea is illustrative of the secrecy with which Cesare managed to veil his private life, for the evidence is that he did keep her. Over a year later, in December 1502, Sanuto reported briefly: ‘Wit
h the Duke, when he left Imola, was the wife of our captain of infantry.’
The kidnapping of Dorotea Caracciolo is interesting for the light which it throws upon Cesare’s character. It was not a romantic act – romance had no part in his make-up. Rather it was the satisfaction of a whim, motivated by what Machiavelli later called his ‘rash self-confidence’, executed for the devilry of it, gambling on the assurance that he would get away with it. No doubt it amused him to feel his power, and to twist the tail of the formidable Lion of St Mark. And yet the game was not really worth the candle, fuelling as it did the growing mistrust and resentment which Venice felt towards him. It is one of the contradictions of his complex character that, despite the clarity of his political perception and his own vengeful nature, Cesare seemed incapable of realizing the depth of the enmities which injuries like this could arouse.
Cesare Borgia Page 18
