Cesare had absolutely no intention of leaving Rome, where his position seemed to be growing stronger by the hour. He had now recalled Michelotto with his infantry from Rocca Soriana, and Baldassare da Scipione of Siena and the Imolese Taddeo da Volpe from the French camp with his men-at-arms. The cardinals, eager to accede to his every wish, allowed him not only to retain possession of Castel Sant’-Angelo but to keep his troops with him there. The prospective candidates for the Papacy vied with each other in the lavishness of their promises to him, in the hopes of winning the votes of his cardinals who, as Giustinian wrote sourly, ‘have more regard for the convenience of the Duke than anything else’. It is not surprising that Machiavelli, arriving in Rome on 27 October to observe the outcome of the conclave, reported to his government that Cesare was in a confident state of mind: ‘He is more in hopes than ever of doing great things, presupposing that there is a pope according to the wishes of his friends.’
And there, despite Cesare’s renewed confidence in himself and his future, lay the rub. The race for the Papacy that took place on the death of Pius III was in reality very different in character from that which had been run on the death of Alexander. There was really no question of either a French or Spanish candidate being elected; everyone was agreed that it must be an Italian, and among the Italians one man appeared in a very strong position: Giuliano della Rovere. In the six weeks he had spent in Rome Giuliano’s powerful personality had dominated affairs. His vociferous rejection of the French connection had succeeded in convincing the Italians, who, in Prospero Colonna’s words, were ‘fed up with the barbarians’, and even Ferdinand and Isabella, who, it was rumoured, now supported his candidature. Thus Cesare was really much less of a free agent than he liked to believe. Moreover, a few days before the conclave his position was seriously undermined by bad news from the Romagna, where the report of Pius’ death and his own flight to Sant’Angelo had encouraged his enemies and weakened the morale of his friends. On the 22nd the Ordelaffis entered Forlì, and on the 26th the Manfredis were back in Faenza, while Malatesta returned to Rimini and Giovanni Sforza captured the citadel of Pesaro, which up till now had held out for Cesare. Of all his Romagna cities, only Cesena and Imola remained to him, with a handful of scattered castles including the Rocca of Forlì.
The sudden crumbling of his Romagnol states seriously depressed Cesare and forced him to face up to reality. Although he had hitherto favoured d’Amboise, and had obtained five of his cardinals’ votes for him, the favour of France had in fact done nothing to stem the tide against him in the Romagna, and in the interests of keeping what still remained to him he thought it better to bow to the inevitable. On Sunday, 29 October, a meeting took place in the Vatican between Cesare and his cardinal followers and Giuliano della Rovere. A signed agreement was drawn up by which, according to Burchard, della Rovere promised that, once elected Pope, he would nominate Cesare Gonfalonier and Captain General, favour him and leave him in possession of his states; in return, all the Spanish cardinals promised to vote for his elevation to the Papacy. The outcome of the election was now a foregone conclusion: on 1 November, after the shortest conclave in the history of the Papacy, Giuliano della Rovere became Pope Julius II.
Cesare has been seriously criticized by historians, including Machiavelli, for his last-minute decision to support Giuliano, but in the circumstances it is hard to see what else he could have done. He could perhaps have held his hand and ordered his supporters to block Giuliano’s nomination in the hope of electing yet another compromise candidate, but with a probable majority of the College against him the likelihood was that Giuliano would have been elected anyway. Of the total of thirty-seven cardinals who took part in the conclave, Cesare could have counted on the votes of five ‘French’ cardinals, d’Amboise, Ascanio, Sanseverino, Medici and Volterra, to block Giuliano, while his own supporters numbered about eleven, together less than half the total voting strength of the College, and in the event he could not have been sure that some of the Spaniards might not either be suborned by promises or decide to obey the orders of their King and support Giuliano. Instead of fruitlessly banging his head against the wall, Cesare obviously thought it more sensible to come to terms with the man who was likely to win, and to extract firm promises from him before his election. Giuliano had the reputation of being a man of his word, and Cesare perforce clung to the hope that he would not break it. Giustinian, who had a private word with Giuliano on the eve of the conclave, formed a different opinion. ‘Necessity,’ Giuliano told the envoy, ‘constrains men to do that which they do not wish, even to place themselves in the hands of others; but once free afterwards, they act in a different manner …’
On the day after Julius’ election, Cesare moved from Castel Sant’-Angelo to the Vatican, where he was attended by forty servants and lodged in the apartments reserved for distinguished guests in the Camera palace built by Innocent VIII overlooking the square of St Peter’s. But this outward pomp meant nothing to him without the certainty that the promises Julius had made him were going to be fulfilled. Indeed it must have been a strange and unnerving experience for him to live as a guest in the palace in which for the past four years he had been master. From the windows overlooking the courtyard at the back of the Camera palace, he could see the apartments that had been his father’s and his own, in which he had lived the fullest years of his life with his family. But Alexander was dead, and Lucrezia far away at Ferrara; the Borgia apartments were occupied by Pope Julius. Now Cesare was indeed a lone wolf, whose future depended upon his relationship with the man whom he had helped to put in his father’s place.
XV
Confrontation
JULIUS II was sixty years old when he attained the object of his lifelong ambition. Men said of him that he had the soul of an emperor, and his appearance was as imperial as his temperament was imperious. Age had whitened his scanty hair, but his tall figure was still erect, and his impressive features had lost none of their impact in the thirty years since Melozzo da Forlì had painted him as Cardinal with his uncle Pope Sixtus. He was a man of volcanic temperament, who never joked, and seemed often absorbed in deep thought; when he acted it was with a dynamic energy, and he was given to fits of violent rage, driving envoys out of the room with his curses whirling round their heads, or striking at unlucky servants with his cane. Guicciardini wrote of him that he was notoriously difficult by nature and formidable with everyone, that he had spent his long life in restless action, in great enmities and friendships and constant intrigues, but that in his loftiness of spirit and magnificence he had always surpassed everyone else. The Venetian envoys Lippomanno and Capello described him as extremely acute, but added:
He has not the patience to listen quietly to what you say to him, and to take men as he finds them … No one has any influence over him, and he consults few or none … One cannot count upon him, for he changes his mind from hour to hour. Anything he has been thinking of overnight has to be carried out immediately the next morning and he insists on doing everything himself. It is almost impossible to describe how strong and violent and difficult to manage he is. In body and soul he has the nature of a giant.
Such a man well deserved the epithet ‘terrible’ which contemporaries used to describe Duke Valentino. An unwavering ambition combined with a subtle feeling for the winding currents of politics had enabled him to survive the difficulties and dangers of a long life to emerge as the triumphant holder of the papal tiara. His explosive temperament led men to underestimate his political abilities, as they confused the violence of his nature for openness. Guicciardini wrote that he had so long enjoyed the reputation of a generous and veracious man that even Alexander, his bitter enemy, admitted him to be a man of his word. Julius, unlike the Borgias, ‘knew very well that no one can more easily deceive others than one who usually had the reputation of never deceiving anyone’.
Machiavelli, at the end of his life, having known the principal kings, emperors, princes and soldiers of his time, consi
dered Julius II and Cesare Borgia as the two most able and exemplary political figures of the age. Now the two were face to face: Julius at sixty in a position of supreme power, Cesare, just twenty-eight, walking the precarious tightrope between success and disaster. Despite the obvious inequality of their respective positions, Cesare at the outset was in a mood of feverish confidence and hope. At twenty-eight he had already survived crises which would have overwhelmed most men, and still, despite the bewildering events of the past two months, he who had been called ‘Fortune’s son’ could not bring himself to believe that his luck had turned against him. His almost superstitious belief in himself and his ability to confront and outface fortune was the wellspring of the unshakeable self-confidence that had been the secret of his success and had so far sustained him on the dangerous course he had set himself. He still had money, and he counted on the fact that Julius, without money or troops, would have need of him. Julius had promised that he would confirm him as Gonfalonier of the Church and Vicar of Romagna, that he would send him to recover his Romagna states with his pontifical blessing as support, and that, as an outward pledge of their alliance, Cesare’s daughter Luisa, formerly promised to the young Gonzaga, should be betrothed to the Pope’s nephew, Francesco Maria della Rovere of Sinigallia. And so, as Machiavelli remarked: ‘The Duke lets himself be carried away by that spirited self-confidence of his, and believes that the word of others should be better kept than his own.’
Cesare, like his father, believed in Julius’ reputation, and was buoyed up by the hope that he would keep his promises to him. Indeed, at the outset of his pontificate Julius treated him with the greatest show of cordiality, and Cesare took these demonstrations at their face value, possibly because he so desperately needed to believe in their sincerity. At first his hopes seemed justified; two days after his election Julius dispatched a brief to Faenza exhorting the citizens to obey Cesare, ‘our beloved son’, ending ‘we who love him with a paternal love’. Cesare, pathetically hopeful, wrote to Imola on 7 November expressing the hope that very soon all his states of the Romagna would be reunited, adding: ‘And this through the medium of His Holiness, in whom we truly deem that he has revived for us the happy memory of Pope Alexander …’ But of the nature of that paternal love, and the memory which Julius himself retained of Alexander, Machiavelli, a more objective observer than Alexander’s son, took a quite different view. Reporting the various forecasts on the development of the situation between Cesare and Julius he wrote:
Others, who are no less sagacious [by which he meant himself], think that, inasmuch as the Pontiff had need of the Duke in his election, and having made him great promises therefore, he finds it advisable now to feed the Duke on hope; and they fear that, if the latter should not decide upon any other course than to remain in Rome, he may be kept there longer than may be agreeable to him; for the Pope’s innate hatred of him is notorious. And it is not to be supposed that Julius II will so quickly have forgotten the ten years of exile which he had to endure under Pope Alexander VI.
Cesare, it seems, had forgotten – or preferred to forget – those years. Throughout his life he evinced a curious blindness as to the effect of his own actions in the past, strange in a man so sensitive to political atmosphere. Like most men he subconsciously believed that others saw things as he did; for him politics were politics and emotion played no part in them, thus only the present or future advantage mattered, and in that light past injuries should be forgotten. He therefore seems to have been unaware of the depths of suspicion with which he was regarded by the powers of Italy, and by the Pope and the Florentines in particular, the two paths by which he hoped to make his way back to his former position. He saw the Pope intent on the recovery of the Romagna, yet without troops, captains or money, while he himself had the remnant of an army, considerable funds, and a name which would instantly attract the best men from all over Italy; moreover he still held several key fortresses in the Romagna, where the people had demonstrated a remarkable loyalty to him. As far as the Florentines were concerned, he saw their jealously and hostility towards Venetian aggression in the Romagna and thought that they would be happy to make common cause with him against the Republic of St Mark. He discounted the bitter hatred of the ordinary citizens of Florence for his actions against them. Obsessed with the future, he seems not to have realized that he must reap the fruits of his successes in the past, and of his reputation as the ‘terrible Valentino’. He therefore planned to leave for the Romagna as soon as Julius had confirmed him as Gonfalonier, and to do so with the promise of safe-conduct and support from the Florentines, but, in Machiavelli’s words: ‘Whoever believes that with great men new services wipe out old injuries, deceives himself.’
Yet Cesare was not entirely wrong in his reading of Julius’ mind and his situation. Beset by problems on his accession, the Pope had seemingly not yet decided how he should deal with the problem of Cesare and of the Romagna, where Venice was steadily encroaching in the vacuum left by Cesare’s difficulties after his father’s death. As far as the territorial power of the Papacy was concerned, Julius’ view was that of Alexander – the Papal States must remain under the control of the Church – but for the time being, with an empty treasury and no army at his disposal, he was physically powerless to reassert his supremacy. Julius therefore was strongly tempted to make use of Cesare as an instrument against the Venetians, and thus to fulfil his election promises to him. As Machiavelli wrote with his customary perspicacity:
He does not love il Valentino, but nonetheless he strings him along for two reasons: one to keep his word, of which men hold him most observant, and for the obligations he has towards him, being recognizant to him for the good part of the Papacy; the other, since it also seems to him, that His Holiness being without forces, the Duke is better placed to resist the Venetians.
Nevertheless, although Cesare was the obvious weapon to employ against Venice, Julius was in two minds as to the wisdom of letting him go. Cesare’s enemies bombarded him with pleas for his destruction, but Julius was not a man to listen to other people’s advice, nor did he need to be reminded of Cesare’s proven potential for causing trouble. Julius knew Rodrigo Borgia’s son as well as anyone, and like most of his contemporaries he regarded him as dangerous and unpredictable. Like a caged leopard, once set free there was no knowing which way he would jump, nor where he might pounce. And as a weapon he was a two-edged one, which could easily turn to injure the man who employed him: there were too many historical examples of popes helpless at the dictation of their powerful Captains General, as Eugenius IV had been in the face of Francesco Sforza. And so, as the first week of November passed, Cesare obtained nothing more concrete from Julius than kind words. By the second week, there were signs that the Pope’s attitude towards him was hardening; he had made up his mind that neither Cesare nor Venice should be allowed to take possession of the Romagna; the province should return to the direct rule of the Church. Referring to Cesare’s hopes of him in an interview with Giustinian on 11 November he said: ‘We do not wish that he should persuade himself that we will favour him, nor that he shall have even one rampart in the Romagna, and although we have promised him something, we intend that our promise should extend only to the security of his life and of the money and goods which he has stolen …’
Cesare, experienced as he was in the labyrinthine paths of Vatican politics, felt the quicksands shifting under his feet. Within a few days of Julius’ accession, Giustinian reported with satisfaction that Cesare had lost importance since the election, although it had been only a week ago, and Cesare with his trained political antennae can hardly have failed to sense this, however much he subconsciously refused to recognize it. His confidence was ebbing and his state of mind deteriorating under the uncertainties he faced. The strain of two months of crises following upon a near-fatal illness was telling upon him. In a long and painful interview with Cesare towards the end of the first week of November, Machiavelli found him greatly changed. In place of th
e self-controlled, masterful figure whose progress he had followed with an awed admiration from Imola to Sinigallia, he saw a man uncertain of himself, breaking into outbursts of bitter, almost hysterical anger. Cesare, having heard reports of the fall of Imola and the advance of the Venetians on Faenza, blamed the Florentines for not supporting him, and alternately stormed and threatened, saying that Florence too would be ruined and he would laugh at it, ‘and here he went on at length with words full of poison and anger …’ Machiavelli, whose favourable reports of Cesare had aroused suspicions in Florence that he had been corrupted by him, was at first surprised, then bored, tried to calm him down, and longed to get away from the spectacle of his ruined idol – this, he wrote, ‘seemed to take a thousand years’.
Part of Machiavelli’s mission to Rome was to discover Cesare’s intentions as to the Romagna, and whether there was any serious prospect of his being used against the Venetians there. At first his reports had recommended support for Cesare, but as he watched the deterioration in the man he washed his hands of il Valentino’s fate, and his dispatches concerning him took on a note of disillusioned detachment tinged with disgust. His nostrils were quick to scent the smell of doom and failure that now seemed to hang over Cesare like an aura, as he sensed the Pope’s secret desire to destroy him, and perceived that even his protector d’Amboise, bought off by the promise of the renewal of his Legateship to France, was weary of him. According to Machiavelli, d’Amboise, when told of Cesare’s behaviour at the interview, exclaimed angrily: ‘God has not up to now left any sin unpunished, and he won’t leave so those of that fellow!’
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