Niccolo’s income from the chancery was not even sufficient to cover his own expenses. While not a spendthrift, he had no talent for economy, and the money allotted him for his mission to France had been hopelessly inadequate. As a result, the long delegation had brought him to the brink of financial disaster.
The longer Niccolo pored over his accounts, the more disillusioned he became. No matter how many times he calculated and recalculated, the expense column always added up to a figure slightly greater than the sum of the income column. Dogged in the pursuit of familial duty, he persevered in spite of his frustration, but the numbers were giving him a headache.
He had all but resolved to tear the offending ledgers to shreds, when he heard a horse approaching. Eagerly snatching at any excuse to leave the accursed account books for a few minutes, Niccolo rose to investigate. He recognized the rider as one of the countless boys who loitered around the chanceries, hoping to pick up a few lire making deliveries or doing odd jobs. For his part, the boy recognized Niccolo and, without saying a word, handed him a letter.
Within the hour, Niccolo was in the saddle and urging his mount toward Florence. His account books were still open on his writing table. The cold dinner prepared for him by a local woman remained on the sideboard, uneaten. The letter had been brief and to the point—Valentino had struck!
The Italians called him Valentino because his official title, among others, was Duc de Valentinois. He had received the French duchy of Valentinois from the hands of King Louis XII, the same king who had been bluntly informed by Niccolo Machiavelli that he knew nothing of politics. Although this Valentino enjoyed a claim to a French duchy with the title and the income that went along with it, he was anything but French. In fact, he was of mixed Italian and Spanish blood.
A consummate military commander, Valentino had also procured a condotta, a military command, from the pope and been named vicar general of the Pontifical Armies. It was in this latter capacity as commander of the Papal Armies that he was waging his present campaign against the Romagna, the province to the north and east of Florence. Traditionally, the papacy claimed these territories as her own, and they were often designated as part of the loosely affiliated Papal States. But as the poet Dante said of the Romagnouli, they were a vicious race of men with tainted blood, a race of bastards and tyrants whose hearts were never without war. As might be expected from the denizens of such an unruly race, they did not accept lightly the yoke of Rome’s authority, and so it was not for the first time in history that a pope was obliged to send an army against them to assert his claims. Valentino, with his reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty, was ideally suited to lead that army.
But Valentino’s brilliance on the battlefield along with his reputed physical strength were not the only things that qualified him to lead the Papal Armies. He could, in fact, boast a unique and singular relationship with the papacy, having been a cardinal in the church before consecrating himself to the military life. Before laying aside the purple, Valentino was the only cardinal in the collegium said to have attained his position without having had to purchase it. This rare and coveted sacred honor, a position as one of the princes of the church, had been granted him freely, not because of his predisposition to sanctity, but because he was the bastard son of Pope Alexander VI. He was Caesar Borgia.
The pope was now called simply “Borgia,” both as a derogatory reference to his Spanish origins and because he had long since forfeited any claim to the title, “Your Holiness,” Of course that was not the only name by which he was known—there were those who insisted on the more precise designations of “antichrist” and “Beast of the Apocalypse.” Caring little for public opinion, Borgia had gone about his business and with the aid of his son Caesar had evolved a plan that was simple and elegant in conception, if somewhat startling in scope. Caesar, with his armies, would conquer and unite all of Italy under the auspices of the papacy. The pope would then be, in effect, the absolute ruler of the peninsula—an earthly as well as a spiritual monarch.
The church had weathered storms in the past, suffered through the depravities and excesses and scandals and indignities inflicted upon her by dozens of unworthy popes. But as an institution, she had survived. Now what Borgia had in mind was something new, something shocking, even to the jaded inhabitants of Rome. For the first time in history, a pope intended nothing less audacious than to pass the triple crown of the church, the papal tiara, on to his son! The papacy would become hereditary.
As Niccolo galloped toward Florence, the first steps toward the establishment of that dynasty had already been taken. Caesar had invaded the Romagna. And the ambition and the wrath of the Borgias was first directed, not against one of the wicked sons of that race of bastards and tyrants, but against one of her daughters—Caterina Sforza of Forli.
He covered the seven miles from San Casciano to Florence in less than an hour. Now a familiar and respected figure in the Signoria, Niccolo did not have to wait to be shown into the Great Council Room, but was allowed to make his own, hurried way there. The council was not in session when he arrived, but small knots of worried men were scattered around the immense chamber. Glancing quickly around, Niccolo noted that many of the dignitaries present were, like himself, dressed in riding clothes, a sign of the haste with which they had been assembled.
“Ah, the worthy secretary has arrived. Over here, Machiavelli. Your counsels are sorely needed.” It was Bishop Soderini who first spied Niccolo.
“Your Excellency,” Niccolo acknowledged his greeting with a curt bow and was instantly at his side. “What’s happened?”
“Your friend, the Countess of Forli, has been taken prisoner.” As usual, the bishop demonstrated the unruffled aplomb of the clergy in a crisis. He spoke with the measured gravity and concern of a confessor who turns calmly to the murderer and says, “Yes, my son, what is it?”
“Not killed?” asked Niccolo, surprised, but relieved too.
“Not yet,” said the unflappable bishop.
“She seems to be in the habit of making herself an obstacle in the path of advancing armies.” It was the bishop’s brother, Piero Soderini, who turned and spoke. Niccolo had always been intimidated by the majestic Soderini, whose stature and magnificent blond hair gave him the appearance of God the Father as a young man.
Soderini was a friend of the Machiavelli family and had often done business with Bernardo Machiavelli. As a boy, Niccolo had frequently been introduced to him, and the statuesque blond made a permanent impression on the boy. To this day, Niccolo could not entirely shake from his mind the sense of awe that Piero Soderini never failed to inspire in him at an early age. Now in his fifties, Soderini’s majesty was undiminished, although a wiser Niccolo allowed himself to wonder, looking at the man’s splendid blond locks, whether he tinted them.
Piero Soderini continued, “When Imola surrendered to Caesar, Caterina flew into a rage. ‘Rabbits!’ she pronounced them and prepared for her own defense. She cut down all the trees around the castle and flooded the surrounding countryside in an effort to slow Caesar’s advance. She said she was resolved to show the Spanish bastard that a woman was capable of firing cannon!”
Niccolo grinned to himself. He could imagine the indomitable Amazon once again on the ramparts, where she belonged.
“The siege lasted a fortnight and was beginning to be an embarrassment to the mighty Caesar, stopped in his tracks at a small castle defended by a woman. But Borgia’s firepower was second to none, and eventually a section of the walls collapsed into the moat. When the defenses were breached, she fell back to the keep. At this point there could not have been more than thirty men left alive with her, but they flung back every attack.” Here Soderini paused and fixed Niccolo with a curious look in his eye. “They say she cast a spell over them, to make them fight like that.”
“In a last desperate attempt, she set fire to the magazine and had it blown up in the face of the army that was pouring through the ruptured walls. Eventually they t
ook her.”
“But Caesar Borgia doesn’t take prisoners,” said Niccolo, “and when he does, it’s only to play with them for a while, as a cat plays with a mouse before eating it.”
Here Soderini smiled, “She outsmarted him. When she saw that all was lost, apparently she was infuriated by the idea of dying at the hands of the Borgia. She swore she wouldn’t give Caesar the satisfaction of killing her and so, at the last minute, she surrendered to the French troops that were fighting with him! In doing so, she made it absolutely clear that she yielded not to Borgia, but to France, and that she was placing her life and her honor under the protection of King Louis!”
“Bravo,” said Niccolo. “The tigress is safe.”
“Not exactly,” was Soderini’s reply. “She’s been ‘deposited’ in Rome under the joint supervision of the French and the pope. For now, Borgia won’t dare touch her. He can’t risk incurring the wrath of the French. But things could change.”
“And Caesar?” asked Niccolo, suddenly concerned, not about the fate of a friend, but about that of the republic.
“That’s the problem,” said Soderini. “Caesar.”
After his victory at Forli, Caesar quickly consolidated his gains in the Romagna, easily procuring the surrender of the other city-states there. His bold advance and his startling success began to worry the French, who could ill afford a united Italy, armed and dangerous, at their southern flank. Louis XII recalled the contingent of French troops serving under Caesar’s banner and temporarily put his conquests on hold. For Caesar Borgia, however, this was only a lull in the action, and he used the time to return to Rome, where he was greeted by his father, the pope, as a conquering hero.
A tremendous welcoming procession was arranged. When it came to making his children happy, the pope spared no expense. Hundreds of retainers marched through the streets with Caesar’s name emblazoned in silver on their black, ruffled, Spanish-style doublets. There was the usual multicolored display of civilian pomposity, religious extravagance, and military might. It is said that the horses had shoes of silver, which were fixed to their hooves with one nail only, permitting them to come loose and fall off, so that they might later to be retrieved by the grateful and adoring mobs.
On eleven pageant wagons, the triumphs of Caesar—the first Caesar, this one’s namesake, Julius Caesar—were represented, everything from the crossing of the Rubicon to the crowning with laurels on the Capitoline hill. The pope found the procession so moving and so beautiful that he demanded to see it twice. In one of the pageant wagons, was a scene depicting Caesar’s conquest and humiliation of Egypt. When he had subdued that nation and brought it to its knees under Rome’s dominion, Caesar then crowned his triumph by taking to his bed the Egyptian Queen, Cleopatra. In the Borgia reenactment of this event, in the place of the queen Cleopatra, rode Caterina Sforza. Despite their agreement with the French, the Borgia could not resist this piece of delicious irony. She appeared on a mighty white horse, clad in a black gown “in the Turkish style.” Her hands were bound with shackles of gold. Under her wood and papier-mâché horse, her feet had been chained together to prevent escape.
At the end of the procession, there was a solemn ceremony in which Caesar was invested as standard-bearer of the church. He knelt before his father, the supreme pontiff and successor of Saint Peter, and received from his consecrated hands the pennant and insignia of his sacred office. The standard-bearer’s biretta was placed on his head and the mantle wrapped around his shoulders. Through a thick cloud of incense, the pope was heard to utter in an emotional voice, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”
Caesar did not rest on his laurels in Rome for long. He had soon assembled a new army and was pressing north to complete his conquest of the Romagna, where the largest city, Bologna, still held out against him. In the course of that march, Caesar Borgia stopped at Urbino and sent a brief message to Florence. He demanded that the republic dispatch an envoy to confer with him on matters of the utmost importance. Immediately! It was this arrogant and abrupt summons that occasioned the hasty convocation of Florentine leaders and diplomats to which Niccolo had been called. Before the conference broke up late that night, two legations were dispatched, and they left the city at once, not even waiting for the light of day. Piero Soderini set out for Milan, which had been recently conquered by the French and where King Louis himself was now in residence. His brother Francesco, the bishop, was on his way to Urbino to answer the demands of the haughty Borgia. With him was the trusted secretary and selfless servant of the republic, Niccolo Machiavelli.
Niccolo and the bishop took two days to reach Urbino, since the prelate was unaccustomed to travel on horseback and insisted on setting what he called a “civilized” pace. Niccolo, eager to meet the son of the antichrist face-to-face, would unconsciously urge his mount on and then be forced to rein the horse in to await the pleasure of the good bishop.
Everything depended on France and the success of Piero’s suit to the French King. As Niccolo had explained to the Soderinis, the French had not taken the Borgia seriously. In fact, it was this lapse in judgment on their part that had occasioned Niccolo’s now-famous remark to King Louis that he knew nothing about politics.
As the Florentine representative, Niccolo had explained time and again to the monarch, that Florence posed no threat to anyone, certainly not to France. She asked only to be left alone to govern herself independently and enjoy the fruits of her success. She had no territorial ambitions beyond securing a deep-water harbor through which her commerce could pass unmolested. Pisa was the only object of her attentions.
The Borgias, on the other hand, were dangerous and could pose a threat to the interests of France. If they succeeded in bringing Italy or a good part of Italy under their rule, they could easily challenge their northern neighbor. What, then, would become of France’s designs on Milan? Of her hereditary claims to Naples? Of her very security against the threat of invasion from the south?
The Florentine position was simple. If the French would agree to support Florence against the Borgias, their conquest of the peninsula could not be completed, since Florence stood in the middle of Italy, like the heart in the center of a man, like a navel, like a womb.
Arguing the possible responses of King Louis to the Florentine petition, Bishop Soderini and Niccolo rode into the picturesque hilltop town of Urbino on a late summer afternoon. Winding their way through the steep streets of the mountain town on horseback was no mean feat, since at several junctures the horses were actually obliged to ascend stone staircases cut in the side of the mountain. As they made their approach to the Ducal Palace, the two Florentine envoys passed through a dusty little square in an unsavory part of town where an arresting spectacle was taking place.
The square was dominated by a smithy, and the scene was dominated by one who, judging from the size of his arms, was the blacksmith. The big, greasy smith had just succeeded in throwing on his back in the dirt an equally big, greasy opponent unlucky enough to have challenged him in a contest of strength. His rowdy companions were clapping him on his immense shoulders, congratulating him in having thus successfully concluded the brawl, when someone in the small crowd came forward and demanded the smith’s attention.
“Ho, smith,” he said in a clear voice, “have you got a horseshoe?”
The smith grunted and with a jerk of his head indicated a pile of recently forged shoes alongside a heavy anvil that stood in the doorway of his shop. The man ambled over to the pile and picked a horseshoe off the top, weighing it in his hand, turning it over and inspecting the workmanship. After a moment’s silent concentration, he looked up at the smith. “Shoddy work,” he said matter-of-factly.
The offended smith clenched his fists and glared at the other man. “I said shoddy work and I’ll prove it.” With those words, he gripped the horseshoe with both hands, held it across his chest, took a deep breath, and with little apparent effort, bent the curved iron shoe inward until the two ends touch
ed.
There was an audible gasp from several members of the blacksmith’s entourage. From the two mounted Florentine diplomats observing the scene, there were whispers of admiration. Then, with as little effort as it had taken him to bend it in, the village Hercules pulled the ends of the shoe back apart again until he held in his hands a broadly curved arc, scarcely recognizable as a proper horseshoe. Laughing, he threw it to the ground and spit. “Shoddy work,” he repeated. The blood was rising visibly in the enraged smith’s face, and bellowing something incoherent, he hurled himself at his challenger.
The other man stepped nimbly aside and avoided the headlong rush of the bullish smith. Twice he charged, twice the other man stepped out of his path. The animated crowd of onlookers was quick to take sides, shouting encouragement, jeering, making wagers, as the fighters danced and feinted, closing with each other. The smith lunged at his antagonist, throwing a punch that would have felled an ox, but the other man ducked, stepped inside, and drove a fist up into the blacksmith’s belly. The force of the blow lifted the burly smith off the ground for a second and sent him crashing into a courtyard wall. There was a cheer from the crowd, but the upstart Hercules had not finished with his opponent yet. Pursuing his advantage, he was on the dazed man in a second. He spun him around, face to the wall, and with staccato regularity, began administering a series of sharp, painful punches to the kidneys. The smith squealed with each new blow. The crowd howled for blood, not forgetting for a minute that the smith was a bully and had given as much, if not more, to many a man. Even the two educated Florentines seemed to be enjoying the rude sport.
He of the horseshoe had already been declared winner, and money was already changing hands to settle bets when the vanquished smith finally sagged to the ground with a groan. But the victor did not back off. He continued to punish the unfortunate smith with the same short, quick, cruel jabs, only this time his target was the blacksmith’s face. He pummeled mercilessly, the hammerblows breaking the smith’s nose in a burst of blood, cracking his jaw, sending his teeth flying, blackening his eyes, splitting his lips.
Machiavelli: The Novel Page 34
