The Borgias

by G. J. Meyer

  In the midst of these horrors it was necessary to get the dead pope buried, and the funeral obsequies were themselves tinged with horror. A fight over silver candlesticks broke out between monks carrying Alexander’s body from the palace to St. Peter’s Basilica and the guards assigned to protect them, so that the corpse was dumped on the ground and for a time abandoned. By the time it was laid out for public viewing, it had swelled up grotesquely and turned dark, a black distended tongue protruding from the mouth. In the end brute force had to be used to cram it into its coffin like an overstuffed sack of rotting potatoes.

  From the start and as usual there was much talk of poisoning. Because whenever the Borgias figured in gossip of this kind they were cast as the villains, this time it was necessary to explain how Alexander and Cesare were murderers and victims at the same time. As the most popular account had it, the two of them had intended to murder their host Cardinal Castelli but had somehow lost track of which goblets of wine were safe and ended up inadvertently poisoning themselves. Why had a full week passed before they fell ill? We have encountered this question before, and the answer that has come to be accepted by the whole world. The Borgias not only knew how to brew a poison unavailable to the rest of the world, they could administer it in such ways as to take effect immediately or weeks later.

  The truth of the matter is obvious and simple. Cardinal Castelli, Pope Alexander, and Cesare were all infected, and the pontiff was killed, by the malaria-bearing mosquitoes of the Tiber valley. It happened in a city notorious for its midsummer epidemics, during an August when even more people than usual were dying. As a priest at the Vatican wrote four days before Alexander’s death, “It is not surprising that His Holiness and His Excellency should be ill, because every single outstanding man in this court is either ill or else sickening, especially those of the palace, owing to the bad condition of the air.” All the recorded symptoms of the two Borgias are consistent with a diagnosis of tertian malarial fever. As for that Borgia poison with its quasi-magical properties, five centuries later the world is still waiting for someone to rediscover it.

  As Cesare recovered consciousness, he was made aware that the armies of France and Spain now loomed over Rome like a pair of watchful vultures. A French force commanded by one of La Trémoille’s condottieri, Francesco Gonzaga, marquess of Mantua (Lucrezia’s brother-in-law by virtue of his marriage to her husband’s sister), had broken off its march toward Naples upon learning of Alexander’s death. It was camped at Viterbo north of Rome, awaiting developments; the sudden prospect of a papal election, and the hope of installing his chief minister Cardinal d’Amboise on the pontifical throne, had altered Louis XII’s priorities considerably. The Spaniard Gonsalvo, meanwhile, was shifting his forces northward after securing the city of Naples. Some of those forces were laying siege to the port city of Gaeta, essential to the ability of the French army to resupply itself in southern Italy, while others prepared to meet La Trémoille’s offensive. With that offensive now in abeyance, Gonsalvo too shifted his focus to Rome and to the question of the papal succession.

  Cesare, from his bed in the Vatican, sent messages to the commanders on both sides, keeping his options open by giving each the impression that the writer was his special friend. His communications with Gonsalvo were entrusted to his private secretary, Agapito Geraldini, whom he authorized to enter into any agreement that seemed sufficiently advantageous. It happened that Geraldini reached the Spanish headquarters at almost the same time that two of Gonsalvo’s most valued condottieri, the same Fabrizio and Prospero Colonna who had helped him win the Battle of Cerignola four months earlier, requested permission to pull their troops out of the siege of Gaeta and take them temporarily to Rome. They knew of the disorder there, and they wanted to reclaim the palaces and estates that the Borgias had taken from them while the opportunity was open. Their request could hardly have been more timely from Gonsalvo’s perspective, and it set the wheels of intrigue turning. He not only consented but gave the Colonna some of his own troops to augment theirs, instructing them to attend to several matters on his behalf while in Rome. They were to offer protection to the city’s Spanish residents and make a sufficient show of force to keep the cardinals from feeling intimidated by the proximity of the French army as they undertook the business of electing a new pope. Also—Gonsalvo got Geraldini’s assent to this—as soon as Cesare was strong enough to travel, the Colonna were to escort him southward to Naples. All this having been agreed, Gonsalvo dispatched twelve galleys northward to secure the port of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, to keep it from falling into French hands.

  Adding to Cesare’s torments, news was reaching the Vatican of the accelerating disintegration of his little empire. Like ravenous wolves moving in on crippled prey, the signori of Venice were helping Guidobaldo da Montefeltro to make yet another happy return to his ancestral seat at Urbino, Giovanni Sforza to reclaim the lordship of Pesaro, and Pandolfo Malatesta to take possession of his family seat at Rimini. Florence for its part was abetting the restoration of the Varani in Camerino and Jacopo d’Appiano in Piombino, and the Baglioni had returned to Perugia. Imola was fighting off an attempted return of the Riarii—a result of the loyalty to Cesare that had taken root in the heart of the Romagna. Cesena too was standing firm, along with several smaller strongholds. Elsewhere, for example at Faenza and Forlì, the Borgias’ Spanish captains had been forced to withdraw into their rocca and defy demands for their surrender.

  Cesare once again seemed doomed. In far-off Ferrara, where she was reported to have gone half-mad with grief upon learning of Alexander’s death, Lucrezia was trying to muster help for her brother. But her father-in-law, Duke Ercole d’Este, wanted nothing to do with the problems of his son’s wife’s brother, especially as becoming involved could have put him once again at odds with Venice. His son Alfonso likewise took no interest.

  In the absence of a pope, the College of Cardinals was responsible for governing Rome. Though its members also had to organize a conclave, they were unwilling to do any such thing with Cesare ensconced in the Vatican, much of the city in the hands of thugs, and two foreign armies looking on threateningly from the sidelines. The cardinals refused even to enter the Vatican so long as Cesare remained there, using as their base the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva on the other side of the Tiber. To break the impasse it was going to be necessary to get Cesare out of the city. Only then might Gonzaga be persuaded to withdraw his French forces, Gonsalvo to do the same with the Spaniards, and the baronial gangs to disband. The Venetian ambassador took the lead, calling on Cesare and probing for a basis on which to negotiate his departure. As the days passed, the ambassador was joined by the Italian cardinals—the Spanish contingent was too loyal to Cesare to be of any use—and by the ambassadors of France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. Finally the pressure became irresistible, and at the end of August Cesare promised that he would depart within three days and swear loyalty to the Sacred College. But only if certain conditions were met. He insisted on retaining his position as captain-general of the papal army until the election of the next pope, and on receiving a pledge from Venice to remove its troops from the Romagna. Once this was agreed, it became possible to get commitments from the French and Spanish to keep not only their own troops but the Orsini and Colonna far enough from Rome for the cardinals to gather in conclave without feeling under duress. Cesare, forced to accept that he could not be in Rome when Alexander’s successor was elected, did what he could to ensure that the deadliest of his enemies would be absent as well: he sent riders northward with instructions to intercept Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere as he came southward from Avignon and keep him from proceeding farther.

  It was a diminished Cesare Borgia who, on September 2, rode out of the Vatican surrounded by two hundred mounted knights dispatched by Michelotto to serve as his personal guard. No longer astride a prancing charger as in the past, this time he traveled as an invalid concealed behind the curtains of a litter borne on the should
ers of eight stout retainers. He had lost much weight, his feet were grossly swollen, and three weeks after first falling ill he continued to be racked with headaches. A bizarre assortment of his relatives—his mother Vannozza, a couple of his bastard daughters with their mothers, his sister-in-law and onetime mistress Sancia, Lucrezia’s little son Rodrigo, the even littler Infant of Rome, and an equally mysterious newborn called Rodrigo Borgia who was inevitably rumored to be the late pope’s bastard but was more likely another of Cesare’s—had been sent on ahead. They awaited him, under guard, at the papal town of Civita Castellana, the rocca of which Alexander had recently expanded and reinforced.

  As Cesare set out from the Vatican, Prospero Colonna with a body of his soldiers waited for him on the other side of the Tiber. In the days preceding, communicating through intermediaries, the two had arrived at an understanding: they would combine forces and attack the Orsini who had been ravaging Rome, destroying them if possible and at a minimum driving them from the city. They would then go south, joining Gonsalvo and his Spanish army. The properties that Pope Alexander had taken from the Colonna and given to Lucrezia’s son Rodrigo would be restored to them, and the boy would be betrothed to a Colonna girl. But Cesare had been negotiating with the French as well, trying to maintain his options. Before crossing the river he managed to slip away, litter and bearers and all. Instead of joining Colonna, he made his way northward to Nepi, near an encampment of French troops.

  There is some evidence that, in going north instead of south, Cesare was following the advice of his astrologers. Be that as it may, the decision was understandable in pragmatic terms. The French rather than the Spanish had it within their power to help him with his most pressing problems—especially the disintegration of his new duchy of Romagna. And Louis XII showed himself willing to be helpful. He ordered the rebellious cities to submit to their Borgia governors, and they quickly began to comply. Venice, seeing that the game it had been playing was up, withdrew and left its Romagnese clients to fend for themselves. Florence, in an almost comically hasty reversal of its recent boldness, declared its allegiance to the duke of Romagna. With numbing speed, Cesare’s situation became no longer hopeless. The Colonna, understandably, felt that Cesare had betrayed them, and Gonsalvo had reason to feel the same.

  All eyes turned now to Rome and the business of choosing a pope. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere succeeded in reaching the Vatican in spite of the efforts of Cesare’s agents to intercept him on his way south. Immediately he set about recruiting support. Cardinal Georges d’Amboise arrived as well and began campaigning on his own behalf. He was accompanied, to general astonishment, by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, who had persuaded Louis XII to release him from prison by promising to use his experience and connections on Amboise’s behalf. Once free and in Rome, however, Sforza showed himself to be interested in no one’s candidacy except his own. The result was one of the most impenetrably complicated conclaves in generations, one that all the powers of Europe tried to turn to their own benefit but in which no one had more at stake than Cesare Borgia. The outcome would determine whether he would, at this decisive point, be able to draw upon enough papal support to save himself from ruin.

  Ferdinand of Spain had entertained hopes of getting another of his countrymen elected. When it became clear that the Italian cardinals would never allow this, he settled for using his influence to block the candidacy of Cardinal della Rovere, whom he regarded, understandably if not quite correctly, as an agent of France. This freed the eleven Spanish cardinals present to do as they wished, so long as they continued to shun della Rovere. To a man they now took their direction from Cesare, to whom a number of them were related and several others owed their red hats. With only four French cardinals voting, Louis XII had to forget about winning the throne for d’Amboise. The power to decide should have rested with the conclave’s twenty-two Italian members but, as had happened before, they were too divided to form an effective bloc. The result was reminiscent of the election of Alonso Borgia almost half a century before. Deadlocked, the cardinals finally cobbled together a two-thirds majority by turning to the darkest of dark-horse candidates, an innocuous figure in such markedly feeble health that there was no possibility of his living more than a few years.

  This was Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, only sixty-four years old but so decrepit as to be incapable even of kneeling. Son of a sister of Pope Pius II, who had given him his red hat and whose surname he had taken, in forty-three years as a cardinal he had shown himself to be honest, well intentioned, and kindly, free of scandal and devoid of political ambition. He had also always been on good terms with the Borgias, which turned out to be a decisive factor: the Spanish bloc provided the votes that gave him the election. There could scarcely have been a better outcome for Cesare. Pope Pius III took office knowing that he could not have been elected without the support of his Spanish colleagues and, behind them, of Cesare himself.

  News of the election of an Italian was received with joy in the streets of Rome. But it disgusted the French, who sullenly broke camp and resumed their advance on Naples, taking with them soldiers Cesare had hoped to use in the Romagna. Gonsalvo recalled Fabrizio and Prospero Colonna from Rome and, partly out of need but also partly in retaliation, sent orders for Cesare’s Spanish troops to detach themselves from his service and come south. Most of the Spaniards obeyed, Gonsalvo’s position as viceroy and Cesare’s reconnection with the French making it virtually treasonous to do otherwise. Cesare thereby lost at a stroke most of his army including all of its heavy cavalry. The ever-faithful Michelotto, however, chose to remain. Cesare found himself almost alone at Nepi and without the means to make war on anyone. Exposed and vulnerable, fearful of an attack by the resurgent Orsini, he sent a message to Pius III asking permission to return to Rome.

  The pope, who in response to complaints from Cardinal della Rovere would later claim to have believed that Cesare was dying, agreed to his return after receiving Louis XII’s approval and Cesare’s promise to keep the peace in the Romagna and elsewhere. Further demonstrations of papal favor followed. Pius sent an exhortation to the people of the Romagna, urging them to accept Cesare’s lordship. He echoed the French king’s warning to Venice not to meddle in Cesare’s domains, and declared his intention to keep Cesare as gonfalonier of Rome.

  There were now more claims on Cesare’s time and attention than he would have been able to respond to if he had been in good health, which he was not. He badly needed to visit the Romagna, to reassert his authority there and see to it that his garrisons were properly deployed and his administration still functioning. But he no less urgently needed to be in Rome, where enemies in abundance were doing their best to poison the pope’s mind against him, and he had nothing to counterbalance their slanders except the force of his own personality and—he had to hope—Pius’s friendship and sense of obligation. He was burning through his reserves of cash at an unsustainable rate, many of his remaining troops were Romagnese amateurs who wanted to go home, and it was largely out of hatred for him that the Orsini chose this most awkward of moments to sever their connections to the French court and join forces with the Colonna and Gonsalvo.

  Taking his menagerie of a family with him, Cesare left Nepi in time to be on hand for Pius III’s coronation on October 8. It was, for him, an event worthy of celebration: the pontiff confirmed him in all his vicariates and as gonfalonier and installed him in the palace of his brother-in-law, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, absent from Rome since making himself a target of Borgia anger by becoming sexually involved both with Sancia and with Cesare’s favorite mistress. But the streets were still out of control, and neither Pius nor Cesare had nearly enough troops to restore order. Clearly the city was no safer than Nepi had been—much less safe, actually, with Orsini, Colonna, and Savelli gangs roaming the streets unrestrained. Cesare decided that it was necessary to move on again. And so he gathered up his dependents and his soldiers and set out for the north. Their immediate destination was Soriano
, a hilltop town east of Viterbo that Michelotto had been sent ahead to secure and where he was now waiting with his troops. Before they could get out of Rome, however, they were headed off by a superior force of Orsini and obliged to turn back. They scrambled to the safety of the Castel Sant’Angelo through the covered passageway that Pope Alexander had improved for just such a purpose. Upon learning that his palace in the Borgo district was being pillaged and put to the torch, Cesare dispatched a messenger with orders for Michelotto to bring his men back to Rome with all possible speed.

  Cesare was for all practical purposes a prisoner in the Castel when, on October 18, the world was informed of the death of Pius III. Eighteen days had passed since Pius’s election, only ten since his coronation. This time the usual rumors of poisoning could not plausibly be focused on Cesare, the death being so obviously a devastating setback for him, so suspicion settled on della Rovere instead. The cardinal could not have cared less. He had been hungering for the papacy since long before losing the election of 1492 to Rodrigo Borgia, and the passing of the years had done nothing to dull his appetite. Now, after long years of exile, he was at the Vatican as the politicking that always preceded a conclave got under way, determined that this time the prize would not slip out of his grasp.