The March of Folly

by Barbara Tuchman

  In Italy, the scandal of Alexander’s election might have suggested to him that it would be useful to give some time and thought to religious governance. Instead, he immediately set about attending to his political fences. He married his daughter Lucrezia to a Sforza and his son Jofré to a granddaughter of the troublesome King of Naples, and in his first year as Pope, enlarged the Sacred College, to the rage and resentment of the opposition cardinals, who, as known partisans of della Rovere at the conclave, had not shared in the golden shower. Prevailing over their bitter resistance, Alexander named eleven new cardinals including Alessandro Farnese, brother of his mistress; a scion of the d’Estes, age fifteen, and his own son Cesare, whose unsuitability to an ecclesiastical career was so patent that he soon resigned it for the more congenial occupations of war, murder and associated skills. The other appointees were judiciously selected to please all the powers, one each for the Empire, France, England, Spain, Hungary, Venice, Milan and Rome, among them several men of piety and learning. The influx consolidated Alexander’s control of the College and caused della Rovere, when he learned of the appointments, to utter “a loud exclamation” and fall ill from outrage. Alexander was eventually to appoint a total of 43 cardinals, including seventeen Spaniards and five members of his own family, with the exact sum that each paid for his hat being meticulously recorded by Burchard in his diary.

  The Papacy’s detachment from religion over the preceding fifty years, its sinking reputation and aversion to reform, gave the French plans for invasion an added impulse. In the general weakening of papal authority and revenues caused by the suction of the national churches over the past century, the French Church had won considerable autonomy. At the same time, it was troubled by ecclesiastical corruption in its own realm. Preachers castigated the decline in flaming sermons, serious critics discussed it, synods were held to draw up measures of reform—all without much practical effect. In these years, wrote a Frenchman, reform was the most frequent topic of conversation. In 1493, when the campaign to make good the French royal claim to Naples was under discussion, Charles VIII summoned a commission at Tours to prepare a program which would validate his march through Italy as a crusade for reform, with the understood if not explicit intention of calling a Council to depose Alexander VI on grounds of simony. This was not a spontaneous idea of the King’s. A poor ungainly creature of the decrepit Valois line, with his head full of dreams of chivalric glory and crusade against the Turks, he had added religious reform to his concerns under the fierce persuasions of Cardinal della Rovere, who, in his ungovernable hatred of Alexander, had come to France for the express purpose of destroying him. A Pope “so full of vices, so abominable in the eyes of the world” must be removed, he insisted to the King, in order that a new Pope might be elected.

  Just such action, initiated by the Cardinals and resting on the support of France, had caused the Schism of recent memory, and nothing in Christian history had done the Church such irretrievable harm. That della Rovere and his party could even contemplate a repetition, no matter what argument Alexander’s crimes provided, was irresponsibility hardly explicable except by virtue of the folly that infected each of the Renaissance rulers of the Church.

  Alexander had good reason to fear della Rovere’s influence on the King of France, especially if he were to direct the befuddled royal mind toward a reformation of the Church. According to Guicciardini, no admirer of the popes, reform was to Alexander a thought “terrible beyond anything else.” Considering that as time went on, Alexander poisoned, imprisoned or otherwise immobilized inconvenient opponents, including cardinals, it is a wonder that he did not lock up della Rovere, but his enemy and successor was already too outstanding, and besides, he was careful to stay outside Rome and take up his residence in a fortress.

  Reports coming out of France set the Italian states into a frantic commotion of combining and recombining in preparation to resist the foreigner—or, if necessary, join him. The great question for the papal and secular rulers was whether larger advantage could be gained by siding with Naples or with France. Ferrante of Naples, whose kingdom was the French objective, engaged in a blizzard of deals and counter-deals with the Pope and princes, but, as a life-long conspirator, he could not wean himself from secretly arranging to undercut his own alliances. He died of his efforts within a year, succeeded by his son Alfonso. Mutual mistrust governed his neighbors while they gave themselves over (as George Meredith wrote in a very different context) to “drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning short-sightedly, plotting dementedly.”

  The move by Milan that precipitated the French invasion qualified in all these respects. It began with a complaint to Ferrante by his granddaughter Isabella, daughter of Alfonso and wife of the rightful heir to Milan, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, that she and her husband were deprived of their rightful place and made subordinate in everything to the regent, Ludovico il Moro, and his wife, the capable Beatrice d’Este. Ferrante responded with such furious menaces as to convince Ludovico that his regency, which he had no intention of resigning, would be safer if Ferrante and his house were deposed. Ludovico allied himself with the disaffected barons of Naples who shared this aim, and, to make sure of the outcome, he invited Charles VIII to enter Italy and establish his claim to the Neapolitan throne. This was taking a serious risk, because the French monarchy through the Orléans line had a stronger claim to Milan than to Naples, but Ludovico, an adventurer at heart, felt confident he could contain that threat. That was an error as events proved.

  Out of such motives and calculations, Italy was opened to invasion, although at the last moment it almost failed to take place. Charles’ advisers, doubtful of the enterprise, caused the King so much worry by stressing the difficulties that lay ahead and the untrustworthiness of Ludovico and Italians in general that he halted his army when it was already on the march. The timely appearance of della Rovere, fervent in exhortation, rekindled his enthusiasm. In September 1494, a French army of 60,000 crossed the Alps carrying with them, in Guicciardini’s words, for once not exaggerated, “the seeds of innumerable calamities.”

  At the outset, after swinging this way and that in something of a panic, Alexander joined a league of defense with Florence and Naples, which came apart as soon as made. Florence defected owing to a crisis of nerves on the part of Piero de’ Medici, eldest son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who had died two years earlier. Suddenly fainthearted in the face of the enemy, Piero secretly arranged terms for opening his city to the French. From this triumph in Florence, Charles’ army moved on unresisted to Rome, where the Pope, after desperate twists to avoid receiving him, succumbed to superior might. The invaders’ armed parade on entering Rome took six hours to pass, in a train of cavalry and foot, archers and crossbowmen, Swiss mercenaries with halberds and lances, mailed knights, royal bodyguard carrying iron maces on their shoulders, all followed by the fearful rumble of 36 wheeled cannon drawn over the cobblestones. The city quaked under the huge influx. “Requisitions are fearful,” reported the envoy of Mantua, “murders innumerable, one hears nothing but moaning and weeping. In all the memory of man the Church has never been in such evil plight.”

  Negotiations between the conquerors and the Papacy were pressed hard. Though forced to abandon Naples and hand over Prince Djem (who shortly died in French custody), Alexander held firm against two demands: he refused to deliver Castel Sant’ Angelo into French hands, or formally to invest Charles with the crown of Naples. Beleaguered as Alexander was, this took strength of mind, even if he had to give the French the right of passage to Naples through papal territory. The one subject that was not at issue during all the sessions was reform. Despite constant prodding by Cardinal della Rovere and his party, the frayed, fumbling French King was no man to shoulder a Council, sponsor reform or depose a Pope. That cup passed from Alexander; he was left in place. The French moved out and on to Naples without meeting combat; the only violence was their own sack and brutality in places seized along the way. King
Alfonso avoided the crisis by abdicating and entering a monastery; his son Ferrante II threw away his sword and fled.

  The reality of French presence in southern Italy galvanized at last a union of resistance, initiated by Spain. Determined not to allow French control of Naples, which Spain wanted for herself, King Ferdinand induced the Emperor Maximilian, who already feared French expansion, to join him, offering as inducement his daughter Joanna in a marriage of fateful consequence to Maximilian’s son Philip. With Spain and the Empire as allies, the Papacy and Milan could now safely turn against France. When even Venice joined, a combination called the League of Venice, later called the Holy League, came into being in 1495, causing the French, who had made themselves hated in Naples, to fear being cut off in the Italian boot. They marched for home and, after fighting at Fornovo in Lombardy on their way out, the only battle of the campaign, a scrambled combat without decisive effect, made their way back to France. Alfonso and his son promptly reappeared to resume the rule of Naples.

  Although no one, least of all France, emerged with profit from this momentous if senseless adventure, the powers, undeterred by empty result, returned again and again to the same arena to compete over Italy’s body. From this time on, wars, leagues, battles, tangled diplomacy, fluid and shifting alignments succeeded one another until they were to culminate in ferocious climax—the Sack of Rome in 1527 by Spanish and Imperial troops. Every twist and maneuver of the Italian wars of these 33 years has been devotedly followed and exhaustively recorded in the history books far beyond the general interest they can sustain today. The significance of the particulars in history’s permanent annals is virtually nil except as a study in the human capacity for conflict. There were certain historic consequences, some important, some minor but memorable: the Florentines, outraged by Piero’s surrender, rose against him, threw out the Medici and declared a republic; the Spanish-Hapsburg marriage produced in the future Emperor Charles V the controlling factor of the next century; Ludovico il Moro, the hotspur of Milan, paid for his folly in a French prison, where he died; at Pavia in the most famous battle of the wars, a King of France, Francis I, was captured and grasped immortality in the quotation books with “All is lost save honor.”

  Otherwise, the Italian wars are significant for their effect in further politicizing and debasing the Papacy. Taking the same part as any secular state, treating and dealing, raising armies and fighting, it became entirely absorbed in the things that are Caesar’s, with the result that it was perceived as no better than secular—a factor that was to make possible the Sack of Rome. In proportion to their absorption in the realm of Caesar, the popes had less time or concern for the things of God. Continually engaged in the quid pro quos of one alliance or another, they neglected more than ever the internal problems of the Church and the religious community and hardly noticed the signs of coming crisis in their own sphere.

  In Florence, beginning in 1490, the frenzied preaching of a Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, prior of San Marco, was a voice of religious distress which Alexander managed to ignore for seven years while it took control of an entire city and aroused echoes throughout Italy. Savonarola was not so much a forerunner of Luther as the type of zealot and scourge of sin that can arise in any disturbed time and sway mobs by his fanaticism. He represented his own time in that his impulse came from revulsion at the low estate and corruption of the Church and in his espousal of reform as necessary to reopen the way to Heaven through a purified clergy. His prophecy that reform would be followed by a period of happiness and well-being for all Christendom exerted a strong appeal. Preaching neither doctrinal reform nor separation from Rome, he poured wrath upon the sins of the people and clergy, whose source he traced to the wickedness of popes and hierarchy. His scoldings and apocalyptic prophesies, according to Pico della Mirandola, “caused such terror, alarm, sobbing and tears that everybody went about the city bewildered, more dead than alive.” His prophecy that Lorenzo the Magnificent and Innocent VIII would both die in 1492, which they shortly did, endowed him with awesome power. He inspired bonfires into which crowds with sobs and hysteria threw their luxuries and valuables, their paintings, fine garments and jewelry. He roused bands of children to scour the city for “vanities” to be burned. He called upon his followers to reform their own lives, to renounce profane festivals and games, usury and vendettas, and to restore religious observance.

  It was when he castigated the Church that Savonarola’s outrage rang fiercest. “Popes and prelates speak against pride and ambition and they are plunged in it up to their ears. They preach chastity and keep mistresses.… They think only of the world and worldly things; they care nothing for souls.” They have made the Church “a house of ill-fame … a prostitute who sits upon the throne of Solomon and signals to the passers-by. Whoever can pay enters and does what he wishes, but he who wishes for good is thrown out. Thus, O prostituted Church, you have unveiled your abuse before the eyes of the entire world and your poisoned breath rises to the heavens.”

  That there was some truth in this verbiage did not excite Rome, long accustomed to censorious zealots. Savonarola became politically dangerous, however, when he hailed Charles VIII as the instrument of reform sent by the Lord, “as I have long predicted,” to cure the ills of Italy and reform the Church. Championship of the French was his fatal move, for it made him a threat to the new rulers of Florence and brought him unpleasantly to the notice of the Pope. The former demanded his suppression, but Alexander, anxious to avoid a popular outcry, took action only when Savonarola’s denunciations of himself and the hierarchy became too pointed to ignore, most especially when Savonarola called for a Council to remove the Pope on grounds of simony.

  At first, Alexander attempted to silence Savonarola quietly by simply forbidding him to preach, but prophets filled with the voice of God are not easily silenced. Savonarola defied the order on the ground that Alexander, by his crimes, had lost his authority as Holy Father and “is no longer a Christian. He is an infidel, a heretic and as such has ceased to be Pope.” Alexander’s answer was excommunication, which Savonarola promptly defied by giving communion and celebrating Mass. Alexander then ordered the Florentine authorities to silence the preacher themselves under pain of excommunicating the whole city. Public sentiment had by now turned against Savonarola owing to a test by fire into which he was drawn by his enemies and could not sustain. Imprisoned by the authorities of Florence and tortured to extract a confession of fraud, tortured again by papal examiners for a confession of heresy, he was turned back for execution by the civil arm. To the howls and hisses of the mob, he was hanged and burned in 1498. The thunder was silenced but the hostility to the hierarchy it had voiced remained.

  Itinerant preachers, hermits and friars took up the theme. Some fanatic, some mad, all had disgust with the Church in common and responded to a widespread public sentiment. Anyone who assumed a mission to preach reform could be sure of an audience. They were not a new phenomenon. As a form of entertainment for the common people, one of the few they had, lay preachers and preaching friars had long wandered from town to town attracting huge multitudes who listened patiently for hours at a time to lengthy sermons held in the public squares because the churches could not hold the throngs. In 1448 as many as 15,000 were reported to have come to hear a famous Franciscan, Roberto da Lecce, preach for four hours in Perugia. Lashing the evils of the time, exhorting the people to lead better lives and abandon sin, the preachers were important for the popular response they evoked. Their sermons usually ended with mass “conversions” and gifts of gratitude to the speaker. A favorite prophecy as the century turned was of an “angelic Pope” who would initiate reform, to be followed, as Savonarola had promised, by a better world. A group of some twenty working-class disciples in Florence elected their own “pope,” who told the followers that until reform was accomplished, it was useless to go to confession because there were no priests worthy of the name. His words spread as token of some great approaching change.

/>   Borgia family affairs had now succeeded in scandalizing an age inured to most excesses. Conceiving that marriage ties to the royal family of Naples would be in his interest, Alexander annulled the marriage of his daughter Lucrezia to Giovanni Sforza in order to marry her to Alfonso, the Neapolitan heir. The outraged husband, fiercely denying the charge of non-consummation, resisted the divorce loudly and publicly, but under heavy political and financial pressures engineered by the Pope was forced to give way, and even to return his wife’s dowry. Amid revelry in the Vatican, Lucrezia was married to a handsome new husband, whom according to all accounts she genuinely loved, but the insult to the Sforzas and offense to the marriage sacrament increased Alexander’s disrepute. Giovanni Sforza added to it with the charge that Alexander had been activated by incestuous desire for his own daughter. Though hard to sustain in view of her rapid remarriage, the tale aided the accretion of ever more lurid slanders that clustered around Alexander and gathered credibility from the vices of his son Cesare.