The Borgias

by Paul Strathern

  In mid-February, under pressure from the Spanish, Julius II permitted Borgia to travel down the Tiber to Ostia, where he would be released if all went according to plan and his Romagna fortresses were surrendered to papal authority. To Borgia’s consternation, on his arrival at Ostia he was immediately marched into confinement within the formidable walls of the local fortress. On orders from Julius II, he was being held in the custody of the Spanish Cardinal Carvajal, who had given his solemn word not to release Borgia until news arrived that his last outposts in the Romagna were in papal hands.

  On 19 April news reached Ostia that Borgia’s Romagna fortresses had surrendered to the Pope. Whereupon, Cardinal Carjaval released Borgia. By chance the news reached Ostia before it had reached Rome. As it turned out, Julius II had had no intention of releasing Borgia and was furious when he heard that Borgia was free.

  At this point Borgia made a fateful decision. He could have sailed north to seek the protection of the French in Milan. Despite Borgia’s treacherous behaviour, Louis XII still remained favourably disposed towards him. In fact, Louis XII was expecting him to journey to Milan, where he intended that Borgia should be given a command in the French army. But instead Borgia chose to head south for Naples, where he had already sent his family for safe keeping. He was greeted at Naples by his brother Jofrè, and Sancia (who had become the mistress of the Italian condottiere Prospero Colonna), as well as the Spanish cardinals who had taken up residence in this new Spanish territory.

  Naples itself was ruled by Gonsalvo de Córdoba, as viceroy for King Ferdinand of Spain. Despite past differences, Gonsalvo de Córdoba welcomed Borgia, and began assisting him in raising troops and artillery for a coming campaign to take Florence. In fact, Gonsalvo had secretly reached an agreement with Borgia that in the event of Borgia taking Florence, Gonsalvo would be created Lord of Piombino and thus rule his own independent state. Gonsalvo had begun to chafe under the irksome commands of King Ferdinand. But Gonsalvo was also a realist, and when he received an order from Spain that Borgia was to be imprisoned he obeyed at once. Julius II had persuaded King Ferdinand that they should form an alliance against the French, and the price for this arrangement was the imprisonment of Borgia. This hit Borgia like a bolt from the blue, on the very night before he was due to set sail for Pisa and his invasion of Florence. In yet another twist of fate, Borgia was marched off to the Castel Nuovo, where he was imprisoned in the notorious cell know as Il Forno (‘The Oven’), which lived up to its name during the stifling heat of the Neapolitan summer. Julius II had requested that Gonsalvo should force Borgia into surrendering his fortress at Forli, which was still holding out in the Romagna, despite earlier reports of its surrender. Gonsalvo assured Borgia that if he ordered the surrender of Forli, he would be set free. After sweating it out in Il Forno for two months, Borgia finally signed the order for the surrender of Forli. On 11 August Borgia’s besieged commander Mirafonte swung open the gates of Forli and marched out his troops beneath the Borgia banner, ‘all proclaiming their allegiance with loud cries of “César! César!”.’

  On 20 August Cesare Borgia was ‘released’ from the Castel Nuovo, only to find himself being marched aboard a galley bound for Spain, under the command of his enemy Prospero Colonna. When Borgia arrived in Spain, King Ferdinand immediately had him dragged off in chains to the mountain fortress of Chinchilla, 700 feet up in the remote hinterland of Valencia. Julius II had informed King Ferdinand that Borgia must never again be allowed to set foot in Italy, and in return King Ferdinand promised to put Borgia on trial for the murder of his own brother Juan, Duke of Gandia (a Spanish dukedom), as well the murder of his brother-in-law Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglie (a Neapolitan dukedom, now under Spanish jurisdiction).

  Yet even now, help was at hand for Borgia. Although Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglie, had been the one husband whom Lucrezia Borgia had loved, she had no wish to see Cesare stand trial for his murder. Lucrezia began using all her influence to secure her beloved brother’s release. Ercole I had died in June, which meant that Lucrezia had succeeded as Duchess of Ferrara, and she was determined to use her new position to the utmost on Cesare’s behalf. She made contact with Juan d’Albret, King of Navarre, who was brother-in-law to both Lucrezia and Cesare through Cesare’s marriage to Charlotte d’Albret. Together Lucrezia and Juan petitioned both Julius II and King Ferdinand to grant clemency to Cesare. All this proved to no avail, and Borgia continued to rot in his cell at Chinchilla. Months passed, autumn turned into winter and then into spring 1505. By summer Borgia could bear it no longer. As a privileged prisoner, he was permitted to take the air once a day on the battlements in the company of the prison governor de Guzman. One day, Borgia hurled himself on de Guzman, attempting to throw him off the battlements. But owing to the debilitating effects of his illness and his months of confinement, Borgia was no longer the man he had once been. He was quickly overpowered and dragged back to his cell. Later the following month Borgia was transferred to the more formidable fortress of La Motta, 300 miles from the Mediterranean coast in the garrison town of Medina del Campo.

  Then once again Fortuna came to Borgia’s rescue. On 26 December 1505 Queen Isabella of Spain died. Queen Isabella had acted as a stabilizing influence on her overly suspicious husband King Ferdinand, who now began to suspect even his most loyal supporters. The first to incur King Ferdinand’s suspicions was Gonsalvo de Córdoba, whom the king suspected of plotting to declare himself ruler of Naples. King Ferdinand decided that the only way to rescue this situation was to send Borgia, along with Spanish troops, to depose Gonsalvo. It looked as if Borgia would return to Italy at the head of an army, depose Gonsalvo, and himself become viceroy of Naples. From here it would have been but a short step to recovering the Romagna . . . But sanity prevailed, as King Ferdinand’s advisors pointed out the consequences of his plan for Borgia. Ferdinand would outrage Julius II, as well as making an enemy of Louis XII of France, who had finally washed his hands of Borgia and wished for closer ties with Spain.

  Surprisingly, conditions at La Motta now improved for Borgia. The commander of the local garrison and prison governor, de Cardenas, had taken a liking to Borgia, admiring him for his previous exploits in Italy and the loyalty he had inspired in his Spanish commanders. De Cardenas had also begun to hear rumours of King Ferdinand’s former plans for Borgia, and realized that if the political climate changed there remained a chance that Borgia might yet end up as his commanding officer. Consequently, Borgia soon found himself supplied with manservants, who brought him meals from de Cardenas’s personal kitchens. Either through these servants, or from de Cardenas himself, Borgia also came into possession of a long rope.

  During the night of 25 October 1506 Borgia began lowering himself from the high walls of La Motta, where three armed accomplices were waiting with horses at the bottom of the dry moat. The alarm was immediately raised and the sentries on the battlements cut the rope, causing Borgia to fall and injure himself. But the waiting accomplices bundled him on to a horse and all four galloped off into the night. They then headed into the mountains for a castle on de Cardenas’s estate. Borgia would hide here for a month, recovering from his injury. Despite armed men scouring the countryside, Borgia then made it north to the Bay of Biscay, where he took ship east along the coast to the refuge of the Kingdom of Navarre. Here he was welcomed in the capital Pamplona* with open arms by the king, his brother-in-law Juan d’Albret. Cesare triumphantly proclaimed his escape by sending a note to Lucrezia in Ferrara, signed ‘César, Duke of Romagna’. When news of Borgia’s escape from La Motta reached Italy it caused a sensation, and there was much quiet rejoicing in the cities of the Romagna.

  Borgia immediately began reviewing his plans to regain the lost territory of his dukedom. The treasury of Navarre was empty, and King Juan was therefore unable to assist him. Meanwhile, Borgia’s 300,000 ducats remained in the banks of Genoa. (There had been rumours that he had somehow managed to extract his monies, and that these had been carried to Rome. Yet desp
ite Julius II mounting an exhaustive search of the city nothing was found, and it seems probable that the entire sum remained in Genoa.) Never one to be daunted, Borgia now boldly wrote to Louis XII, suggesting that he should be paid the handsome dowry which he had been promised on his marriage to Charlotte d’Albret. Louis XII was unimpressed with this appeal to his honour by a man who had so many times failed to honour his own promises.

  Uncharacteristically, Borgia now chose to repay the loyalty shown to him by King Juan. Navarre was split by a vicious civil war after a revolt by Beaumonte, Count of Lerin, and Borgia volunteered his services to King Juan, who appointed him commander of the royal forces. Finally recovered from his injuries, and no longer beset by illness,* Borgia once again cut an imposing figure before the stocky fighting men of Navarre. A contemporary report described him as ‘a big man, strong, handsome and in the full flight of his manhood’.

  In January 1507 the newly revitalized Cesare Borgia led 10,000 Navarese troops into the field. He was soon pressing Beaumonte’s forces into retreat. On 11 March, as night was falling, Borgia reached Viana, close to the border, some fifty miles south-west of Pamplona. He immediately laid siege to the local fortress, which was held by Luis, the eldest son of Beaumonte. During that night, under cover of a torrential storm, Beaumonte’s men managed to penetrate Borgia’s lines and get into the city. Borgia woke at dawn to a scene of chaos and confusion. After donning his chainmail and breastplate he mounted his horse and set off with his guards in pursuit of a fleeing column of Beaumonte’s men. During the course of this chase Borgia became cut off from his men and rode into a ravine, where he was ambushed by three knights. One knight plunged his lance under Borgia’s arm, where his body was unprotected by his armour, dislodging him from his horse. With daggers drawn, the knights then fell upon him, stabbing him to death. Not realizing the identity of their victim, the knights stripped him of his crested helmet and armour, leaving his butchered body as ‘bare as a hand’ where it had fallen.

  Thus did Cesare Borgia, erstwhile Duke of Romagna, succumb to the final twist of Fortuna on an obscure mountainside in northern Spain on 12 March 1507. He was just thirty-one years old.

  Borgia had at last been deserted by power and fortune. But he would not be deserted by Machiavelli, who chose to make him the central figure in his masterpiece of political science The Prince. Machiavelli would use Borgia as an exemplar,

  for all those who rise through strength and good fortune . . . Had he succeeded, as he was on the point of doing when Alexander VI died, he would have gained such power and reputation that he might then have stood alone, reliant on his own strength and prowess, no longer subject to the power and fortune of others.

  The Prince, and its Borgia hero, would embody realpolitik 300 years before the coining of this word, and its direct influence would extend through history to the modern day. A copy of Machiavelli’s work would be found in the coach Napoleon abandoned on his retreat from Moscow. Hitler was an avid reader; Mussolini was given to grandiose recitations; and it would become bedside reading for Saddam Hussein.

  ________________

  *Ironically, the bishopric of Pamplona had been one of the earliest benefices obtained for the fifteen-year-old Cesare Borgia by his father, who had then been vice-chancellor to Pope Innocent VIII. Despite this being Cesare’s first lucrative source of income, he had never previously shown any interest in the city, let alone visited it.

  *Borgia’s illness remains something of a mystery. According to Cardinal Carvajal, whilst Borgia was under his charge in Ostia, he ‘had been in some pain, and he seemed to me to be suffering from the French disease [syphilis] . . . His face was blotched and disfigured with pustules.’ Despite Cardinal Carvajal’s description bearing a close resemblance to syphilis, Borgia’s subsequent behaviour indicates that he was unlikely to have been suffering from the debilitating effects of tertiary syphilis. Indeed, if it was in fact malaria which had struck down Cesare and his father after the party in Rome, according to modern medical opinion this might well have cured him of his syphilitic ailment.

  EPILOGUE

  NWS OF CESARE BORGIA’S death would take six weeks to reach his sister Lucrezia in Ferrara. On hearing what had happened, she is said to have cried out: ‘The more I turn to God, the more he turns away from me.’ Despite this, she is said to have maintained her composure until she reached the sanctuary of her apartment, where she locked herself in. Behind the closed door she could be heard wailing out his name, again and again, in an agony of grief.

  Precisely how much Lucrezia had ‘turned to God’ at this point is another matter. She was now twenty-seven years old and had been Duchess of Ferrara for almost two years. Despite a number of miscarriages she would not produce an heir to the dukedom until the following year. He would be named Ercole, after his grandfather.

  Lucrezia’s intense affair with the poet Bembo – which may or may not have been physically consummated – would continue in epistolary form after he left Ferrara at the end of 1503. However, despite the continuing fervour of her letters, some time prior to Bembo’s departure Lucrezia began a torrid affair with Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. The dashing condottiere was seven years older than Lucrezia and was said to have had an animal magnetism where women were concerned. Unlike the romantic and high-minded Bembo, this was a man more like her father and her brother, and there is no doubting that their relationship was strongly physical, an aspect confirmed by their passionate love letters. An added piquancy for Lucrezia was the fact that Francesco was the husband of her enemy Isabella d’Este.

  On Julius II’s accession to the papal throne, he had quickly made his intentions clear:

  I will not live in the same rooms as the Borgias lived. He [Alexander VI] desecrated the Holy Church as none before. He usurped the papal power by the devil’s aid, and I forbid under the pain of excommunication anyone to speak or think of Borgia again. His name and memory must be forgotten. It must be crossed out of every document and memorial. His reign must be obliterated. All paintings made of the Borgias or for them must be covered over with black crêpe. All the tombs of the Borgias must be opened and their bodies sent back to where they belong – to Spain.

  Not for nothing would Julius II go down in history as the ‘warrior pope’. He would personally lead the Papal Army into the Romagna. His intention was to return northern Italy to its former state: to restore all the Papal Territories to papal rule, to reinstate the Medici as rulers of Florence, and to conquer Ferrara. The threat to Ferrara, and Lucrezia Borgia, would remain – with Francesco Gonzaga doing his best to mediate with Julius II. Not until 1512 would the Pope be thwarted at the Battle of Ravenna. Here the Papal Forces and the Spanish were defeated by the French and Italian forces, the latter local soldiers being under the command of Lucrezia’s husband Alfonso d’Este.

  Lucrezia’s court would in time become a centre of culture rivalling that of Isabella d’Este at nearby Mantua. Lucrezia’s life during this period has led many to concur that she became ‘a respectable and accomplished Renaissance duchess, effectively rising above her previous reputation’. The legends of incest, murder and poisoning – which cling to her name to this day – would become a thing of the past during the last years of her own lifetime. Meanwhile, amidst several miscarriages she would produce four further children, all legitimate offspring of her husband Alfonso. It was the debilitating effects of this frequent childbearing which would fatally weaken her, bringing about her death in 1519 at the age of just thirty-four. Thus passed into history the last of the legendary Borgias: Callixtus III, Alexander VI, Cesare Borgia and Lucrezia Borgia. Of these, it would be the last three who established the Borgia reputation – for better or worse, deserved or undeserved. Other Borgias would go on to become cardinals, archbishops and dukes. A distant descendant would even become a pope (Innocent X). And finally, in the seventeenth century, a Borgia would become a saint: St Francis Borgia. (St Francis, the epitome of all the qualities that Alexander VI had lacked.) Lat
er, more distant descendants would include two young women who became queens of England, marrying Charles II and James II, respectively.

  Yet a trio such as Alexander VI, Cesare and Lucrezia, who had achieved infamy in their rise to the very brink of transforming western Christendom into their own family fiefdom, would not appear again. For almost four centuries the Borgia apartments, with their Catalan tiles, luxuriously painted walls, including emblematic bulls and a depiction of Alexander VI at prayer, would remain unoccupied, silent and bereft of furnishings, sealed off from the outside world as if they harboured a contagious bacillus. Now they have been reopened, becoming a tourist attraction, their strange decor and chilling history stirring the imagination of the lines of visitors from all parts of the globe, which over 500 years ago Alexander VI had divided into two by drawing a line.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  All authors rely to a great extent upon the advice and guidance of their colleagues. This was more than ever the case with The Borgias. The help I have received from a host of colleagues, friends and informed readers both in Britain and Italy has enabled me to uncover much material which remained new to me, as well as to correct errors and misjudgements which appeared in my work. Any such which remain are entirely my own doing. Where the manuscript is concerned particular mention should be made of my editor at Atlantic, James Nightingale, as well as James Pulford who stood in for him when he was away on paternity leave. The role of Ian Pindar in shaping my final manuscript was expert, exact and imaginative – without him the book would not be what it is. I would also particularly like to mention the indexer Chris Bell, whose eagle-eye proved invaluable in unravelling several knotty problems far beyond her remit.