His departure for France on I October was yet another public demonstration of Borgia power and splendour paid for by 200,000 ducats, raised, it was said, from the confiscation of the goods of Pedro de Aranda, Bishop of Calahorra, lately condemned for heresy, and from the three hundred Jews whose conversion Lucrezia had earlier witnessed in the piazza of St Peter’s. Roman supplies of rich stuffs, jewels, gold and silverware had been exhausted so that additional luxuries had to be brought in from Venice and elsewhere. Cesare had requested Francesco Gonzaga and Ippolito d’Este to send him horses ‘not unworthy of French esteem’ from their famous stables. These coursers were to be shod with silver; Cesare even took with him a princely travelling privy ‘covered with gold brocade without and scarlet within, with silver vessels within the urinals’. No expense was spared in an effort to impress the French and perhaps some of it was intended to offset the discomfort Cesare felt at his appearance. For the blotches under the skin associated with the second stage of syphilis now showed on his handsome face. The significance of his departure for France on a French ship, destined for a military career, was not lost on the watching envoys of the Italian powers. As the Mantuan Cattaneo wrote with wry foreboding: ‘The ruin of Italy is confirmed . . . given the plans which father and son have made but many believe the Holy Spirit has no part in them . . .’ Nor would the Holy Spirit have any part in Cesare’s plans for Lucrezia, still happy and content in the Palazzo Santa Maria in Portico with her new young husband.
That autumn after Cesare’s departure, Lucrezia was first in her father’s attentions, courted particularly by Ascanio Sforza who was anxiously aware of which way the Pope’s alliances were inclining. On 23 October, Sanudo reported that Ascanio was in Rome, though not invited to the Vatican by the Pope, but that he ‘has been with the daughter of the Pontiff and attends to nothing else’.10 At the end of the year, a confidant of Ludovico reported that Lucrezia, with the cardinals of Capua and Borgia, were the three people of influence with the Pope.11 On the surface, all had seemed well; at a ceremony in the Vatican, Paolo Orsini’s son, Fabio, married Geronima Borgia, sister of Cardinal Juan Borgia the younger, on 8 September, when Lucrezia’s husband held the naked sword over the couple.
But even Lucrezia, now pregnant with her first child by Alfonso, could not avert the shadows gathering around him. In late December ambassadors arrived from Spain for a stormy four-hour interview with Alexander during which they complained of his negotiations with the French, returned to the old charges of simony concerning his election to the papacy and threatened a Council of the Church to depose him. They tactlessly raised the death of Gandia as God’s punishment for his sins – to which Alexander angrily retorted that God had also punished the Spanish sovereigns with the death of their son.12 They reminded him of his pledge (made in the immediate aftermath of Gandia’s murder) to reform the papacy and send away his children. This Alexander steadfastly refused to consider: during another fierce row with the envoys in the Sala del Pappagallo the following month in the presence of six cardinals, when they petitioned him to recall Cesare from France and restore him to the cardinalate, Alexander, according to Sanudo, threatened to throw them into the Tiber.
In February, Lucrezia suffered a miscarriage. Running down a hill in a ‘vineyard’ on a beautiful Roman spring day she fell, and the lady following her fell on top of her, as a result of which she lost a baby girl. She was soon pregnant again but politics – and Cesare – would make a settled life with her husband impossible. On 23 May a special courier arrived in Rome with the news that Cesare had contracted – and consummated – marriage, not with Carlotta of Aragon, who had resolutely refused to consider it, but with a cousin of the French King, the sister of the King of Navarre. Charlotte d’Albret, three years younger than Lucrezia, was an acknowledged beauty – even the critical Italian envoys called her ‘the loveliest daughter of France’. King Louis reassured the Pope that the marriage had been consummated, Cesare’s performance in bed even surpassing his own wedding night with Anne de Bretagne: ‘Valencia has broken four lances more than he, two before supper and six at night,’ reported Cattaneo after all the letters from France had been read out on the orders of the delighted Pope. Alexander – and the Spanish, Milanese and Neapolitan party – had been on tenterhooks as to the outcome of Cesare’s French adventure. The result spelled danger for the dynasties of Sforza and the Aragonese of Naples.
To celebrate her brother’s marriage Lucrezia lit a fire outside her palace but it is unlikely that her jubilation was shared by her husband or her sister-in-law. It was not long before the outcome became clear: as commander of a squadron of heavy cavalry Cesare was to accompany Louis to Italy. By mid July as the news filtered through to Italy, the casualties of the Borgias’ pro-French policy fled Rome. Ascanio was the first to go, leaving precipitately on 13 July for the Colonna stronghold at Nettuno. A week later Ludovico captured one of Cesare’s servants en route from Rome to Lyons with secret letters from the Pope. Ascanio immediately fled Nettuno for Milan to join his brother. On Friday 2 August Alfonso, now, as the chronicler put it, ‘an unwelcome guest’, ‘secretly left the city before daybreak . . . to go to the lands of the Colonna and thence to the Kingdom of Naples without the licence, knowledge or will of the Pontiff’. He left Lucrezia six months pregnant and in tears. There seems to be little doubt that they loved each other: from Genazzano, Alfonso wrote to her begging her to join him. He should have known the Vatican intelligence system better: the letters fell into the Pope’s hands and Alexander forced Lucrezia to write back asking him to return. For greater security, the Pope sent Lucrezia out of Rome to act as Governor of Spoleto. Lucrezia was only nineteen but her appointment was far from being a cynical joke; later in life she was to demonstrate that she had inherited her father’s administrative ability. With Cesare in France, Alexander regarded her as the only one whose ability and loyalty he could trust: Jofre had been placed in the Castel Sant’Angelo after incurring his father’s wrath for involving himself with the city police in a brawl in which he had been wounded. Alexander’s anger had extended to Sancia when the fiery princess defended Jofre. As a potential spy in the Vatican, she was dispatched to Naples in Alfonso’s wake.
Lucrezia’s appointment as Governor of Spoleto was intended to demonstrate a Borgia presence in the Papal States north of Rome and to provide Lucrezia with an independent power base with rich revenues. Jofre, who accompanied his sister as she left the city, was clearly considered inadequate to fulfil that role. Alexander made his trust in Lucrezia plain in a letter he wrote to the Priors of Spoleto:
We have entrusted to our beloved daughter in Christ, the noble lady, Lucretia de Borgia, Duchess of Biseglia [sic], the office of keeper of the castle, as well as the government of our cities of Spoleto and Foligno, and of the county and district about them. Having perfect confidence in the intelligence, fidelity and probity of the Duchess, which We have dwelt upon in previous letters . . . We trust that you will receive the Duchess Lucretia as is your duty, with all due honour as your regent, and show her submission in all things . . . collectively and severally, in so far as law and custom dictate in the government of the city, and whatever she may think proper to exact of you, even as you would obey Ourselves, and to execute her commands with all diligence and promptness.13
Lucrezia arrived in the great castle of Spoleto with a train of forty-three carriages loaded with goods designed to display her gubernatorial magnificence. Meanwhile Alexander, perhaps in fulfilment of a promise he had made to her before she left Rome, sent Juan Cervillon, one of the Borgias’ most trusted henchmen, to Naples to persuade the King to send Alfonso back. ‘And they will have a hundred matters to discuss, each seeking to fool the other,’ the Mantuan envoy reported,14 ‘but the Pope will not trust the King, nor the King the Pope.’ There was a mysterious killing in Rome of a Spanish constable of the guard, one of Cesare’s most favoured followers who had been ‘involved with him in many matters’. He was found drowned with a cord round his ne
ck, his hands tied, in a sack weighted with a stone. The body was meant to be found, as it had been attached to posts in a vineyard on the river bank, probably as a warning to the Borgias and to Cesare, now in Lyons with the French army destined for Italy, that they had powerful enemies. The Mantuan envoy, always ready to embroider a crime or a mystery, added ‘it is presumed he knew too much’.15
King Federigo, however, perhaps unwilling to offend the Pope in these critical times, now agreed to send Alfonso back to Lucrezia. Avoiding Rome, the young man was reunited in Spoleto with his now heavily pregnant wife. With Jofre they joined Alexander on 25 September at the powerful fortress of Nepi, strategically situated between the two main roads, the Via Cassia and the Via Flaminia. Alexander had taken the castle from the absent Ascanio Sforza and fortified it; he now handed it over to Lucrezia, together with the city and its lands. Lucrezia was now mistress of two key castles and territories in the Papal States north of Rome, but she did not stay there long. On 14 October she returned to Rome with Alfonso and Jofre to be greeted by, among others, mummers and jesters of the Pope’s household. Nearing her time, she retreated to her Palazzo Santa Maria in Portico. The Vatican was crowded with armed men and there was a palpable air of excitement and fear. On 11 October, Louis XII had entered Milan in triumph and splendour; riding close behind him was Cardinal Borgia, and two ranks behind him Cesare with Duke Ercole d’Este, followed by the Marquis of Mantua. A few days later, the Pope deprived the Malatesta lords of Rimini, the Riarii of Imola and Forlì, Varani of Camerino, Manfredi of Faenza, and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, of their status as papal vicars on the grounds of non-payment of the census. Among them was Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro. The way was now open for a Borgia takeover of a large portion of the Papal States, the Romagna and the Marches, by Cesare acting in the name of the Church, backed by French troops and a loan of 45,000 ducats from the Commune of Milan, guaranteed by cardinals Borgia and Giuliano della Rovere.
On 1 November, Lucrezia gave birth to a son, named Rodrigo in honour of her father. He was christened in St Peter’s on the 11th, St Martin’s Day, amid great pomp. The entrance to Lucrezia’s palace was hung with silks and brocade. As a mark of great favour, Juan Cervillon carried the baby, who was dressed in a robe of gold brocade trimmed with ermine, into the basilica to the sound of trumpets and oboes. The child was attended by the ambassadors of the Empire, England, Naples, Venice, Savoy and Florence. He was delivered by Francesco Borgia, Cardinal of Cosenza, to be baptized in the great silver gilt shell, commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV, by Cardinal Caraffa, who stood as his godfather. Underlining the reconciliation between Orsini and Borgia, Paolo Orsini carried the child back to Santa Maria in Portico. Startled by the noise of the trumpets the baby Rodrigo, who had been silent during the whole ceremony, began to cry.
As yet, the baby’s father, Alfonso, had no reason to feel insecure, protected as he was by the high favour in which Lucrezia was held by the Pope. As of that moment, Cesare’s attention was turned on the Romagna where, with Louis’s political and military support, he anticipated an easy campaign. Almost without exception, the lords of the Romagna were a worthless lot, detested by their subjects, whom they shamelessly exploited. As Machiavelli later wrote in the Discourses: ‘Before those lords who ruled it were driven out by Pope Alexander VI, the Romagna was a nursery of the worst crimes, the slightest occasion giving rise to wholesale rapine and murder. This resulted from the wickedness of these lords, and not, as they asserted, from the disposition of their subjects. For these princes being poor, yet choosing to live as if they were rich, were forced to resort to cruelties innumerable . . .’
For Cesare, as for Alexander, politics was the art of the possible: a Venetian report of a mission by Cardinal Borgia on Cesare’s behalf illustrates his thinking: ‘. . . he did not want Ferrara since it was a great state, and its lord old and loved by the people, and has three sons who would never leave him in peace if he had it; however he wanted Imola, Forlì and Pesaro, an undertaking which would be easy . . .’
Even before he reached Forlì, Cesare was forced to make a secret dash to Rome on 18 November. The ruler of Forlì, Caterina Sforza Riario, a famous beauty who was also a warlike ‘virago’, had attempted to pre-empt Cesare’s attack by poisoning the Pope. That afternoon Cardinal Riario suddenly left Rome on the pretext of going hunting and did not return, while Burchard revealed that one of Jofre Borgia’s musicians, a native of Forlì, and an accomplice, had been taken to the Castel Sant’Angelo because they had planned to murder the Pope by means of letters steeped in poison which they intended to present to Alexander under the guise of a petition. Another version had Caterina Sforza wrapping the letters in a cloth taken from the body of a plague victim. It was a vain attempt and Cesare rode north again three days later to continue his campaign; Caterina’s cities gave themselves to him ‘like whores’, as Sanudo put it. Only Caterina in the citadel of Forlì held out.
While Cesare was campaigning in the Romagna, Lucrezia was shocked by the murder in mid December of another Borgia intimate —Juan Cervillon, the man who had carried the infant Rodrigo to his baptism the previous month. As with so many crimes at the time, his death was imputed to Cesare but, as Burchard recorded, he had ‘many enemies’ and the murder could have been carried out by any of them. Cesare was, in fact, the least likely candidate.
Lucrezia’s life in Rome at this time remains a mystery. While her father and brother were intent on their complicated plans for Cesare’s advancement, she is barely mentioned. She is recorded as having ridden to the Lateran in procession with Alfonso and one hundred horsemen, including Giulia Farnese’s husband, Orsino Orsini, as a part of the celebrations of the Holy Year of 1500 inaugurated by Alexander on 24 December. But she remained a part of Alexander’s plans for the family, this time at the expense of the Caetani family whose lands at Sermoneta and other territories south of Rome he expropriated from the head of the clan, Guglielmo Caetani, who happened to be Giulia Farnese’s uncle. In February 1500 Lucrezia became ruler of Sermoneta in addition to her lands north of Rome. Five months later Guglielmo Caetani died of poison. Did Lucrezia close her eyes to the terrible things which were taking place? Probably. Did she protest? Almost certainly not. It was only when the atmosphere of violence touched her own circle that she finally rebelled against the ruthlessness of her father and brother.
As before, Lucrezia’s fate and that of those close to her was closely bound up with Cesare’s plans and ambitions. Cesare had returned to Rome in triumph in the last week of February, his arrival a carefully stage-managed spectacle which galvanized the city, already full of pilgrims and foreign visitors enjoying the spiritual and other less worthy benefits of Holy Year. Even before the appearance of the principal character, the event compared favourably with the excitement of a Roman triumph. Down the wide Via Lata (now the Corso) from the Porta del Popolo marched the city dignitaries and officials of the Vatican Curia in their finest robes, the cardinals riding in purple and ermine, with their households in rich livery, and the ambassadors from every country in the Christian world with their retinues. The organization of the procession outside the Porta del Popolo had driven the everprecise papal master of ceremonies, Burchard, almost to despair. People had joined the company from every village it had passed through, forming a disorderly group with no more regard for papal protocol than Cesare’s Swiss and Gascon mercenaries. These, in five companies under standards bearing his arms, refused to acknowledge Burchard’s authority and ‘indecently’ occupied places in the procession to which they were not entitled. The more orderly part of the official entry comprised Cesare’s baggage wagons, the mules caparisoned in his colours of crimson and gold, then two heralds, one in the colours of France, the other in Cesare’s livery, then one thousand infantry in full campaign armour, and a hundred of his personal guard with ‘Cesar’ emblazoned in silver letters on their chests. Fifty gorgeously dressed gentlemen of his household preceded the cavalry headed by Vitellozzo Vitelli, a renowned condottiere.
Then came Cesare himself, flanked by cardinals Orsini and Farnese and followed by Alfonso Bisceglie and Jofre.
Cesare wore a simple robe of black velvet, his only ornament the golden collar of the Order of St Michel, the symbol of his new high rank. The stark cloth set off his looks more dramatically than the flashy silks he had worn on his departure for France almost eighteen months before. From now on, with a growing confidence in himself, black, with its connotations of outward drama, inner narcissism and introversion, was to be his preferred colour, a reflection of his increasingly dark personality.
Alexander was beside himself with paternal pride. At Cesare’s reception in the Sala del Pappagallo ambassadors recorded him as so moved that he cried at one moment and laughed the next. He embraced Cesare tenderly and even welcomed his son’s captive, Caterina Sforza, the woman who had tried to have him poisoned, and lodged her comfortably in the Vatican. (When she refused to sign away her rights and those of her children to Imola and Forli, she was moved to less agreeable quarters in the prisons of the Castel Sant’Angelo.) When, the next day, Cesare staged an allegorical procession representing the Triumphs of Caesar, the Pope was so delighted with it that he insisted it pass twice before his windows. On 29 March he gave Cesare the Golden Rose and invested him with the insignia of Gonfalonier and Captain General of the Church. To the watchful envoys, this nomination could signify only one thing – a complete Borgia takeover of the Church. With the father wielding the spiritual and temporal authority of the papacy, the son in control of the papal forces and the beginnings of a Borgia state taking place in the Romagna, the future was pregnant with potential danger.
Lucrezia Borgia Page 10
