by Michael Hone
1431 – 1477
Italy was far from the only country where we find the inhumanity of men. At the exact same moment, to the East, another despot reigned. Vlad the Impaler was known by his father’s name, Dracul, meaning son of the dragon. His father ruled Wallachia. He was a warrior who dedicated himself to the protection of Christians against the hoards of Ottomans of whom he is credited with impaling tens of thousands. As a boy he spoke Romanian and learned Greek, German and Latin, combat skills as well as geography, mathematics and science. Vlad and a younger brother, Radu the Handsome, were sent by their father to the Ottomans as hostages and there Radu converted to Islam. The Ottomans taught the boys warfare and horsemanship. Vlad’s father was overthrown and Vlad’s older brother, who should have succeeded his father, was blinded and buried alive. When Vlad eventually came to power in Wallachia he strove to increase both the defenses of the country and his own political power. He had the nobles he held responsible for his father and brother’s murders impaled. When Turks arrived to reclaim tribute from Wallachia he requested that they remove their turbans in respect for his person. When they refused, he had the turbans nailed to their heads, killing them all. The Turks sent an army that Vlad defeated; the soldiers were impaled with the highest stake reserved for their general. The pope and the Venetians--whose trade had been disrupted by the Turks--were wild with joy at the news. But Vlad’s little brother who had converted to Islam, Radu the Handsome, came at the head of janissary battalions to destroy his Christian brother. In addition, he promised that the nobles in Wallachia who had lost their positions because of Vlad would recuperate their entire wealth. Vlad was thereafter assassinated under unclear conditions and beheaded. His reputation for evil spread through Germany and Russia. How much is true will never be known. He was said to have had children roasted and then fed to their mothers, and to have the breasts of women cut off and forcibly fed to their husbands, before impaling them all. It is also reported that the Ottoman army turned back from the Danube, in horror, when they came across thousands of rotting corpses, all impaled.
Dracula
CESARE BORGIA and his father
ALEXANDER VI
1431 – 1507
We learned about the origins of the Borgia in the chapter on Ferrante. Rodrigo Borgia, the future Alexander VI, became vice-chancellor under Eugenius IV, the second most important position in Rome, after the pope himself. Sixtus IV followed Eugenius and kept Rodrigo on as vice-chancellor, thanks to his work in assuring the pope’s election. Rodrigo extended his palace and enriched its furnishings and his clothes. Sixtus awarded him with bishoprics and abbeys, sources of more wealth still. During this period Rodrigo returned to Spain for an extended visit. On his way back his ship was wrecked off the coast of Tuscany and he was taken to Pisa to recover from his close call with death. There, at a banquet in his honor, he met Vannozza de’ Catanei, the mother of his future children. In very quick succession she gave him Cesare, Juan, Lucrezia and Jofrè. In return, Rodrigo gave Vannozza a series of complaisant husbands and great wealth. These six were, however, only part of the brood he fathered with other acquaintances. The incredible luck of the Borgia was in having so many children, so many boys, boys who survived infancy in times when at least half of all children died nearly immediately or within a few years of birth. The death toll was so high that even in France, nearly up to modern times, children were given out to wet nurses who cared for them until around age seven; in this way parents suffered less when babies they’d rarely seen passed away.
When Cesare was eight, Rodrigo moved all of his children to the home of his Spanish cousin Adriana da Mila, more qualified to raise them as she was of noble birth and would instruct them in the ways of the aristocracy. Adriana had married into the very powerful Orsini family. Her son married a beautiful girl known as La Bella whom Rodrigo immediately took as his mistress.
Cesare
The next pope, Innocent VIII, was known as the Rabbit for his lack of authority. Bands of youths, armed with daggers and swords, ruled the streets of Rome, stealing, raping and murdering to such an extent that the cardinals were forced to place guards with crossbows and artillery at their windows and on the roofs of their palaces. The new pope soon fell ill and died, but not before making Lorenzo Il Magnifico’s son Giovanni, age thirteen, a cardinal, a cardinal who would one day become Pope Leo X. The cardinals who came to the Vatican to replace Innocent met in conclave, now decided to elect a strong pope who would bring order to Rome.
Following the usual bargaining, during which wagonloads of gold, silver, jewels and precious furnishings and tissues were loaded at the Borgia palace and unloaded at the residences of nearly all of the cardinals (a few were said to have refused the bribes), Rodrigo Borgia became Pope Alexander VI. The truth of the bribes will never be known, and anyway, those who ran against him for pope were at least equally wealthy and equally inclined to bribe whomever they could.
Rodrigo was virile, producing many legitimatized children (as well as being the first pope to ever recognize his bastards) on his main mistress, Vannozza de’ Catanei, of whom two were to become world famous, a daughter, Lucrezia, and a son, Cesare. He had at least four other children he did not recognize officially, but all his offspring and mistresses were abundantly cared for. Alexander was sensual, fun loving, certainly good to his children, a sugar-daddy papa, extremely tolerant, ruthless, courageous, and an administrator of genius.
At age 18 Cesare was made a cardinal, causing a howl of outrage among the other cardinals, especially Giuliano della Rovere, the future Warrior Pope Julius II, who would later do his best to see Cesare into an early grave. As mentioned, Alexander had a new mistress known as La Bella. This was Giulia Farnese. Giulia had married Adriana da Mila Orsini’s son, Orso Orsini (Adriana da Mila was the woman Alexander had chosen to bring up his own children as aristocrats). Giulia had a brother, Alessandro Farnese, that Alexander now made cardinal at the same time as Cesare, causing great unrest among the cardinals in the know. This was the first step in the rise of the House of Farnese. Alessandro would later become the homosexual Paul III.
Alexander and his children spoke Spanish when together, but they all knew Italian, French and Latin. Cesare was destined for the orders, a destiny he hated as he hated his brother Juan who was marked for a military career, one Juan loved but was not good at--or at least not as good as Cesare would show himself to be. Cesare was described by the great Boccaccio, author of The Decameron--a book as wonderful today as then--as possessed of genius and charm, lively and merry and happy in the company of society. He was also ambitious to the extreme and fearless--in fact, fearing nothing and no one. Cesare addressed Juan as his Lord brother, and admonished him to give thanks to their father His Holiness, who had made the family so great. Juan was married in Barcelona to a young cousin of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Given everything he could wish for from birth, Juan spent his time whoring--and his young body was capable of giving him a great deal of pleasure--drinking and gambling. It’s not known if he ‘’honored’’ his wife on the evening of their wedding, so decided was he to go off with his friends to shatter the quiet of the Barcelona night. Juan was clearly Alexander’s favorite, another supposed reason for Cesare’s hatred. As virile as his father, slim waisted and certain of his sex appeal, Juan swaggered through the streets of Rome in what can only be described as gorgeous attire, a cloak of gold brocade, jewel-encrusted waistcoats and silk shirts, skin-tight trousers with drop fronts--cloth attached by ribbons that would free a man’s loins when he wished to piss or fuck. This beautiful, gorgeously clad body, stabbed nine times, 30 golden ducats still in his belt purse, was fished up from the Tiber, to the grief-stricken horror of his father who locked himself away from public view for three days. The death freed the way for Cesare to renounce his vows, having been made cardinal at age 18. Alexander never confronted his son with the murder of his favorite boy, but that he was guilty was silently acknowledged by nearly all. On the morning of the murder, just
before sunrise, men were seen leading a horse with a body strapped over its back to the edge of the Tiber river, untie and then caste it into the middle. They were accompanied by another man on a white charger, his silver stirrups and gold spurs reflecting the moon’s glow. The men, said the witness, a Slovenian watchman standing guard over boats carrying cargo, spoke in very low voices … in Spanish. So it was Cesare … unless … unless, thought some, it was his other brother, Jofrè.
It’s not clear at exactly what age Jofrè married but he was thought to be 12 and his wife Sancia 16. As puberty was far later during the Renaissance than today (around ages 15 or 16 then) he failed to have the lust, due to insufficient testosterone, to consummate the union. His brothers took over the task for him, however, an experience that was not necessarily grueling for the young girl as she was rumored to have had many lovers before arriving in Rome. At any rate, some historians place their bet on Jofrè as his brother’s assassin, out of jealously. Jofrè played only a minor role in the uncoiling events attached to the Borgias. He had been made Prince of Squillace, a vassal town of Naples where he lived until he died, having produced four children of his own. Jofrè seems to have been a loving prince, certainly a lucky one as the center of attention in Squillace, attended by scores of servants, and for a boy who was so calm and steady, a wife like Sancia may have added spice to his otherwise tranquil existence.
Cardinal Ascanio Sforza was also suspected of killing Juan as he had had a clash with the boy for unknown reasons that left men fighting for and against Ascanio and Juan dead in the streets, par for the course for Juan who was always seeking violence.
Others thought the murderer was Lucrezia’s husband Giovanni Sforza. After the marriage Giovanni learned that his wife had had sexual congress with both her brothers Cesare and Juan, as well as her father Alexander. Giovanni wished to wipe them all out as a way of wiping out his humiliation at having been taken in by them all. Of course, the accusations of incest were based on nothing more than rumors, and as the author Sabatini had put it so well, historians were ready to accept any nonsense as long as it was well-salted and well-spiced. (Alas, there is no ‘’good’’ painting of Juan.)
Alexander VI
Charles VIII entered Italy on his way to occupy Naples. Before leaving Paris he had entered into a number of extremely expensive treaties with kings such as Henry VII of England in order to cover his back should his warring in Italy turn out to be more arduous than he had planned. As Naples belonged to the church, Charles needed Alexander’s benediction in order to control it. But should Alexander prove recalcitrant, Charles was prepared to replace him with Cardinal della Rovere who was at his side in Paris. In fact, councilors around the king tried to pursued him that Alexander had bought the papacy and was therefore not legitimate, and that the majority of the cardinals in Rome would thank Charles for rescuing the church by deposing him. Charles’s stopover in Rome was the first test of Alexander’s exceptional intelligence. Alexander withdrew to Castel Sant’Angelo with all his possessions, including his bed. Charles tried to calm the Romans by telling them that his army wouldn’t take an egg without paying for it. So numerous were Charles’s men that they took six hours to file through the gate of Santa Maria del Popolo. He was accompanied by the Borgia archenemy, Giuliano della Rovere who had gone to Paris in hopes of convincing Charles that he should replace Alexander with Rovere himself. Charles took up residence in the Palazzo Venezia where he sat by the fire in slippers while his food was tasted by servants and his wine tested for poison. His army may not have stolen a single egg, but it stole everything else that hadn’t been battened down, reportedly cutting off fingers when rings refused to budge, and his men raped any woman silly enough to have not already fled the city. They killed as well, especially the Jews. They took any residence that pleased them, burning the furniture for warmth. An observer said that Charles left the Palazzo Venezia as dirty as a pigsty. Alexander finally agreed to a meeting that took place in the papal palace. Charles is reported to have rushed to him and was prevented from a third genuflection by the pope who stopped him in mid-kneeling, giving him the kiss of peace on the lips. As Charles and his troops had brought syphilis, the kiss could not have been hygienic.
Alexander had given Lucrezia Giovanni Sforza for husband, but discovering that the boy was a spy for Milan, who favored Charles, Alexander decided to annul the marriage in favor of Alfonso of Aragon who was a member of the royal family of Naples and also Sancia’s brother (the promiscuous wife of Alexander’s son Jofrè). After the slaying of Juan, Giovanni feared that Cesare would kill him too in order to further the ties between the Borgia and Naples. So he easily gave in, especially when he was told that he didn’t have to reimburse Lucrezia’s dowry of 31,000 ducats. He nonetheless spread the rumor that Alexander wanted the annulment so he could have Lucrezia for himself, and he bruited that he knew for a fact that Cesare had enjoyed his sister on many occasions. When Alexander informed him that he would have to sign a statement saying that he was impotent, he answered that he had had Lucrezia a thousand times. As an additional proof of her innocence, Lucrezia was examined and found to be vergo intacta. In reality she was six months pregnant.
The boy responsible for her pregnancy was a handsome Spanish valet, Pedro Calderon. In a frenzy of rage Cesare chased him through the palace until the lad sought shelter within the robes of Alexander VI himself. The pope tried to protect him but Cesare slashed at the boy through the robes, literally cutting him to pieces. The body was caste into the Tiber.
Cesare, as cardinal, had been chosen by his father to crown Frederigo of Aragon, King of Naples and, at the same time, convince Frederigo to give his son to Lucrezia, still only 17, for husband. Frederigo’s son was 18-year-old Alfonso of Aragon, Sancia’s brother. At the same time, Cesare hinted that he wouldn’t mind marrying King Frederigo’s daughter. As his son Alfonso was illegitimate, Frederigo felt he could marry Lucrezia, but as his daughter was legitimate, there was no question of her marrying the power crazy, syphilitic Cesare. At any rate the daughter, Carlotta, was in love with another, something that would normally not have stopped Frederigo from doing what he wanted with her, but the girl held firm, the stars were in her favor, and she finished with the boy she loved.
Jofrè Borgia – Too young to satisfy Sancia, Cesare and Juan
did so in his place.
Alfonso 17, Lucrezia’s second husband. She was 18 and was thought to have sincerely loved him.
Alfonso and Lucrezia married and the wedding was consummated.
While in Naples, Cesare was said to have fallen for the daughter of the Conte d’Aliffe, on whom he spent 200,000 ducats. To give one an idea of this monumental sum, 40,000 ducats were offered Alfonso for Lucrezia’s dowry and Alexander earned 160,000 by selling 13 new cardinal red hats, money needed so that his son Cesare could continue his march into the Romagna, as we’ll see in a moment.
In Florence Lorenzo’s son Piero had sided with Naples against Charles VIII, earning his expulsion from the city by citizens who considered France a far richer market than Naples, a far better client for Florentine banks and manufacturing. This, plus the total destruction of the Florentine garrison of Fivizzano by French troops, tipped the scales against the Medici. Even so, when Charles entered Florence, before descending on Rome, he was coldly received. He then liberated Pisa and the port of Livorno that had been under Florentine rule. The Pisans were ecstatic because they hated the Florentines with every fiber of their bodies, but when they witnessed the sacking and rape of their young girls they realized their mistake. Savonarola made his way to Pisa where he welcomed the tyrant, calling him the godsend-liberator he had been predicting in his sermons. Back in Florence Charles told the people with the breezy candor of his youth that he cared nothing for them and the leaders they chose to rule them. What he wanted was money and when he told them the amount they laughed in his face. He shouted that in that case he would sound his trumpets; the Florentines promised they would sound their bell, on th
e summit of the tower of the Palazzo della Signoria, the bell that would bring all the men of Florence and its surroundings running fully armed. Charles, wishing to get on to Naples, accepted their offer of 120,000 florins.
Charles VIII
This first weakness on Charles’s part, and the cruel, inhuman destruction of life and the raping of women, got Milan’s Ludovic Sforza, who had favored Charles’s invasion, to thinking that he had made a mistake. He entered into negotiations with Alexander and Venice, his normally mortal enemy, on how to stop the massacres. The Venetians were extremely well armed but they knew they would be next, and Ludovico was convinced that Charles would finally choose Milan to conquer over Jerusalem. Siena, Urbino and Bologna sent representatives to Alexander too.
Said to be Lucrezia, by Bartolomeo Veneto
So in response to the terrible ravages caused by the French, the Italians finally unified in an anti-French coalition sponsored by Pope Alexander VI, noted for his courage. Venetians and Ludovico of Milan took part. Charles was forced to retreat, although in various battles the anti-French coalition lost a reported 2,000 men to every 1,000 lost by Charles. The coalition hounded the retreating French army like wolves, attacking its baggage train until nothing remained to Charles of the tons of gold, jewels and other loot he had amassed. But he and his Swiss and Gascons massacred as they went: Toscanella and Pontremoli were wiped off the map. In a way, worse awaited him at Poggibonsi where Savonarola scurried to tell him that he had failed because he hadn’t accomplished the will of God; he hadn’t cleansed Italy of its filth in the form of the pope and his bastards; and if Charles didn’t listen to the word of God that passed through the mouth of his chosen servant Savonarola, God would replace him with someone who would.
