Caesar Borgia

“ Caesar Borgia learned the news of his father's election at the University of Pisa, where he was a student. His ambition had sometimes dreamed of such good fortune, yet his joy was little short of madness. He was then a young man, about twenty-two or twenty-four years of age, skilful in all bodily exercises, and especially in fencing; he could ride barebacked the most fiery steeds, could cut off the head of a bull at a single sword-stroke ”

“ There he was awaited by Cardinal Valentino, who was about to accompany him, as we know, as a hostage, and who had remained behind to exchange a few words with his father. In a moment Caesar Borgia appeared, riding on a splendidly harnessed mule, and behind him were led six magnificent horses, a present from the Holy Father to the King of France. Charles at once mounted one of these, to do honour to the gift the pope had just conferred on him, and leaving Rome with the rest of his troops, pursued his way towards Marino, where he arrived the same evening. ”

“ But this was not Caesar Borgia's idea at all: he had stayed behind to confer with the pope, and had joined the French army with some of his troops on the very day on which the conference had been arranged for two days later: and a capitulation of any nature would rob him of his share of the booty and the promise of such pleasure as would come from the capture of a city so rich and populous as Capua. So he opened up negotiations on his own account with a captain who was on guard at one of the gates. ”

“ It was Wednesday, the 18th of December 1498, when Caesar Borgia entered the town of Chinon, with pomp worthy of the son of a pope who is about to marry the daughter of a king. The procession began with four-and-twenty mules, caparisoned in red, adorned with escutcheons bearing the duke's arms, laden with carved trunks and chests inlaid with ivory and silver; after them came four-and-twenty more, also caparisoned, this time in the livery of the King of France, yellow and red; next after these came ten other mules, covered in yellow satin with red crossbars ”

“ No one ever knew by whose hands the scaffold had been raised by night, nor by what executioners the terrible deed had been carried out; but when the Florentine Republic sent to ask Macchiavelli, their ambassador at Cesena, what he thought of it, he replied:
"MAGNIFICENT LORDS,-I can tell you nothing concerning the execution of Ramiro d'Orco, except that Caesar Borgia is the prince who best knows how to make and unmake men according to their deserts. ”

“ But all this pomp had no effect on the lady for whose sake it had been displayed; for when Dona Carlota was told that Caesar Borgia had come to France in the hope of becoming her husband, she replied simply that she would never take a priest for her husband, and, moreover, the son of a priest; a man who was not only an assassin, but a fratricide; not only a man of infamous birth, but still more infamous in his morals and his actions. ”

“ Everyone has read about Cæsar Borgia, his murders, his treacheries and his end, and he is held up to us as a type of monstrous wickedness. But a learned Frenchman, Émile Gebhart, has recently written a rather convincing treatise, to show that Cæsar Borgia was not a monster at all, nor even much of an exception to the general rule among the Italian despots of his day, and his day was civilized compared with that of Rienzi, of Boniface the Eighth, of Sciarra Colonna. [Pg 214]
In order to understand anything about the real life of the Middle Age, one should begin at the beginning ”

“ Both these reasons made Gian Borgia a special object of suspicion to Caesar, and it was with an inward vow that he should not enjoy his new dignities very long that the Duke of Valentinois heard that his cousin Gian had just been nominated cardinal 'a latere' of all the Christian world, and had quitted Rome to make a circuit through all the pontifical states with a suite of archbishops, bishops, prelates, and gentlemen, such as would have done honour to the pope himself. ”

“ This promotion caused no discontent, because of John's antecedents; and Alexander, encouraged by the success of this, promised to Caesar Borgia the archbishopric of Valencia, a benefice he had himself enjoyed before his elevation to the papacy. But here the difficulty arose on the side of the recipient. The young man, full-blooded, with all the vices and natural instincts of a captain of condottieri, had very great trouble in assuming even the appearance of a Churchman's virtue ”

“ Report said the dissipations were of so dissolute a character that their equals had never been seen in Rome. With a view to checking the rumours that began to spread abroad, Roderigo sent Caesar to study at Pisa, and married Lucrezia to a young gentleman of Aragon; thus there only remained at home Rosa Vanozza and her two sons: such was the state of things when Innocent VIII died and Roderigo Borgia was proclaimed pope. ”

“ It was said with truth that Alexander VI. succeeded beyond his designs. [65] When Caesar stood at the head of a victorious army, the only Italian army in existence, the ambition of the Borgias soared to great heights. They were absolute in Central Italy, where no Pope had exercised real direct authority for ages. [66] The kingdom of Naples was the Pope's to grant, to take away, or to distribute. Lucretia was married to the heir of Ferrara. A marriage was proposed between an infant Borgia and the Duke of Mantua. Cæsar possessed Piombino ”

“ Piero, archbishop of Reggio, governor of Rome; Francesco Borgia , archbishop of Cosenza, treasurer-general; Gian, archbishop of Salerno, vice-chamberlain; Luigi Borgia , archbishop of Valencia, secretary to His Holiness, and brother of the Gian Borgia whom Caesar had poisoned; Antonio, bishop of Coma; Gian Battista Ferraro, bishop of Modem; Amedee d'Albret, son of the King of Navarre, brother-in-law of the Duke of Valentinois; and Marco Cornaro, a Venetian noble, in whose person His Holiness rendered back to the most serene republic the favour he had just received. ”

“ Every chance was provided against, except one; but Satan himself could hardly have foreseen this particular one. The reader will judge for himself.
The pope had invited Cardinal Adrien to supper in his vineyard on the Belvidere; Cardinal Adrien was very rich, and the pope wished to inherit his wealth, as he already had acquired that of the Cardinals of Sant' Angelo, Capua, and Modena. To effect this, Caesar Borgia sent two bottles of poisoned wine to his father's cup-bearer, without taking him into his confidence ”

“ As l’Espinois points out in his masterly essay in the Revue des Questions Historiques, Gregorovius refuses to recognize in Cesare Borgia the Messiah of a united Central Italy, but considers him merely as a high-flying adventurer; whilst Villari, in his Life and Times of Macchiavelli, tells you bluntly that Cesare Borgia was neither a statesman nor a soldier but a brigand-chief.
These are mere words; and to utter words is easier than to make them good. ”

“ Don Michele da Corella was liberated by Julius II after an interrogatory which can have revealed nothing defamatory to Cesare or his father; as it is unthinkable that a Pope who did all that man could do to ruin the House of Borgia and to befoul its memory, should have preserved silence touching any such revelations as were hoped for when Corella was put to torture. That most faithful of all Cesare’s officers—and sharer of the odium that has been heaped upon Cesare’s name—entered the service of the Signory of Florence. ”

“ To His Holiness’s enemies the mere touch of my ladie’s soft hand meant certain death, and feastes were given at the which those singled out were swept away like flies. None who dared to thwart the Borgia Pope or the lord Duke of Valentinois escaped swift and certain destruction. For them, death lurked at all times no matter how much care they took of their personal safetie. The fiendish ingenuity of Cesare Borgia showed itself in divers and sundry ways all to encompass the death of rivals that the House of Borgia became paramount, and its power overwhelming. ”

“ In the study of the history of the Borgias, we repeat, there has been too much acceptance without question, too much taking for granted of matters whose incredibility frequently touches and occasionally oversteps the confines of the impossible.
One man knew Cesare Borgia better, perhaps, than did any other contemporary, of the many who have left more or less valuable records; for the mind of that man was the acutest of its age, one of the acutest Italy and the world have ever known. ”

“ The cunning political genius of Cesare Borgia had maneuvered the pope into a position of great advantage. France and Spain were bidding for the support of Alexander, who through his son now controlled a not inconsiderable portion of Italian territory. All indications pointed to a further increase of Cesare's conquests and to a corresponding augmentation of the papal power in the politics of Europe. It is not too much to say that the Borgia were on the road to absolute dominance of the world when they plotted to poison and rob the aged Cardinal Adrian of Corneto. ”

“ No—he practically tells you—this Macchiavelli, who daily saw and spoke with Cesare for two months (and during a critical time, which is when men best reveal their natures) , this acute Florentine—the acutest man of his age, perhaps—who studied and analysed Cesare, and sent his Government the results of his analyses, and was inspired by them later to write The Prince—this man did not know Cesare Borgia. He wrote, not about Cesare himself, but about a creation of his own intellect. ”

“ The one clear and certain inference to be drawn, not only from those dispatches, but from the Florentine secretary’s later writings, is that, at close quarters with Cesare Borgia, a critical witness of his methods, he conceived for him a transcending admiration which was later to find its fullest expression in his immortal book The Prince—a book, remember, compiled to serve as a guide in government to Giuliano de’Medici, the feeble brother of Pope Leo X, a book inspired by Cesare Borgia, who is the model prince held up by Macchiavelli for emulation. ”

“ Alexander, Cesare, and Lucrezia, among others of the Borgia family, bear their share of the formidable accusations. Of the Pope are related perfidies, simonies, and ravishments; against Lucrezia are urged the matter of her incest, the supper of the fifty courtesans, and the scene of the stallions; against Cesare there are the death of Biselli, the murder of Pedro Caldes, the ruin of the Romagna, whence he has driven out the legitimate lords, and the universal fear in which he is held. ”

“ The striking talents of Gregorovius are occasionally marred by the egotism and pedantry sometimes characteristic of the scholars of his nation. He is too positive; he seldom opines; he asserts with finality the things that only God can know; occasionally his knowledge, transcending the possible, quits the realm of the historian for that of the romancer, as for instance—to cite one amid a thousand—when he actually tells us what passes in Cesare Borgia’s mind at the coronation of the King of Naples. ”

“ We are in no mood to reckon the total of Cesare’s crimes, terrified as we are at the stupendous force to which they but serve as a convenient means. And it is not our poet’s doing, but of the mere data of history, that Rodrigo Borgia, his Holi{215}ness Pope Alexander VI, pronounces inexorable judgment on himself. This he does when, stricken by the murder of his son Giovanni, Duke of Gandia, he is filled with remorse and penitence. A vision of his son in Paradise induces the softer mood:
Alexander. ”

“ In immediate attendance upon him came several cardinals on their mules, and behind these followed the ambassadors of the Powers, Cesare’s brother Giuffredo Borgia, and Alfonso of Aragon, Duke of Biselli and Prince of Salerno—Lucrezia’s husband and the father of her boy Roderigo, born some three months earlier. Conspicuous, too, in Cesare’s train would be the imposing figure of the formidable Countess Sforza-Riario, in black upon her white horse, riding in her golden shackles between her two attendant women. ”

“ Moncalieri, the papal envoy, returned to Rome with the news, and this so inflamed the Pope that the Cardinals Lodovico Borgia and Francesco Remolino, together with other Borgia partisans, instantly fled from Rome, where they no longer accounted themselves safe, and sought refuge with Gonzalo de Cordoba in the Spanish camp at Naples, imploring his protection at the same time for Cesare. ”

“ Therefore Francesco Piccolomini, Cardinal of Siena (nephew of Pius II) , a feeble octogenarian, tormented by an ulcer, which, in conjunction with an incompetent physician, was to cut his life even shorter than they hoped, was placed upon the throne of St. Peter, and assumed with the Pontificate the name of Pius III.
The new Pope was entirely favourable to Cesare Borgia, and confirmed him in all his offices, signifying his displeasure to Venice at her attempt upon the Romagna, and issuing briefs to the allied tyrants commanding them to desist from their opposition to the will of the Holy See. ”

“ As early as 1480, Pope Sixtus IV had granted Cesare Borgia—in a Bull dated October 1 (1) —dispensation from proving the legitimacy of his birth. This entirely removed the necessity for any such subsequent measures as those which are suggested by these chroniclers.
1 See the supplement to the Appendix of Thuasne’s edition of Burchard’s Diarium.
Moreover, had Cardinal Roderigo desired to fasten the paternity of Cesare on another, there was ready to his hand Vannozza’s actual husband, Giorgio della Croce. (2) When exactly this man became her husband is not to be ascertained. ”