Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (13 page)

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,
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‘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 neck, 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’.
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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.

The Borgias’ plans were put into a temporary state of suspension by the brief return on 5 February 1500 of Ludovico to Milan and the defeat of the French in Lombardy; without the help of the French, Cesare was not yet strong enough to pursue his conquest of the Romagna. But on 10 April, il Moro was decisively defeated by the French at Novara, taken prisoner and immured in the fortress of Loches in Touraine, where he died eight years later. It was a sad end for the once magnificent Duke of Milan, born for his own ruin as much as that of his country. Leonardo da Vinci recorded in his notebook an epitaph on his former patron: ‘The Duke has lost fortune, state and liberty, and not one of his works has been completed.’ The news was greeted with cries of ‘Urso [Orsini]’ and ‘Francia’ by the many Orsini partisans in the city and fires were lit outside the Orsini palace of Montegiordano and in the piazza outside the Pantheon. Ascanio was also captured and imprisoned in Bourges. The Pope, who had given 100 ducats to the messenger who had brought the news of Ludovico’s downfall, rewarded with the same sum the tidings of the downfall of Ascanio, his old ally. According to Burchard:

The Pope has had from him [Ascanio] very pitiful, plaintive letters, in which he recounts how he has lost in three days, his brother, his State, his honour, his possessions and the liberty of his person, beseeching His Holiness that, in whatever manner it may seem best to him, he should deign to consider his liberation, signing himself: infelix et afflictus Ascanius [‘unhappy and afflicted Ascanio’]. The College [of Cardinals] has discussed it, and the Pope keeps the matter to himself, and shows himself well content with this matter or not, according to the person with whom he is speaking: moreover he shows no compassion . . .

Far from showing compassion, Alexander immediately took advantage of Ascanio’s misfortune, seizing his art treasures and giving away his benefices to new allies, such as Giuliano della Rovere.
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With the Sforzas out of the way, the Borgias’ hopes rested with France and Louis XII who, having regained his Milanese duchy, now looked to assert his rights to his Neapolitan kingdom. In this event, the Aragonese, including Alfonso Bisceglie, would be swept away just as the Sforzas had been. A decision handed down by Alexander at the beginning of April had indicated which way the wind was blowing when he gave sentence against Alfonso’s relation, Beatrice d’Aragona, Queen of Hungary, daughter of King Ferrante, whose husband, Ladislaus Jagiello, had repudiated her, asking for an annulment. The line-up of the powers in this case was significant: the Emperor, the Kings of Spain and Naples and the Milanese interest supported her; the French and Venice took the opposite side. Alfonso Bisceglie complained bitterly of the Pope’s decision, as Antonio Malegonelle reported to the Signoria of Florence: ‘It seems to me of great significance this sentence against the Queen of Hungary, concerning which sentence as it happens, I being in the Camera del Pappagallo, heard the Duke of Bisceglie condoling greatly with the Ambassador of Naples, not noticing that I overheard him . . .
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