The Borgias (56 page)

All the tyrants of north Italy were afraid of Cesare at this point, and all were looking for help. The men he had displaced but not captured or killed—Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, for example, and the sole surviving son of Giulio Cesare Varano—had migrated to Louis XII’s court in Milan, the one place they could take their grievances and at least hope to produce a result. They were being joined by men who had not yet lost their places but feared that they soon would: Giovanni Bentivoglio of Bologna, Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua, and others. Louis found himself under a barrage of warnings about the dangers posed by Borgia ambition and the need to understand that Cesare was the enemy even of France. These entreaties were echoed by some of the regulars at the court, most emphatically by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. He had returned to his old refrain about how Alexander VI had no right to the pontifical throne and removing him would be a blessed act.

Cesare was aware of all this—he had a keen appreciation of the value of information and always spent freely to keep himself current—and he needed no one to tell him how worthless all his conquests would be if Louis turned against him. Early on the morning of July 27, disguised as a knight of the Order of St. John and accompanied by only three companions, he rode out of Urbino with his destination, as usual, unstated. The next day he showed up in Ferrara, where he found an epidemic of some kind ravaging the city and his sister Lucrezia both pregnant and dangerously ill.
The two talked all night, using the Valencian dialect that had been the language of their childhood and that prevented eavesdroppers from understanding what they said. The next day, after summoning
papal physicians to come and attend to Lucrezia, accompanied now by his brother-in-law Alfonso d’Este, Cesare mounted up again and started for Milan.

We have no certain knowledge of why Alfonso left his bride, expecting his child and so ill that her life was believed to be in danger, in order to join Cesare on the ride from Ferrara to Milan. Obviously he was not restrained from doing so by any great affection for Lucrezia. He and his father the duke probably thought it advisable, with a new war for Naples in the offing, to provide Louis XII with fresh and direct assurances that they remained his faithful friends. It is equally probable that Cesare had urged upon the Este the importance of demonstrating to the king that they and he were united in his support. It would have been natural for him to want to create the impression that Ferrara was now his to command.

On August 5, when Cesare came pounding into Milan and presented himself at an astonished French court, his enemies were appalled to observe the enthusiasm with which Louis received him. The king found it touching, apparently, that the young Valentino had undertaken such an arduous and risky journey in order to see him, and his old affection was immediately rekindled.
A retainer of Francesco Gonzaga observed that “His Most Christian Majesty welcomed and embraced [Cesare] with great joy and led him to the castle, where he had him lodged in the chamber nearest him, and he himself ordered the supper, choosing diverse dishes, and that evening three or four times he went to his room dressed in shirt sleeves.… He could not have done more for a son or a brother.” Thus encouraged, Cesare spent long hours in conversation not only with the king but also with his chief minister Cardinal d’Amboise, whose hopes of becoming the next pope provided all the encouragement he needed to stay on the friendliest possible terms with the Borgias and their minions in the College of Cardinals.

Cesare remained at court for almost a month, accomplishing everything he could have hoped when setting out. The extent of his success is evident in the transformation that his time in Milan wrought in his relationship with Francesco Gonzaga, marquess (a noble rank lower only than duke) of the city-state of Mantua and lord of Modena as well. Gonzaga had reacted angrily to Cesare’s unexpected appearance in
Milan. He treated him with contempt, hurling insults until Cesare challenged him to a duel. The king intervened, demanding that the two find a way to become friends.

They were helped to do so by Gonzaga’s wife Isabella, the daughter of Duke Ercole of Ferrara who had objected so bitterly to her brother’s marriage to Lucrezia. Like her late sister Beatrice, wife of Ludovico Sforza of Milan, Isabella was more intelligent, more sophisticated, and politically a good deal shrewder than her husband. When, at home in Mantua, she heard about Francesco’s clash with Cesare, she sent a letter of rebuke.
“I cannot conceal my fears for your person and state,” she told her husband. “It is generally understood that His Most Christian Majesty has some understanding with Valentino, so I beg you to be careful not to use words which may be repeated to him, because in these days we do not know who is to be trusted. There is a report here—whether it has come from Milan by letter or mouth, I do not know—that Your Excellency has spoken angry words against Valentino before the Most Christian King and the Pope’s servants, and whether this is true or not, they will doubtless reach the ears of Valentino, who, having already shown that he does not scruple to conspire against those of his own blood, will, I am certain, not hesitate to plot against your person.”

In saying that Cesare had conspired against his own blood, she was referring of course to the murder of his brother Juan. About that, as we have seen, she was almost certainly wrong. She was right, however, in warning her husband that if he valued his life, he would change his behavior. No one could yet know, in September 1502, just how right she was, but Francesco was sensible enough to take her advice. Isabella also intervened with Cesare directly, writing to him in fawning terms and sending him a hundred carnival masks—a perfectly chosen gift in light of his predilection for going about masked when in Rome. The rift was healed so completely—clearly neither side wanted further trouble—that before Cesare’s departure a betrothal was arranged between the three-year-old daughter he had never seen and the Gonzagas’ two-year-old son and heir. It is difficult to believe that anyone expected this arrangement ever to lead to an actual marriage, but in the near term there was something in it for everyone. It put Cesare on a newly friendly footing with Mantua, which lay just to the north of Bologna and was
closely connected to Ferrara. It spared Louis XII from having to add Mantua to the list of states he was committed to shielding from Cesare.

Isabella was right about something else too. There was indeed “some understanding” with Louis, one that from Cesare’s perspective could hardly have been more welcome. The king, betraying his new ally Giovanni Bentivoglio in much the same way that he had already betrayed the people of Pisa, promised not only not to interfere if Cesare chose to attack Bologna—which helps to explain Cesare’s eagerness for a rapprochement with Bologna’s neighbor, the gratuitously insulting Gonzaga of Mantua—but to continue making troops available for Cesare’s use. He further agreed that Cesare should be free to deal with his own
condottieri
—Vitelli, Baglioni, and various Orsini—in whatever way he thought best. In return the king required only that Cesare acknowledge the status of Florence as a French protectorate and join his army with France’s when the war with Spain began.
On September 2, in bidding the king farewell, Cesare offered profuse thanks and a written pledge that “when the time comes I will present myself to you at the head of ten thousand men.” He then started back to the Romagna. Again he detoured to Ferrara, arriving to discover that Lucrezia had suffered a miscarriage and was now so ill that she was not expected to recover.
He helped to hold her down while the physicians summoned from Rome bled her, and witnesses would report that the two days he spent at her side “cheered her greatly.” Though Lucrezia was given the last rites the day after the bleeding, she went on to make a full recovery. She would, however, never see her brother again. That he had twice added a hundred miles to a hard journey at least partly to see his sister—solely for that purpose the second time, so far as we know—shows the strength of the bond between the two.

Cesare established a headquarters at Imola and, employing some of his clergymen relatives as administrators, set about organizing his new duchy of Romagna. In doing so he demonstrated that he had learned from the example of Pope Alexander, who from the reign of Calixtus III had displayed a good understanding of the problems of the Papal States and a keen appreciation of the value of firm and honest administration in maintaining order and creating loyalty. Cesare replaced the capricious and often savagely cruel rule of the likes of Caterina Sforza with something the Romagnese people had not experienced since ancient
times: governmental machinery that functioned fairly and efficiently and delivered real justice. One of his first acts in this connection was to dismiss his vicar-general, the Spaniard Ramiro de Lorqua. Lorqua’s hard methods, growing interest in enriching himself, and sneering contempt for the farmers and merchants of the Romagna had made him hated. His demotion to the governorship of Rimini was cheered everywhere except in that suddenly fearful city. Cesare created a new office,
presidente
, and appointed to it a distinguished jurist and humanist scholar named Antonio di Monte Sansovino, not just personally honest but devoted to rooting out official corruption. The administration that Sansovino put in place marked the opening of a new era for the Romagna. It made Cesare a popular figure, a ruler for whom many of the region’s people would be willing to fight.

The understanding that Cesare had come to with Louis XII in Milan was supposedly secret, but word of it leaked out soon enough. Possibly Pope Alexander let it slip in the course of talking, as he was increasingly inclined to do as he grew older, too much and too freely. He would alternate happy effusions about Cesare’s conquests with complaints about how much he was draining from the papal treasury—no less than a thousand ducats a day at this point. It would not be surprising if he let what he knew of Cesare’s plans slip out in the course of one of his monologues. However it happened, the Orsini learned that Louis had given Cesare license to do with them as he wished. Their compeers Vitelli and Baglioni inferred, sensibly enough, that they too were marked for destruction.

Giovanni Bentivoglio of Bologna could feel a Borgia noose tightening around his neck as well. On September 17 he received orders to come to Rome to answer charges of having failed to fulfill his responsibilities as a papal vicar and, even more ominously, to bring his sons with him. Six days later Louis XII sent an even more shocking instruction: Bentivoglio was to surrender Bologna to the pope. Thoroughly alarmed, Bentivoglio assembled the leading men of the city and invited them to vote on whether he should do as the king demanded. The balloting was to be secret, with each participant putting into a box either a white bean indicating that Bentivoglio should stay or a black bean indicating that he should go. Any doubts about the outcome disappeared when the electors discovered that they had been given white beans
only. It was all futile in any case; Bentivoglio obviously was doomed, and just as obviously he was not alone. The threatened lords began to meet and talk, and their discussions turned inevitably into the hatching of plans for striking at Cesare while there was still time. Among the plotters were the leading Orsini, the Bentivoglii, the Baglioni, Pandolfo Petrucci of Siena, Vitellozzo Vitelli, the exiled Guidobaldo of Urbino, and the lords of several smaller states. All were soldiers, many were seasoned killers, and almost all commanded substantial territories and significant numbers of men. Together they were likely to be strong enough to defy the pope, escape the wrath of the French king, and perhaps eliminate Cesare as a political force.

Events began to unfold more rapidly than the conspirators expected, but to do so in encouraging ways. On October 7 the people of San Leo, a town some ten miles from Urbino and fiercely loyal to the Montefeltro dukes, learned of the conspiracy against Cesare and spontaneously rose up against the troops he had garrisoned there. This sparked other risings elsewhere, at Urbino itself and its satellite city of Gubbio as well as several smaller places. Some of the Borgia garrisons were not only overwhelmed but annihilated. Suddenly Cesare found himself on the defensive, and the conspirators hastened to press their advantage. They reconvened in Magione, a town far to the south of the Romagna that became their regular meeting place. They agreed to launch two simultaneous offensives. Vitelli and the Orsini would advance together on Urbino, their objective to restore Guidobaldo as duke. Giovanni Bentivoglio’s son Ermes, meanwhile, was to attack Cesare directly at his Imola headquarters.

Word came to Imola of setback after setback, disaster after disaster. Seeing that he was overextended, Cesare sent instructions for the two Spaniards he had left in command at Urbino, his friend Michelotto Corella and Ugo de Moncada, to pull back to Imola. They obeyed reluctantly, hating to surrender such a prize. Almost as soon as they were gone, Duke Guidobaldo returned, offering his palace to his fellow conspirators as their new base. To the south, Oliverotto Euffreducci of Fermo helped the last surviving son of Giulio Cesare Varano to retake Camerino. News of Guidobaldo’s restoration caused two more towns loyal to the Montefeltri, Fossombrone and Pergola, to rise against Cesare’s troops, almost all of whom were Spanish, and kill them to the last
man. Virtually all this trouble was south of the Romagna, in Umbria and the March. The Romagna itself remained quiet, its garrisons unthreatened; Cesare’s care to win the support of the population was showing its value.

Michelotto and Moncada were on the march when they learned of the loss of Camerino, Fossombrone, and Pergola and the slaughter of their Spanish comrades. Furious, they cast aside Cesare’s instructions and changed direction. Their troops, veteran Spaniards hungry for revenge, were unleashed to pillage without restraint. They reduced Fossombrone and Pergola to smoldering rubble, subjecting their populations to every imaginable outrage before essentially wiping them out. When news of these horrors reached Vitelli and Baglioni, they joined forces with Paolo and Francesco Orsini and set out in pursuit of the marauders. The two sides met near the village of Calmazzo, and the battle that followed was another disaster for Cesare. Moncada was taken prisoner, Michelotto barely managed to escape, and the remains of their army were driven in disorder back down the coast.