The Borgias (10 page)

‘On being told of His Holiness’s approach,’ wrote Burchard, the eager young king, not well versed in the subtleties of achieving diplomatic advantage, ‘hurried to the end of the second private garden to greet him.’ Catching sight of the pope, he approached him and twice genuflected before him: ‘At first His Holiness pretended not to see this gesture but when His Majesty came closer and was about to genuflect for a third time, the Pope removed his cap and, holding out his hand to restrain the King from kneeling, kissed him.’

Alexander VI’s informality was calculated, as was his apparent insistence on the equality that was seen to exist between the two rulers. ‘At this their first meeting,’ Burchard continued, ‘both men were bareheaded and the King kissed neither the Pope’s foot nor his hand. His Holiness refused to place his cap back on his head until the King had replaced his own hat, but eventually they both covered their heads simultaneously.’ Later that day Alexander VI displayed a similar deference when, having accompanied Charles VIII to the Sala del Pappagallo, he declined to sit down until his guest had done so.

Alexander VI also acceded to Charles VIII’s request to give a cardinal’s hat to Guillaume Briçonnet, the bishop of St-Malo and a trusted member of the king’s Privy Council, and to invest him immediately. Burchard was sent off forthwith to find a cardinal’s hat and robe. ‘The hat was supplied by Cardinal Cesare Borgia,’ he remarked, ‘and the cloak was borrowed from the rooms of Cardinal Pallavicini.’ All the cardinals present were now seated as if for a consistory, and Alexander VI, according to Burchard, ‘said he was happy to agree to the King’s request providing the cardinals also considered the occasion suitable.’

One by one the cardinals gave their consent, and the pope duly invested Briçonnet with the insignia of his new rank. ‘When this had been done the Cardinal of St-Malo kissed the Pope’s foot and hand, and then, raised up by the Pope, he received the kiss on the mouth,’ not just from Alexander VI but also from all the other cardinals present.

Alexander VI himself now rose from his seat and said that he wished to escort the king back to the royal apartments, but this Charles VIII ‘categorically refused to allow.’ He was therefore accompanied by the cardinals as far as the entrance, where they left him. The doors were guarded by Scottish mercenaries, who had the special duty of guarding the French king and allowed none to enter except for members of the royal household.

Two days later, on January 18, having managed neatly to side-step two of Charles VIII’s demands – the calling of a council to address the issue of the reform of the church and papal recognition of his claim to Naples – Alexander VI did give him formal permission to pass freely through the Papal States, a somewhat Pyrrhic victory for the young king, who already held most of the territory north of Rome and knew that the pope did not have the forces necessary to prevent him from taking the rest, if he wanted it. In return, the pope had extracted a promise from Charles VIII that he would profess his obedience to the pope in public.

This was a diplomatic triumph for Alexander VI. A month earlier he had been under siege, his city in an uproar, his hold on power tenuous at best; now he had fully reestablished his authority. The terms of the agreement were formally read out and written up, ‘in French for His Majesty and in Latin for the Pope.’

‘T
HEY RAPED THE WOMEN
,
THEN ROBBED THEM
’

O
VER THE NEXT FEW DAYS
, Charles VIII was seen to adhere to his side of the bargain. On January 19, 1495, Burchard noted, ‘the Sala Regia in the Vatican was prepared in the traditional way for the public consistory in which the King of France would take his solemn oath of obedience.’ When everything was ready, the pope asked Burchard to inform the king, ‘whom we found beside the fire in his room, wearing his doublet and his boots still not laced.’ On being told that his presence was requested, the king, wiser than before, replied that he still ‘had to dress, and when he had done so, he intended to hear mass in St Peter’s, and then to dine and that after this he would come to His Holiness.’ When the cardinals, who were to escort Charles VIII to the Sala Regia, arrived at his rooms, they found him still at table and were forced to wait, seated on the window seats. He further delayed by insisting that Burchard repeat
again and again the order of the ceremony, and it was some two hours before the royal party finally arrived.

In the magnificent setting of the Sala Regia, designed specifically for the reception of kings and emperors, or their ambassadors, Charles VIII addressed the pope: ‘Most Holy Father,’ he intoned, ‘I have come to render homage and reverence to Your Holiness in the same way as my predecessors the Kings of France have done.’ On January 28, when Charles VIII took leave of Alexander VI, they parted in sincere amity or, as Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere thought, in abject surrender on the part of the king. The master of ceremonies described their parting:

Leaving with Charles VIII, to accompany the king to Naples in the guise of a papal legate, though in reality a hostage for Alexander VI’s good behaviour, was Cesare. He kept the king waiting while he returned briefly to his apartments: ‘At last Cesare appeared, wearing his cardinal’s hat, and, with His Holiness’s permission, mounted his horse beside the King. To His Majesty he presented six exceedingly beautiful horses, which stood ready at
hand with bridles but no saddles, and then both the King and Cesare departed.’

That evening a courier arrived with news for Alexander VI that King Alfonso II had fled from Naples – ‘out of sheer cowardice,’ commented the contemporary French chronicler Philippe de Commynes – loading four galleys with treasure in order, so the letter reported, to sail to Sicily and then to Spain, to recruit forces against the French.

The following evening, January 29, came the news that, in fact, Alfonso II, who had only been crowned by the pope’s nephew the cardinal of Monreale just nine months before, had now abdicated in favour of his son, Ferrante II, who had, on his father’s orders, contracted marriage to Isabella of Aragon, his father’s sister, ‘that he had ridden through Naples where he had received oaths of homage from all,’ and that he had set free all those nobles imprisoned by Ferrante I and Alfonso II, except for those known to be associated with the French, and these he had executed.

On January 30 couriers arrived with even more dramatic news from Naples, this time concerning Cesare. As Burchard recorded:

When he learned of Cesare’s disappearance, Charles VIII was furious. ‘All Italians are filthy dogs,’ he was quoted as having said, ‘and the Holy Father is as bad as the worst of them.’ The king suspected that Alexander VI knew very well where his son was and that he had been told beforehand of Cesare’s attempt to escape as soon as opportunity offered. The pope did, however, send his secretary to Charles VIII with his sincere apologies for his son’s behaviour.

By the middle of February, Charles VIII had entered Capua, where, so it was said, strange portents had appeared. ‘One night as he slept in his chamber,’ reported Burchard, ‘he was woken twice by a dreadful voice; he opened a chest which was in his room to find a banner standing erect and, in his terror, made a vow that he would not return to France without having taken the Holy Land and reconquered the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem; he also promised to build and endow a chapel in Naples in honour of the Holy Ghost.’

Charles VIII entered Naples on February 22, slipping quietly
into the city to lodge in the Castel Capuano, because the three other royal castles, including Castel Nuovo, remained in the hands of troops loyal to Ferrante II. As a French chronicler observed: ‘On Sunday, after he had enjoyed an excellent dinner, [the king] put on his robes of state and, with joy not rancour entered the city in pomp, thus displaying his power there, although he did not have a proper entry on that day.’ Guicciardini reported the view of the populace: ‘The reputation of the last two kings was so odious among all the people and almost all the nobles, and there was much eagerness for the French regime.’

Charles VIII was intent upon enjoying himself in Naples. The city was, he declared, ‘an earthly paradise.’ He was certainly, ‘as one of the most lascivious men in France,’ finding plenty of opportunity to indulge his ‘fondness for copulation’ and of ‘changing his dishes’ so that ‘once he had had a woman, he cared no more about her, taking his pleasure with fresh ones.’ His soldiers were equally lascivious, and having made themselves hated in Rome, they now became detested in Naples, despite the welcome they had first received. As Guicciardini commented:

The French were ‘stupid, dirty and dissolute people,’ another Italian observer decided, and he added:

The arrival of the French, moreover, coincided with the first dramatic epidemic of syphilis, which was known as the ‘
morbo gallico
’ or ‘
mal francese
’ by the Italians, and as ‘
le mal de Napoli
’ by the French. This foul venereal disease – ‘so horrible that it ought to be mentioned as one of the gravest calamities,’ wrote Guicciardini – arrived in Europe in 1494, probably brought to Europe from the West Indies or America by Christopher Columbus’s sailors. It soon spread, and the doctors, confronting the disease for the first time, were perplexed; indeed, as Guicciardini noted, ‘they often applied inappropriate remedies, many of which were harmful and frequently inflamed the infection.’ In Rome it was so virulent that seventeen members of Alexander VI’s family and court, including Cesare, had to be treated for it within a period of two months.

For almost two months after he escaped from the French court at Velletri, nothing reliable was heard about Cesare; and then he reappeared once more, as a deus ex machina, in Rome, where, with his customary skill in such matters, he set about organizing an
attack upon the Swiss troops who had been left behind in the city when the French army marched south for Naples. The troops were attacked in the piazza in front of St Peter’s by a large body of Spaniards who killed over twenty of them and wounded several more.