The Borgias (17 page)

Cesare rode through the town of Chinon, glittering with jewels and the finest clothes. From the castle windows high above, the king and his courtiers watched the procession and were exceedingly entertained by what they considered the ‘vanity and ridiculous pomposity of this duke.’ On entering the château, Cesare made ‘a profound reverence to the ground to His Majesty,’ reported the Venetian ambassador, ‘then, half way across the great hall, he made another reverence, and then, coming up to the King, he made as if to kiss his foot, but the King prevented this, so he kissed his hand instead, as did the gentlemen of his suite.’ And after dinner Cesare was escorted to the royal apartments, where he remained with the king ‘to the fourth hour of the night,’ and the following day Louis XII entertained Cesare in the company of several fashionable ladies. Indeed, despite his earlier ridicule, the king was clearly
deeply impressed with this extraordinary youngman, who could be so agreeable when he chose to be so, especially when flattered by royalty.

On December 21, in a magnificent ceremony in the Church of St-Mexme at Chinon, in the presence of King Louis and Cesare, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere solemnly invested Georges d’Amboise with his cardinal’s hat. ‘On the journey from the royal court to the church,’ reported Burchard, who was not there but was informed of the event, ‘the illustrious Cesare, Duke of Valence, formerly cardinal, carrying the hat for all to see, walked behind the other princes and immediately in front of the King, as if he were the royal equerry.’

Cardinal Giuliano sent news to Rome of Cesare’s success at the French court. ‘I cannot refrain from informing Your Holiness that the most illustrious Duke is so endowed with prudence, ability and every virtue of mind and body, that he has conquered everybody,’ he wrote to the pope on January 18, 1499. ‘He has found so much favour with the King, and all the princes of this court,’ he added, ‘that everyone holds him in esteem and honour of which fact I willingly and gladly give testimony.’

Louis XII and Anne of Brittany were married in the castle at Nantes on January 6, 1499. Cesare’s marital prospects, however, were not looking so positive. He had hoped that by now Carlotta of Aragon might have changed her mind about marrying him; but the Neapolitan princess was more stubborn than ever in her refusal to do so, ‘unless,’ so Cardinal della Rovere reported, ‘her father insists on it.’ King Federigo would only agree to the marriage if his rightful position as king of Naples was confirmed by both Alexander VI and Louis XII; Louis XII had his own ideas about who was
the rightful king of Naples. For his own part, he did try to force Carlotta to consent to the marriage, and faced by what he saw as her ‘feminine perversity,’ even went so far as to threaten to exile her from the French court. It was all to no avail, and in due course she married the Breton with whom she had fallen in love.

Cesare, whose principal reason for going to France was to get married, was furious, blaming the French king for not doing more to help him and threatening to return to Rome to complain of his treatment to his father, who was as angry as his son. ‘All Europe,’ Alexander VI declared, ‘was very well aware that, but for the definite promise of the King of France to find a wife for him, Cesare would have remained in Italy.’

In Rome, meanwhile, the issue of the alliance with France was causing violent rifts in the college. ‘Yesterday in consistory,’ the Venetian ambassador had reported in December 1498, ‘Cardinal Ascanio [Sforza] told the Pope that sending his son to France would be the ruin of Italy. The Pope shouted in reply that it had been Ascanio’s brother who had first brought the French into Italy.’ Alexander VI had a point – it was Ludovico who had encouraged the adventurous Charles VIII to invade Italy and assert his claim to the kingdom of Naples, a policy that, in hind sight, appeared rash in the extreme, particularly now his successor to the throne of France had a better claim to Milan than did Ludovico and his brother. The quarrel ended with the pope threatening to hurl Ascanio into the Tiber.

Yet, despite all the difficulties, Cesare was persuaded to stay on in France. There were hopes that all had been resolved when it was reported that King Louis and Cesare had had dinner alone
together. In late February Burchard reported the rumour that ‘the Pope’s son, Cesare, lately the Cardinal of Valence, has contracted matrimony with the daughter of the King of Naples, who is living in France,’ adding that ‘the marriage has been consummated.’ Less than a week later, this was flatly contradicted in a letter from Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere: ‘The marriage of Duke Valentino with the daughter of the King,’ he wrote, ‘is now definitely excluded.’

Rumours of a possible French bride were now rife in Rome and causing such concern and confusion that the pope not only had to receive deputations of protest from several European powers, even from Portugal, but felt obliged to appear in public with an armed guard. The pope declared to the Venetian ambassador, who came to see him about some other matter, that at the moment he cared little about other problems; he was waiting for news from France. ‘He is very anxious to hear what is happening there and is kept in suspense.’

Finally, after anxious weeks of waiting on the part of the pope, and increasing impatience on the part of Cesare, Louis XII proposed that since a marriage to Carlotta of Aragon could not be arranged, Cesare should marry – instead of an Italian bride – a French one. The king’s choice was the sixteen-year-old Charlotte d’Albret, a quiet, religious, good-looking, and good-tempered girl who had excellent royal connections; her father was the Duke of Guienne, her mother was related to the new queen, and her brother was the king of Navarre.

The news that Cesare was to marry Charlotte d’Albret arrived in Rome in late March. The pope disapproved of the match, knowing the inevitable trouble it would make for the papacy in Italy, and
would have prevented it had he been able to do so; but in view of his son’s determination, he felt constrained to give way, even agreeing to give a cardinal’s hat to the girl’s brother, Amanieu d’Albret.

The marriage contract was signed on May 10, and two days later the wedding took place in the queen’s apartments at the château of Blois. This family ceremony was followed by a grand wedding breakfast served in huge marquees put up in the grounds below the château walls; and after the meal, the marriage was consummated while Charlotte’s giggling young ladies took turns in watching the activities of the couple through the keyhole. The pleasure of the bride and groom was evidently spoiled, however, in a manner described by Robert de la Marck, the Lord of Fleurange:

The next day Cesare sent a trusty Spanish messenger to his father in Rome. On arrival the courier was immediately summoned to the Vatican and kept there for several hours, so anxious was the pope to hear every detail of the marriage, its preliminaries and its aftermath. He was pleased and amused to hear that his son had ‘broken the lance’ eight times on the wedding night – even the pedantic Burchard recorded this piece of information in his diary. And the French king wrote to the pope with the information that it had been a better performance than he himself had been able to manage; he,
too, had ‘consummated the matrimony eight times,’ but these eight times consisted of two before supper and six at night.

Over the next few weeks, more couriers arrived from France, each with letters reporting further details of Cesare’s success. The pope was delighted with the news that Louis XII had given Cesare the right to use the armorial bearings of the French royal house; the duke’s coat-of-arms would henceforth show the Borgia bull quartered with the lilies of France. He was also delighted to hear of Cesare’s new command in the French army, with an elite corps of one hundred lancers, of his collar of the royal chivalric Order of St Michael, which King Louis XII bestowed on him a week after the wedding, and of the estate in France that had been bought with the money that Charlotte had inherited from her mother. Cesare himself wrote to his father to say that he was ‘the most contented man in the world.’

Even Charlotte wrote to her father to say that she was very well satisfied with her husband; and she hoped to be able to go to Rome one day soon to see her father-in-law. She was also satisfied with the presents showered upon her by her enthusiastic bridegroom, many of which had been bought by Cesare for Carlotta of Aragon, and well she might have been, for they included numerous precious stones, pearls and diamonds, brocades and silks, gold chains, silver-gilt dinner services, vessels and vases, miniature silver bell towers and citadels, and mother-of-pearl models of warships.

On May 23, the day the news of the wedding arrived in Rome, the pope declared an evening of celebrations. That night Rome was
en fête
. Fireworks exploded in the sky; torches burned throughout the night; ‘bonfires were lit as a sign of joy in the city,’ recorded
Burchard, who reported that even Lucrezia had lit her own fire, despite the fact that the French alliance spelled imminent disaster for her husband, Alfonso of Aragon, and for her sister-in-law Sancia. For Burchard, too, the marriage did not bode well: ‘It was in reality a great dishonour, a source of great shame for His Holiness and for the Holy See.’

The pope, however, was hugely relieved. He admitted to one foreign envoy that he had entertained real doubts as to the marriage ever taking place, but now that it had done so he was delighted, and, whereas he used to speak ill of France, he was ‘now all French because of the love the King of France had shown towards his Duke.’ So anxious and impatient of late, he was contented once more and raised no objection when asked to pay the 30,000 ducats required in France toward the cost of accommodating and entertaining his son during his stay there. The benefits that he was expecting from this alliance with France would bring him, and particularly his son, advantages that would far outweigh this sum of money.

‘A
UT
C
AESAR AUT NIHIL
’

I
T WAS IN THE MIDDLE
of July 1499 that news reached Rome that the king of France was gathering his troops in Lyons ready for the invasion of Italy and the military campaign to enforce his claims to Milan and Naples. Knowing what was in store for his family, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza fled the city to join his brother, Duke Ludovico. The pope’s son-in-law, Alfonso of Aragon, left on August 2, riding toward Naples, much to the misery of Lucrezia; the young man, according to the Venetian ambassador, had ‘deserted his wife who has been with child for six months and she cries constantly.’ A few days later, Alexander VI sent his reluctant daughter-in-law Sancia off to join her brother in Naples and, on August 8, dispatched their spouses, Lucrezia and Jofrè, north to Spoleto, a town in the Apennines, to which he now appointed the
nineteen-year-old Lucrezia as governor, an unusual appointment but one that confirmed the respect the pope had for his daughter’s abilities and the trust he placed in her loyalty – it was an appointment that would have been conventional for a son. Out of respect for her delicate condition, he equipped her with a litter, which was decorated inside with white and crimson satin, to ease what would be an extremely uncomfortable journey up into the hills in the harsh summer heat.

Cesare, meanwhile, had taken leave of his new bride in early July, just two months after his wedding, and ridden south from Blois to join the French troops massing at Lyons. With an army of six thousand cavalry, one company of which was under Cesare’s command, and seventeen thousand infantry, Louis XII was optimistic about his chances of conquering the prosperous duchy of Milan. He declined, however, to lead the troops himself, preferring instead to follow the old French tradition whereby a king without a direct male heir should remain in France.

By the end of the month, the French army had crossed the Alps, negotiating the passes with ease in the midsummer heat, and were now encamped on the Po plain. Alessandria capitulated after a short siege, and several other towns, mindful of the price they would pay for resistance, chose to surrender peacefully. On September 2 Duke Ludovico Sforza, who was not popular in Milan and was suspected by many of having poisoned his nephew to acquire his title, fled the city. The Milanese, unwilling to suffer as Alessandria had done, opened their gates to the French invaders. A month later, on Sunday, October 6, Louis XII made his formal entry into the city, hailed as ‘King of the Franks, Duke of Milan.’