James Dennistoun

The crimes and ambition of the Borgia—Murder of the Duke of Gandia—Duke Guidobaldo’s expeditions against Perugia and Tuscany—He adopts Francesco Maria della Rovere as his heir—Louis XII. succeeds to Charles VIII., and to his views upon Italy—Cesare Borgia created Duke Valentino—Duke Guidobaldo at Venice.

TIME was meanwhile maturing the crimes of the Borgia, whose sinister influence upon the destiny of Guidobaldo was about to be signally manifested. So far from regarding his spurious progeny with shame, Alexander was indefatigable in his endeavours to elevate them to the most conspicuous places. He had obtained for the eldest the dukedom of Gandia in Spain, and one of the highest offices at Naples. For the youngest he had secured, by political intrigue, a similar dignity there, with the principality of Squillace, and the hand of an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso II. He had loaded Cesare with ecclesiastical benefices, and had remarried Lucrezia to the sovereign of Pesaro. But his ambition became insatiable in proportion as it was pampered. Upon a vague pretext he annulled his daughter's marriage, that he might give her hand to the Duke of Bisceglia, natural son of Alfonso. His schemes for endowing his sons with the Orsini holdings having entirely miscarried, he resolved to provide for the Duke of Gandia a sovereign principality from the states of the Church, consisting of Benevento and Terracino. Having gained a complete co-operation in the consistory, by frightening into exile or removing by poison the more impracticable cardinals, and by overawing or corrupting the others, he, on the 7th of June, invested the Duke with these towns with due solemnity. Three days previously, Lucrezia had retired to the convent of S. Sisto, to prepare for the formal rupture of her marriage with Giovanni Sforza, whose murder would have anticipated the divorce, had not a hint from her enabled him to save his life by flight, insalutato hospite, as Machiavelli remarks.[260] On the 9th, Cardinal Valentino received his credentials as legate for the coronation of Frederick of Naples. On Thursday, the 15th, he set out on his mission, after spending the preceding afternoon at a casino of his mother, near S. Pietro in Vinculis, where all the family except the sister were assembled in apparent harmony. He quitted it in company with his eldest brother, who was never again seen in life, and having visited his father at a late hour to receive a benediction, he left Rome before dawn. When an alarm was raised on the Duke of Gandia's disappearance, a boatman deposed to having seen, about one o'clock on Thursday morning, a body thrown neck and heels into the Tiber, at the present port of the Ripetta, by four attendants of a mounted gentleman, who had brought it to the bank swung across his horse. The river was dragged, and the Duke's body was found pierced with wounds. He was said to have spent the preceding hours with a lady in whose favours the Cardinal was his avowed rival. Public opinion, though distracted by conflicting rumours, branded the latter with fratricide, and scandal gave to that charge a still more loathsome dye, by naming the lady Lucrezia Borgia. History has received the former accusation as established, the latter as uncontradicted, adducing against its truth no better argument than its revolting improbability. It is, however, but just to pause ere we lend our faith to charges so hideous. Burchard, though greedy of gossip, and seldom scrupulous in exposing the Vatican immoralities, mentions no fact, breathes no hint, tending to inculpate Cesare. Neither do contemporary accounts from residents in the Holy City, preserved by Sanuto, attach any such foul slur to his name, but chiefly mention Cardinal Ascanio Sforza as then suspected of the murder.[261] They even prove that, four days after it took place, the latter thought it necessary to rebut the allegation by the mouth of the Spanish ambassador, in a full consistory, from which he alone was absent. But this negation does not appear to have quashed a surmise which gathered strength by scenting out motives for the outrage. By some, Ascanio was regarded as an unscrupulous instrument of the Orsini in their vengeance against the Pontiff's family; others traced his evil purpose to a recent feud between the Duke of Gandia and some guests at an entertainment given by him, where mutual insults had led to bloody reprisals, imputed to the implacable Borgia. Again, we are told by Burchard that the victim was last seen in company with a masked figure, who had been observed to follow him during several days, and whom he that night took up on the crupper of his horse, probably to keep an assignation; a statement easily reconcileable with the bargeman's evidence, and pointing probably to some dark intrigue, whereto it does not appear that his brother was necessarily privy.

Cesare Borgia

Anderson

CESARE BORGIA AS THE EMPEROR

Detail from the fresco of the Disputa of S. Catherine in the Appartamento Borgia in the Vatican

Although the Duke of Gandia's morals will bear no examination, he was a general favourite in Rome. To a people fond of pageantry the taste of his family for splendour was naturally grateful, and he, alone, of the race, mingled neither tyranny nor cruelty with his magnificence. The bargeman of the Ripetta had manifested neither surprise nor curiosity regarding an incident which he stated to be of frequent occurrence at that spot; but when the victim was ascertained, the whole city was moved; the tradespeople closed their shops,[*262] and all retired panic-stricken to their homes. The few stragglers who crossed the bridge near to which the mutilated body had been found, started at the cry of many sorrowing voices which issued from St. Angelo, and one deep-toned note of woe, which rose above the wailing, was imputed to the Pontiff, "lamenting him who was his right eye, the hope and glory of his house." His grief and horror were indeed overwhelming: we are assured that he swallowed nothing from Wednesday till Saturday, and passed three successive nights without an hour of sleep. On the 19th he held a consistory, to receive the condolence of the cardinals and foreign ministers, whom he addressed to the following purpose[263]:—

"The Duke of Gandia is dead, and his death has been to us the greatest affliction: a more grievous trial we could not have met with, for we loved him mightily, and we no longer value our popedom nor anything; nay, had we seven popedoms, we should give them all to recover the Duke's life. It is rather a visitation from God, sent, perhaps, for some sin of ours, than that he should have merited a death so dreadful. It being unknown by whom he was murdered and thrown into the Tiber, rumour has ascribed the assassination to the Lord of Pesaro, which we are certain is untrue; no more can it have been done by the Prince of Squillace, brother of the Duke; and we are even satisfied as to the Duke of Urbino: may God forgive who ever it was! We have, however, determined no longer to apply to anything, nor take any charge of the papacy, nor of life itself, nor any thought for the Church; but in order to regulate it and our mode of life, and for the due correction of our own person, we mean to commit these to six of you, most reverend cardinals our brethren, along with two judges of the Rota; and in order that all benefices may be bestowed by merit, apart from any other consideration, they shall be decided by a majority of you cardinals." After naming this executive council, and hearing a justification of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, volunteered in his absence by the Spanish ambassador, the Pope continued:—"God forbid that we should entertain such a fancy, for never could we credit that his Lordship would do us the smallest injury, least of all an outrage such as this; for we have regarded him as a brother, and have on every occasion placed ourselves at the disposal of himself and of the Duke his brother: assuredly we harbour not the trace of such an idea, and when he comes to us he will be welcome."

It was, indeed, high time that the scandals brought upon the Church by the enormities of her head should terminate. Alexander had for some time been openly living with a sister of Cardinal Farnese, wife of Monoculo Orsini, who was known as Giulia Bella; and who, after appearing prominently by his side on all public and solemn occasions, had lately borne him a son.[264] But even now he realised the scriptural proverb of "the dog turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." The remorse and repentance he had avowed, in full consistory, with sobs and tears, were quickly forgotten; the public reforms he had promised were repudiated; the administrative council he had formally nominated was never assembled nor installed. Nepotism and intrigue again became his policy, debauchery his pastime. Those who charge the Cardinal Valentino with his brother's murder, may point to the exclamation, "I know who did it," which was said to have escaped from their father in the first outbreak of his grief; and it has been by some connected with the alleged institution of Giovanni, their next brother, to the titles and inheritance of the Duke of Gandia, passing over the suspected fratricide. This, however, is an entirely erroneous assumption, as there not only appears no brother of the Duke of Gandia bearing his honours, but the invaluable diary of Sanuto expressly mentions an investiture of the Neapolitan fiefs obtained for his son within a few weeks of his death.[265] The Pontiff's displeasure with Cesare, from whatever cause originating, was transient as his personal reformation. His schemes of aggrandisement could not be pursued without the co-operation of him who, alone of his children, was as ambitious and as unscrupulous as himself, and the close of the year brought Valentino an addition to his already enormous plurality of benefices, upon the death of the Cardinal of Parma.

Valentino had endeavoured, by the imposing splendour of his legation to Naples, and by scattering immoderate largesses, to dazzle, and if possible blind, men to the Cain-brand that was upon him. But when he developed a new scheme of aggrandisement, by proffering to a daughter of Federigo a hand which his unscrupulous father was ready to liberate from priestly vows, the King and the Princess alike recoiled from an offer tainted by sacrilege and fratricide. We have seen that a similar refusal by Ferdinand I. was a principal cause for Charles VIII. being invited into Italy. Unwarned by that result of a wretched policy, the Pontiff prepared to repeat it in circumstances still more fatal to the Peninsula. Cesare Borgia returned from his legation on the 5th of September, and was received with every mark of honour and favour by his father, who appeared to have dismissed the Duke of Gandia's very existence from his mind. The pontifical court was once more a scene of alternate dissipation and crime, and the Cardinal of Valencia was the moving spirit of both. In December, Lucrezia's divorce was pronounced, and her dowry of 31,000 ducats returned; next August she became wife of Alfonso Duke of Bisceglia, with an augmented provision of 40,000 ducats, he being then seventeen years of age.

In the following summer, the Duke of Urbino was induced to unite with the Prefect della Rovere in an expedition against Perugia, for the purpose of restoring the Oddi, who, as heads of the Ghibellines, had been expelled from thence by their rivals, the Guelphic Baglioni.[*266] But from this enterprise the Pope speedily recalled him by a remonstrance, which with wonted devotion he hastened to obey, stipulating, however, for indemnity of the expenses he had incurred, amounting to 5000 scudi. About the same time he lost his relation and counsellor Ottaviano Ubaldini, Count of Mercatello, who died at an advanced age.

The services of Guidobaldo were speedily required in another quarter; and by one of those sudden changes, not unusual to soldiers of fortune, he found himself comrade of his late opponents, the Orsini and Baglioni.[*267] The occasion was the recommencement of the Pisan war, when the fickle usurper of Milan joined the Florentines in their attempts to reduce that city to its former obedience; a combination which, arousing the jealousy of Venice, induced her to adopt the cause of Pisa. Pietro de' Medici and his brother Giuliano availed themselves of this opportunity to make another effort for their re-establishment in that capital. They offered to support an invasion of Tuscany, with all the aid which their own credit and the Orsini influence could bring into the field; and the maritime republic, accepting the proposal, took into their pay, besides the Baglioni of Perugia, the Duke of Urbino with two hundred men-at-arms, and a hundred light horse, for which they allowed him 20,000 scudi a year.[268] Having gained over one of the Malatesta, owner of a small fief in the passes above Sarsina, the confederates sent forward Bartolomeo d'Alviano, who, penetrating the mountain paths about Camaldoli, entered Tuscany and seized Bibbiena, in the upper Val d'Arno, ere the Florentines were aware of the incursion. Guidobaldo followed with a strong body of men, and, finding the season vigorous, went into winter quarters in that and the adjoining towns. The enemy was led by Paulo Vitelli, whose judicious arrangements and great activity, having closed all the defiles around them, kept them in a state of siege during the winter, cutting off their supplies, surprising their posts, and tempting their men to desertion, until they were reduced to great straits. The Duke's health, already broken by frequent gouty attacks, suffered sadly from the severe climate of these mountain sites, and the privations of an ill-supplied commissariat. The critical position of his army aggravated his malady by preying upon his spirits, and his applications for a physician were coldly refused by his assailants. At length, in the middle of February, their general, Vitelli, on his own responsibility, granted him free passage home to Urbino, an act of charity afterwards severely visited upon his head by the authorities of Florence. Disgusted by the losses of a campaign fruitlessly protracted by disinclination of the respective commanders to risk their reputation in an engagement, the Venetians recalled the reinforcements which they had sent under NicolÒ di Petigliano, and abandoned the cause of Pisan independence for that wider field of ambition which the schemes of Louis XII. were developing.

The Cardinal della Rovere, who, during nearly all the pontificate of Alexander, provided for his safety by absence from Rome, had shared the hardships of the Bibbiena campaign, and escaped from them with Guidobaldo. Whilst thus thrown together they seem to have planned an arrangement which opened a new era for Urbino. Feeling that in himself must terminate the male investiture of his states, and dreading that by his early decease they might lapse to a Pope who would joyfully endow with them one of his odious progeny, the Duke willingly listened to a suggestion of the Cardinal, that he should adopt their mutual nephew Francesco Maria della Rovere, son of the Prefect of Sinigaglia, then a promising boy of eight years old. At first they thought of concealing this design from Alexander, but Guidobaldo, aware that without his sanction it could not be matured, and trusting to the hold which his services and dutiful obedience ought to have given him in that quarter, soon proposed it for his approval. The successor of St. Peter, anticipating the modern discovery that words are given to conceal thoughts, professed great satisfaction with the plan, and hinted at bestowing the hand of his niece Angela Borgia upon the presumptive heir of Urbino. A brief interval removed the flimsy veil, and proved that the Pontiff was ready to anticipate the lapse of that dukedom, without awaiting his vassal's death.

The great convulsions impending over Italy require another general glance at the new combinations which the politics of Southern Europe had assumed. Charles VIII. died of apoplexy on the 7th of April, 1498, and was succeeded by his second cousin, Louis XII., first of the Orleans branch of Valois. Though a prince of narrow views and somewhat feeble character, he became the instrument of unprecedented misfortunes to Italy. In him were centred the Angevine claims upon Naples which his predecessor had asserted; and likewise such pretensions upon the Milanese as vested in the heir of line of the Visconti, through his grandmother Valentina, sister of the last Duke. Upon these grounds he at once assumed the style of King of Naples and Jerusalem, and Duke of Milan, and avowed his intention of rendering the latter at least of these titles effectual. Federigo of Aragon and Ludovico Sforza trembled at the impending danger; but, with unaccountable blindness, the other powers strove who should be foremost to offer their alliance to the invader. The Venetians hailed the certain punishment of a tyrannical usurper, who had aided in thwarting them in their recent attempts to maintain the independence of Pisa. They and the princes of Romagna and La Marca remembered how little their several interests had suffered from the expedition of Charles. Florence conceived that the return of the French was the surest guarantee of their democratic independence against the re-establishment of the Medici. The Pope, as usual, had in view ulterior and private ends. His late indignation against his son, the Cardinal, had, with unaccountable revulsion, been succeeded by an increased fondness. The latter reminded him that the years passed since his elevation to the tiara had brought no fulfilment of those schemes of aggrandisement which their mutual ambition had nourished. His recent domestic catastrophe perhaps warned the father how much might be dared by a disappointed son. Every consideration urged upon both the necessity of a great effort to obtain for Cesare a sovereign principality; and conscious that this scheme would have the best chance of success at a moment of general confusion, they resolved to effect it through the instrumentality of a new French invasion, if no readier means offered for their purpose.

Louis XII. had set his mind upon divorcing his queen, Jeanne, the daughter of Louis XI., in order to marry Anne of Bretagne, widow of his predecessor, for which purpose papal dispensations were required, and for these he was a suppliant. The Borgia seized the golden moment to pledge him to their views. Cesare had been created a Cardinal in 1494, by means of suborned oaths, that he was the lawful son of a Roman citizen, for illegitimacy was a bar to that dignity. On the pretext that ecclesiastical orders had been unwillingly conferred upon him, his father, on the 17th of September, annulled them in full consistory, and accepted a renunciation of his cardinal's hat. Next day he appeared in a rich military costume of the latest French fashion, and forthwith took shipping for Marseilles, on a special embassy to the French court, where he arrived about the 18th of October. The following letter of recommendation which he bore is preserved in the BibliothÈque du Roi, and being to all intents a private missive, written and addressed by the Pope's own hand, possesses a very different interest from ordinary papal brieves.

This mission was ostensibly to present Louis with his divorce; but the Duke, in fact, carried also a dispensation for his union with Queen Anne, which had been secretly granted, and which he thus held, ready to deliver it as soon as he should gain the royal consent to certain conditions for his own aggrandisement, the prize then in distant perspective being nothing less than the sceptre of Naples.[270]

Relieved from a character and garb but ill-adapted to his temperament and habits, Cesare Borgia at once assumed the bearing and pomp of sovereignty to which his gradually extending ambition now aspired. All Rome had been busied in preparing his outfit, which is stated by Sanuto at 100,000 ducats; and the magnificence of his following may be estimated from the assertion that his chargers were shod with silver, or, as some say, with gold. An account of his presentation at the French court will be found in the Appendix X., with details of splendour befitting lavish tastes. His reception was suited to such pretensions, and Louis, well appreciating his disposition, prefaced all negotiation by presenting him with a dukedom, a pension of 20,000 francs, and a similar sum in name of yearly pay for himself and a hundred lances. As he had been styled Cardinal Valentino, from Valencia in Spain, he now became Duke Valentino, from Valence in Dauphiny.

But the intrigues of the Borgia had not entirely abandoned the hope of an alliance for Cesare with a princess of Naples, notwithstanding the cold reception which such a proposal had met with on his recent legation at her father's court. Carlotta, daughter of Federigo, by his first wife, a princess of Savoy, was resident in France, and they hoped to sell the Pope's sanction to the French King's designs upon Milan, for the influence of Louis in favour of her marriage to the Duke Valentino, with the sovereignty of Tarento as her dowry. This project was, however, finally abandoned, on receiving from the lady a scornful refusal to soil her hand by uniting it with an apostate priest, the son of a priest, a blood-thirsty fratricide, as base in character as in birth. This result was not a little pleasing to Louis, who, with a view to his ulterior designs upon Naples, was much more content that the Duke should be the insulted suitor than the son-in-law of Federigo. Meanwhile the finesse of Cesare had nearly overreached itself. Keeping back the dispensation until he had effected his own objects, he endeavoured to attach conditions to its delivery; but Louis, informed by the Bishop of Cette, who was Nuncio at his court, that it had already issued on the 20th of October, and that its non-publication could not prevent its validity, prepared to celebrate his marriage without delay. The Duke hastened to remedy his mistake with a good grace, by delivering the dispensation, and presenting a cardinal's hat to George d'Amboise, the French King's favourite minister; but with a vengeance that knew no pity, he had poison administered to the tell-tale Bishop.

Lying nearest the common danger, Ludovico il Moro was the most energetic, as well as the most interested, in preparing for defence. Again he proposed a general league for the exclusion of ultra-montane invasion, and attempted to gain the Pope's adherence to it by a secret engagement, that the great states should, at his dictation, make common cause against any or all of the princely feudatories of the Church, and by money or the sword should establish Cesare Borgia in some sovereignty. This offer being addressed to the Pontiff's leading passion, it was entertained with apparent favour, in order to keep his decision open to the last, as well as meanwhile to divert Sforza from maturing an effectual resistance to Louis, whose alliance, as the most powerful, seemed on the whole most eligible, and from whom it might be easy for his Holiness to obtain the very advantages which Ludovico's proposal offered.

Whilst the policy of Italy remained thus in suspense, Duke Valentino became more and more united to the interests of France. Profiting by the pique which his recent disappointment occasioned, Louis persuaded him in the beginning of May to marry Charlotte d'Albret, sister of Jean, King of Navarre, adding 80,000 francs to her dowry of 30,000; and at the same time decorated him with the order of St. Michael, then the most distinguished in Christendom. The Pope presented him with 200,000 scudi, and celebrated the event by extravagant festivities. Having thus seemingly secured Alexander, the French King bribed the Venetians to aid him in conquering the Milanese, by promising them a slice of its territory, and in August sent his army across the Alps. It would lead us too far from our proper theme to trace the invasion of Italy which followed these complicated intrigues. The French incursion into Lombardy was crowned with entire success, and within three weeks Ludovico, driven from the capital which he had usurped, retired with his treasure to Inspruck.

After recruiting the hardships of Bibbiena, from which however his constitution never recovered, the Duke of Urbino paid a visit to Venice, which is thus graphically told by Marino Sanuto in his amusing diary.

"On the 2nd of June luncheon was prepared for the Duke of Urbino's coming; and when it was over, the Doge with the ambassadors and senators went in the Bucentaur to meet Duke Guido, as far as San Antonio, and there awaited him; and there were five gig-boats [paraschelmi] prepared as usual for us sages of the orders, ornamented with the armorial bearings of each. And presently the Duke arrived from Chioggia, with Giorgio Pisani, the PodestÀ, and some gentlemen who had been sent to meet him. He is twenty-eight years of age, a handsome man, dressed in black after the French fashion, as were all his attendants, on account of the death of his uncle [cousin] Ottavio de' Ubaldini, who long had governed both the state and the Duke. And being brought into the Bucentaur with great rejoicings, he came by the Cana l' Grande to the Marquis of Ferrara's house, which had been made ready for him, and the Doge accompanied him to his chamber. He remained [eleven] days in this city, with a numerous suite, and thirty-five ducats a day were assigned for his expenses." According to the estimate of this chronicler, a ducat was then worth four English shillings, so that, making allowance for the depreciated value of money, the sum set apart for the Duke's daily maintenance may have exceeded 70l. He received at the same time the compliment of citizenship, and his services were retained for the Republic with two hundred men-at-arms, and 27,000 ducats of pay. It does not, however, appear that he was called into action during the rapid campaign by which Louis possessed himself of Milan, being probably then disabled by gout: indeed, he seems to have suffered from it even on his visit to Venice, as his not having danced at a ball given in his honour is specially noted by Sanuto, and it was provided in his engagement of service that his contingent should be led by an approved commander. During this year he testified his good will for the Signory, by sending them from his wide forests forty head of bucks, does, kids, wild-boar, and other game, borne by forty men.