The Borgias

A >> Alexandre Dumas, Pere >> The Borgias


His uncle Frederic succeeded; and so, in the three years of his papacy,
Alexander VI had seen five kings upon the throne of Naples, while he was
establishing himself more firmly upon his own pontifical seat--Ferdinand
I, Alfonso I, Charles VIII, Ferdinand II, and Frederic. All this
agitation about his throne, this rapid succession of sovereigns, was the
best thing possible for Alexander; for each new monarch became actually
king only on condition of his receiving the pontifical investiture. The
consequence was that Alexander was the only gainer in power and credit by
these changes; for the Duke of Milan and the republics of Florence and
Venice had successively recognised him as supreme head of the Church, in
spite of his simony; moreover, the five kings of Naples had in turn paid
him homage. So he thought the time had now come for founding a mighty
family; and for this he relied upon the Duke of Gandia, who was to hold
all the highest temporal dignities; and upon Caesar Borgia, who was to be
appointed to all the great ecclesiastical offices. The pope made sure of
the success of these new projects by electing four Spanish cardinals, who
brought up the number of his compatriots in the Sacred College to
twenty-two, thus assuring him a constant and certain majority.

The first requirement of the pope's policy was to clear away from the
neighbourhood of Rome all those petty lords whom most people call vicars
of the Church, but whom Alexander called the shackles of the papacy. We
saw that he had already begun this work by rousing the Orsini against the
Colonna family, when Charles VIII's enterprise compelled him to
concentrate all his mental resources, and also the forces of his States,
so as to secure his own personal safety.

It had come about through their own imprudent action that the Orsini, the
pope's old friends, were now in the pay of the French, and had entered
the kingdom of Naples with them, where one of them, Virginio, a very
important member of their powerful house, had been taken prisoner during
the war, and was Ferdinand II's captive. Alexander could not let this
opportunity escape him; so, first ordering the King of Naples not to
release a man who, ever since the 1st of June, 1496, had been a declared
rebel, he pronounced a sentence of confiscation against Virginio Orsini
and his whole family in a secret consistory, which sat on the 26th of
October following--that is to say, in the early days of the reign of
Frederic, whom he knew to be entirely at his command, owing to the King's
great desire of getting the investiture from him; then, as it was not
enough to declare the goods confiscated, without also dispossessing the
owners, he made overtures to the Colonna family, saying he would
commission them, in proof of their new bond of friendship, to execute the
order given against their old enemies under the direction of his son
Francesco, Duke of Gandia. In this fashion he contrived to weaken his
neighbours each by means of the other, till such time as he could safely
attack and put an end to conquered and conqueror alike.

The Colonna family accepted this proposition, and the Duke of Gandia was
named General of the Church: his father in his pontifical robes bestowed
on him the insignia of this office in the church of St. Peter's at Rome.




CHAPTER VII

Matters went forward as Alexander had wished, and before the end of the
year the pontifical army had, seized a great number of castles and
fortresses that belonged to the Orsini, who thought themselves already
lost when Charles VIII came to the rescue. They had addressed themselves
to him without much hope that he could be of real use to there, with his
want of armed troops and his preoccupation with his own affairs. He,
however, sent Carlo Orsini, son of Virginio, the prisoner, and Vitellozzo
Vitelli, brother of Camillo Vitelli, one of the three valiant Italian
condottieri who had joined him and fought for him at the crossing of the
Taro: These two captains, whose courage and skill were well known,
brought with them a considerable sum of money from the liberal coffers of
Charles VIII. Now, scarcely had they arrived at Citta di Castello, the
centre of their little sovereignty, and expressed their intention of
raising a band of soldiers, when men presented themselves from all sides
to fight under their banner; so they very soon assembled a small army,
and as they had been able during their stay among the French to study
those matters of military organisation in which France excelled, they now
applied the result of their learning to their own troops: the
improvements were mainly certain changes in the artillery which made
their manoeuvres easier, and the substitution for their ordinary weapons
of pikes similar in form to the Swiss pikes, but two feet longer. These
changes effected, Vitellozzo Vitelli spent three or four months in
exercising his men in the management of their new weapons; then, when he
thought them fit to make good use of these, and when he had collected
more or less help from the towns of Perugia, Todi, and Narni, where the
inhabitants trembled lest their turn should come after the Orsini's, as
the Orsini's had followed on the Colonnas', he marched towards
Braccianno, which was being besieged by the Duke of Urbino, who had been
lent to the pope by the Venetians, in virtue of the treaty quoted above.

The Venetian general, when he heard of Vitelli's approach, thought he
might as well spare him half his journey, and marched out to confront
him: the two armies met in the Soriano road, and the battle straightway
began. The pontifical army had a body of eight hundred Germans, on which
the Dukes of Urbino and Gandia chiefly relied, as well they might, for
they were the best troops in the world; but Vitelli attacked these picked
men with his infantry, who, armed with their formidable pikes, ran them
through, while they with arms four feet shorter had no chance even of
returning the blows they received; at the same time Vitelli's light
troops wheeled upon the flank, following their most rapid movements, and
silencing the enemy's artillery by the swiftness and accuracy of their
attack. The pontifical troops were put to flight, though after a longer
resistance than might have been expected when they had to sustain the
attack of an army so much better equipped than their own; with them they
bore to Ronciglione the Duke of Gandia, wounded in the face by a
pike-thrust, Fabrizia Calonna, and the envoy; the Duke of Urbino, who was
fighting in the rear to aid the retreat, was taken prisoner with all his
artillery and the baggage of the conquered army. But this success, great
as it was, did not so swell the pride of Vitellozza Vitelli as to make
him oblivious of his position. He knew that he and the Orsini together
were too weak to sustain a war of such magnitude; that the little store
of money to which he owed the existence of his army would very soon be
expended and his army would disappear with it. So he hastened to get
pardoned far the victory by making propositions which he would very
likely have refused had he been the vanquished party; and the pope
accepted his conditions without demur; during the interval having heard
that Trivulce had just recrossed the Alps and re-entered Italy with three
thousand Swiss, and fearing lest the Italian general might only be the
advance guard of the King of France. So it was settled that the Orsini
should pay 70,000 florins for the expenses of the war, and that all the
prisoners on both sides should be exchanged without ransom with the
single exception of the Duke of Urbino. As a pledge for the future
payment of the 70,000 florins, the Orsini handed over to the Cardinals
Sforza and San Severino the fortresses of Anguillara and Cervetri; then,
when the day came and they had not the necessary money, they gave up
their prisoner, the Duke of Urbino, estimating his worth at 40,000
ducats--nearly all the sum required--and handed him over to Alexander on
account; he, a rigid observer of engagements, made his own general, taken
prisoner in his service, pay, to himself the ransom he owed to the enemy.

Then the pope had the corpse of Virginio sent to Carlo Orsini and
Vitellozzo Vitelli, as he could not send him alive. By a strange
fatality the prisoner had died, eight days before the treaty was signed,
of the same malady--at least, if we may judge by analogy--that had
carried off Bajazet's brother.

As soon as the peace was signed, Prospero Calonna and Gonzalvo de
Cordova, whom the Pope had demanded from Frederic, arrived at Rome with
an army of Spanish and Neapolitan troops. Alexander, as he could not
utilise these against the Orsini, set them the work of recapturing Ostia,
not desiring to incur the reproach of bringing them to Rome far nothing.
Gonzalvo was rewarded for this feat by receiving the Rose of Gold from
the pope's hand--that being the highest honour His Holiness can grant.
He shared this distinction with the Emperor Maximilian, the King of
France, the Doge of Venice, and the Marquis of Mantua.

In the midst of all this occurred the solemn festival of the Assumption;
in which Ganzalvo was invited to take part. He accordingly left his
palace, proceeded in great pomp in the front of the pontifical cavalry,
and took his place on the Duke of Gandia's left hand. The duke attracted
all eyes by his personal beauty, set off as it was by all the luxury he
thought fit to display at this festival. He had a retinue of pages and
servants, clad in sumptuous liveries, incomparable for richness with
anything heretofore seen in Rome, that city of religious pomp. All these
pages and servants rode magnificent horses, caparisoned in velvet trimmed
with silver fringe, and bells of silver hanging down every here and
there. He himself was in a robe of gold brocade, and wore at his neck a
string of Eastern pearls, perhaps the finest and largest that ever
belonged to a Christian prince, while on his cap was a gold chain studded
with diamonds of which the smallest was worth more than 20,000 ducats.
This magnificence was all the more conspicuous by the contrast it
presented to Caesar's dress, whose scarlet robe admitted of no ornaments.
The result was that Caesar, doubly jealous of his brother, felt a new
hatred rise up within him when he heard all along the way the praises of
his fine appearance and noble equipment. From this moment Cardinal
Valentino decided in his own mind the fate of this man, this constant
obstacle in the path of his pride, his love, and his ambition. Very good
reason, says Tommaso, the historian, had the Duke of Gandia to leave
behind him an impression on the public mind of his beauty and his
grandeur at this fete, for this last display was soon to be followed by
the obsequies of the unhappy young man.

Lucrezia also had come to Rome, on the pretext of taking part in the
solemnity, but really, as we shall see later, with the view of serving as
a new instrument for her father's ambition. As the pope was not
satisfied with an empty triumph of vanity and display for his son, and as
his war with the Orsini had failed to produce the anticipated results, he
decided to increase the fortune of his firstborn by doing the very thing
which he had accused Calixtus in his speech of doing for him, viz.,
alienating from the States of the Church the cities of Benevento,
Terracino, and Pontecorvo to form, a duchy as an appanage to his son's
house. Accordingly this proposition was put forward in a full
consistory, and as the college of cardinals was entirely Alexander's,
there was no difficulty about carrying his point. This new favour to his
elder brother exasperated Caesar, although he was himself getting a share
of the paternal gifts; for he had just been named envoy 'a latere' at
Frederic's court, and was appointed to crown him with his own hands as
the papal representative. But Lucrezia, when she had spent a few days of
pleasure with her father and brothers, had gone into retreat at the
convent of San Sisto. No one knew the real motive of her seclusion, and
no entreaties of Caesar, whose love for her was strange and unnatural,
had induced her to defer this departure from the world even until the day
after he left for Naples. His sister's obstinacy wounded him deeply, for
ever since the day when the Duke of Gandia had appeared in the procession
so magnificently attired, he fancied he had observed a coldness in the
mistress of his illicit affection, and so far did this increase his
hatred of his rival that he resolved to be rid of him at all costs. So
he ordered the chief of his sbirri to come and see him the same night.

Michelotto was accustomed to these mysterious messages, which almost
always meant his help was wanted in some love affair or some act of
revenge. As in either case his reward was generally a large one, he was
careful to keep his engagement, and at the appointed hour was brought
into the presence of his patron.

Caesar received him leaning against a tall chimney-piece, no longer
wearing his cardinal's robe and hat, but a doublet of black velvet
slashed with satin of the same colour. One hand toyed mechanically with
his gloves, while the other rested an the handle of a poisoned dagger
which never left his side. This was the dress he kept for his nocturnal
expeditions, so Michelotto felt no surprise at that; but his eyes burned
with a flame more gloomy than their want, and his cheeks, generally pale,
were now livid. Michelotto had but to cast one look upon his master to
see that Caesar and he were about to share some terrible enterprise.

He signed to him to shut the door. Michelotto obeyed. Then, after a
moment's silence, during which the eyes of Borgia seemed to burn into the
soul of the bravo, who with a careless air stood bareheaded before ham,
he said, in a voice whose slightly mocking tone gave the only sign of his
emotion.

"Michelotto, how do you think this dress suits me?"

Accustomed as he was to his master's tricks of circumlocution, the bravo
was so far from expecting this question, that at first he stood mute, and
only after a few moments' pause was able to say:

"Admirably, monsignore; thanks to the dress, your Excellency has the
appearance as well as the true spirit of a captain."

"I am glad you think so," replied Caesar. "And now let me ask you, do
you know who is the cause that, instead of wearing this dress, which I
can only put an at night, I am forced to disguise myself in the daytime
in a cardinal's robe and hat, and pass my time trotting about from church
to church, from consistory to consistory, when I ought properly to be
leading a magnificent army in the battlefield, where you would enjoy a
captain's rank, instead of being the chief of a few miserable sbirri?"

"Yes, monsignore," replied Michelotto, who had divined Caesar's meaning
at his first word; "the man who is the cause of this is Francesco, Duke
of Gandia, and Benevento, your elder brother."

"Do you know," Caesar resumed, giving no sign of assent but a nod and a
bitter smile,--"do you know who has all the money and none of the genius,
who has the helmet and none of the brains, who has the sword and no hand
to wield it?"

"That too is the Duke of Gandia," said Michelotto.

"Do you know;" continued Caesar, "who is the man whom I find continually
blocking the path of my ambition, my fortune, and my love?"

"It is the same, the Duke of Gandia," said Michelotto.

"And what do you think of it?" asked Caesar.

"I think he must die," replied the man coldly.

"That is my opinion also, Michelotto," said Caesar, stepping towards him
and grasping his hand; "and my only regret is that I did not think of it
sooner; for if I had carried a sword at my side in stead of a crosier in
my hand when the King of France was marching through Italy, I should now
have been master of a fine domain. The pope is obviously anxious to
aggrandise his family, but he is mistaken in the means he adopts: it is I
who ought to have been made duke, and my brother a cardinal. There is no
doubt at all that, had he made me duke, I should have contributed a
daring and courage to his service that would have made his power far
weightier than it is. The man who would make his way to vast dominions
and a kingdom ought to trample under foot all the obstacles in his path,
and boldly grasp the very sharpest thorns, whatever reluctance his weak
flesh may feel; such a man, if he would open out his path to fortune,
should seize his dagger or his sword and strike out with his eyes shut;
he should not shrink from bathing his hands in the blood of his kindred;
he should follow the example offered him by every founder of empire from
Romulus to Bajazet, both of whom climbed to the throne by the ladder of
fratracide. Yes, Michelotto, as you say, such is my condition, and I am
resolved I will not shrink. Now you know why I sent for you: am I wrong
in counting upon you?"

As might have been expected, Michelotto, seeing his own fortune in this
crime, replied that he was entirely at Caesar's service, and that he had
nothing to do but to give his orders as to time, place, and manner of
execution. Caesar replied that the time must needs be very soon, since
he was on the point of leaving Rome for Naples; as to the place and the
mode of execution, they would depend on circumstances, and each of them
must look out for an opportunity, and seize the first that seemed
favourable.

Two days after this resolution had been taken, Caesar learned that the
day of his departure was fixed for Thursday the 15th of June: at the same
time he received an invitation from his mother to come to supper with her
on the 14th. This was a farewell repast given in his honour. Michelotto
received orders to be in readiness at eleven o'clock at night.

The table was set in the open air in a magnificent vineyard, a property
of Rosa Vanozza's in the neighbourhood of San Piero-in-Vinculis: the
guests were Caesar Borgia, the hero of the occasion; the Duke of Gandia;
Prince of Squillace; Dona Sancha, his wife; the Cardinal of Monte Reale,
Francesco Borgia, son of Calixtus III; Don Roderigo Borgia, captain of
the apostolic palace; Don Goffredo, brother of the cardinal; Gian Borgia,
at that time ambassador at Perugia; and lastly, Don Alfonso Borgia, the
pope's nephew: the whole family therefore was present, except Lucrezia,
who was still in retreat, and would not come.

The repast was magnificent: Caesar was quite as cheerful as usual, and
the Duke of Gandia seemed more joyous than he had ever been before.

In the middle of supper a man in a mask brought him a letter. The duke
unfastened it, colouring up with pleasure; and when he had read it
answered in these words, "I will come": then he quickly hid the letter in
the pocket of his doublet; but quick as he was to conceal it from every
eye, Caesar had had time to cast a glance that way, and he fancied he
recognised the handwriting of his sister Lucrezia. Meanwhile the
messenger had gone off with his answer, no one but Caesar paying the
slightest attention to him, for at that period it was the custom for have
messages to be conveyed by men in domino or by women whose faces were
concealed by a veil.

At ten o'clock they rose from the table, and as the air was sweet and
mild they walked about a while under the magnificent pine trees that
shaded the house of Rosa Vanozza, while Caesar never for an instant let
his brother out of his sight. At eleven o'clock the Duke of Gandia bade
good-night to his mother. Caesar at once followed suit, alleging his
desire to go to the Vatican to bid farewell to the pope, as he would not
be able to fulfil this duty an the morrow, his departure being fixed at
daybreak. This pretext was all the more plausible since the pope was in
the habit of sitting up every night till two or three o'clock in the
morning.

The two brothers went out together, mounted their horses, which were
waiting for them at the door, and rode side by side as far as the Palazzo
Borgia, the present home of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, who had taken it as
a gift from Alexander the night before his election to the papacy. There
the Duke of Gandia separated from his brother, saying with a smile that
he was not intending to go home, as he had several hours to spend first
with a fair lady who was expecting him. Caesar replied that he was no
doubt free to make any use he liked best of his opportunities, and wished
him a very good night. The duke turned to the right, and Caesar to the
left; but Caesar observed that the street the duke had taken led in the
direction of the convent of San Sisto, where, as we said, Lucrezia was in
retreat; his suspicions were confirmed by this observation, and he
directed his horse's steps to the Vatican, found the pope, took his leave
of him, and received his benediction.

From this moment all is wrapped in mystery and darkness, like that in
which the terrible deed was done that we are now to relate.

This, however, is what is believed.

The Duke of Gandia, when he quitted Caesar, sent away his servants, and
in the company of one confidential valet alone pursued his course towards
the Piazza della Giudecca. There he found the same man in a mask who had
come to speak to him at supper, and forbidding his valet to follow any
farther, he bade him wait on the piazza where they then stood, promising
to be on his way back in two hours' time at latest, and to take him up as
he passed. And at the appointed hour the duke reappeared, took leave
this time of the man in the mask, and retraced his steps towards his
palace. But scarcely had he turned the corner of the Jewish Ghetto, when
four men on foot, led by a fifth who was on horseback, flung themselves
upon him. Thinking they were thieves, or else that he was the victim of
some mistake, the Duke of Gandia mentioned his name; but instead of the
name checking the murderers' daggers, their strokes were redoubled, and
the duke very soon fell dead, his valet dying beside him.

Then the man on horseback, who had watched the assassination with no sign
of emotion, backed his horse towards the dead body: the four murderers
lifted the corpse across the crupper, and walking by the side to support
it, then made their way down the lane that leads to the Church of Santa
Maria-in-Monticelli. The wretched valet they left for dead upon the
pavement. But he, after the lapse of a few seconds, regained some small
strength, and his groans were heard by the inhabitants of a poor little
house hard by; they came and picked him up, and laid him upon a bed,
where he died almost at once, unable to give any evidence as to the
assassins or any details of the murder.

All night the duke was expected home, and all the next morning; then
expectation was turned into fear, and fear at last into deadly terror.
The pope was approached, and told that the Duke of Gandia had never come
back to his palace since he left his mother's house. But Alexander tried
to deceive himself all through the rest of the day, hoping that his son
might have been surprised by the coming of daylight in the midst of an
amorous adventure, and was waiting till the next night to get away in
that darkness which had aided his coming thither. But the night, like
the day, passed and brought no news. On the morrow, the pope, tormented
by the gloomiest presentiments and by the raven's croak of the 'vox
populi', let himself fall into the depths of despair: amid sighs and sobs
of grief, all he could say to any one who came to him was but these
words, repeated a thousand times: "Search, search; let us know how my
unhappy son has died."

Then everybody joined in the search; for, as we have said, the Duke of
Gandia was beloved by all; but nothing could be discovered from scouring
the town, except the body of the murdered man, who was recognised as the
duke's valet; of his master there was no trace whatever: it was then
thought, not without reason, that he had probably been thrown into the
Tiber, and they began to follow along its banks, beginning from the Via
della Ripetta, questioning every boatman and fisherman who might possibly
have seen, either from their houses or from their boats, what had
happened on the river banks during the two preceding nights. At first
all inquiries were in vain; but when they had gone up as high as the Via
del Fantanone, they found a man at last who said he had seen something
happen on the night of the 14th which might very possibly have some
bearing on the subject of inquiry. He was a Slav named George, who was
taking up the river a boat laden with wood to Ripetta. The following are
his own words:

"Gentlemen," he said, "last Wednesday evening, when I had set down my
load of wood on the bank, I remained in my boat, resting in the cool
night air, and watching lest other men should come and take away what I
had just unloaded, when, about two o'clock in the morning, I saw coming
out of the lane on the left of San Girolamo's Church two men on foot, who
came forward into the middle of the street, and looked so carefully all
around that they seemed to have come to find out if anybody was going
along the street. When they felt sure that it was deserted, they went
back along the same lane, whence issued presently two other men, who used
similar precautions to make sure that there was nothing fresh; they, when
they found all as they wished, gave a sign to their companions to come
and join them; next appeared one man on a dapple-grey horse, which was
carrying on the crupper the body of a dead man, his head and arms hanging
over on one side and his feet on the other. The two fellows I had first
seen exploring were holding him up by the arms and legs. The other three
at once went up to the river, while the first two kept a watch on the
street, and advancing to the part of the bank where the sewers of the
town are discharged into the Tiber, the horseman turned his horse,
backing on the river; then the two who were at either side taking the
corpse, one by the hands, the other by the feet, swung it three times,
and the third time threw it out into the river with all their strength;
then at the noise made when the body splashed into the water, the
horseman asked, 'Is it done?' and the others answered, 'Yes, sir,' and he
at once turned right about face; but seeing the dead man's cloak
floating, he asked what was that black thing swimming about. 'Sir,' said
one of the men, 'it is his cloak'; and then another man picked up some
stones, and running to the place where it was still floating, threw them
so as to make it sink under; as soon, as it had quite disappeared, they
went off, and after walking a little way along the main road, they went
into the lane that leads to San Giacomo. That was all I saw, gentlemen,
and so it is all I can answer to the questions you have asked me."