The Borgias (64 page)

For this to happen he needed the Spanish cardinals, which meant that he needed Cesare. Using the Venetian ambassador as an intermediary, he therefore promised to have all the forces of the Orsini removed from Rome if Cesare would come out of the Castel Sant’Angelo long enough to meet with him at the Vatican. Cesare agreed, the meeting took place, and a deal was struck. Della Rovere pledged that, in return for the votes of the Spanish cardinals, he would confirm Cesare as vicar of all the places bestowed on him by Alexander VI and later by Pius III. He would also reappoint him as gonfalonier, and the daughter Cesare had never seen, the now-three-year-old Louisa, would be betrothed to the thirteen-year-old Francesco della Rovere, son of the cardinal’s deceased brother and, as nephew of the childless Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, designated heir to the duchy of Urbino.

This settled the papal election. Two days after his meeting with Cesare, della Rovere was chosen to succeed Pius III in the shortest conclave in history. He had left nothing to chance, bringing into play all the political and financial weapons at his disposal including a willingness to threaten every cardinal susceptible to intimidation and to buy the votes of the greedy. Having achieved the dream of his life, as Pope Julius II he continued to brim over with ambitions unfulfilled. In a decade on the throne, this violent, irascible character would turn himself into one of the epic figures of the Renaissance and one of history’s legendary popes. He would be remembered as a reformer in spite of systematically selling offices and benefices and allowing his courts to be corrupted, and would be honored for a restrained use of nepotism that was made easier by the things his uncle Sixtus IV had already done to enrich their kinsmen—and the fact that only one of his illegitimate children, a daughter, lived to adulthood.

Machiavelli, learning of the bargain by which Cesare had ensured della Rovere’s election, expressed astonishment at Cesare’s willingness to trust the promises of a man whose relationship with the Borgias had always been laced with disappointment and resentment, hatred and deceit. And who, as pope, now held most of the cards. He concluded that Cesare somehow did not understand that in the new pope he was faced with someone whose intelligence, strength, and ruthlessness were at least the equal of his own—and who hated him.

When Cesare and Machiavelli had what appears to have been their
first Rome meeting, five days after the pope’s election, news had just arrived that the city of Imola was in revolt against its Borgia governor and that Venice was preparing to attack Faenza. Cesare was in a rage. He blamed the Florentines for allowing Venice freedom of movement in the Romagna, warning that Venetian domination of the region would end in Florence’s ruin.
“He spoke with words full of poison and anger,” Machiavelli reported. “I could easily have argued with him, and replied to his charges, but I thought it best to try and calm him down, before managing as best I could to break off the interview, which felt as if it had gone on for a thousand years.” This episode marks a change in Machiavelli’s attitude toward Cesare—the point where he ceases to be as admiring as he had been before. It also, not coincidentally, shows Cesare losing the self-possession that had long been one of his most striking traits. Perhaps it marks the beginning of his psychological disintegration. From this point forward his moods will swing violently and unpredictably, to the alarm of his friends and the satisfaction of his enemies.

Two things were becoming clear. First, that Julius had no priority more urgent than that of making himself master of the Papal States, starting with the Romagna because of Venice’s encroachments there. Second, that he possessed neither the money nor the manpower to do what he wished. In this lay Cesare’s hope: that the pope would use him as the means to accomplish this objective. If in such a role Cesare could not hope for the independence and importance that he had enjoyed under Alexander and that he might have recovered if Pius III had lived, it would enable him to remain one of Italy’s leading soldiers and give him continued access to money and power. In the long term, Julius being more than twice his age, Cesare could expect to outlive him and possibly his successor and even his successor’s successor, perhaps rising to the kinds of heights achieved in the previous century by those master
condottieri
Francesco Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro. Julius encouraged him to think so, going so far as to invite him to return to his apartments in the Vatican.

That the pope’s friendship was without substance soon became clear. Just nine days after the election, Cesare attended an open consistory in the expectation of being reappointed gonfalonier. When nothing of the kind happened and no explanation was forthcoming, he decided that
the time had come to return to the Romagna and see to the security of Cesena, Faenza, Forlì, and the other strongholds that his captains still held there. With the troops he still had in and near Rome and those waiting for him in the north, he could hope to hold off the Venetians and possibly drive them out. He and Machiavelli met just hours after the consistory, and Cesare proved to be in such good spirits that Machiavelli was surprised.
The duke had a plan now: to move the southern parts of his army, reportedly consisting at this point of only three hundred light cavalry and four hundred foot, into Tuscany and from there on to the Romagna, where he would link up with Michelotto and his men. To cross Tuscany safely with such a modest force, however, he would need a guarantee of safe conduct from Florence. Some of his restored confidence is explained by the fact that the pope had promised to write to Florence, demanding that it agree. Cesare’s aim, as Machiavelli understood and reported it, was simple and clear.
He intended to “prevent the Venetians from becoming masters of the Romagna,” something that he was now capable of accomplishing because “the pope is ready to assist him.”

All this was going to require money. Cesare needed what remained of the treasure that had been confiscated the night Alexander died—it was now with Michelotto at Cesena—as well as the sums on deposit with banking houses in Genoa. The Genoa funds probably amounted to something on the order of two hundred thousand ducats, enough to finance military operations on a large scale for half a year or more, a time period in which almost anything might be accomplished. To get access to them, however, Cesare needed to go to Genoa in person, and doing so speedily was going to require travel on horseback—through Tuscany.

Thus the shock that Cesare experienced, and failed to conceal, upon learning on November 14 that the Florentine council had voted overwhelmingly to deny him the safe conduct. It had good reasons for doing so, starting with memories of Cesare’s past conduct in Tuscany and fear of what he might do if given a second chance, but it probably also acted with the oblique encouragement of the pope. In all likelihood Julius had let it be known in Florence that he did not expect Cesare’s request to be taken seriously.

People who saw Cesare at this time wrote of encountering a changed
man. His cousin Francisco Lloris y de Borja, a lifelong friend and one of the last cardinals created by Alexander VI, reported that he seemed “out of his mind, for he knew not himself what he desired to do, so involved and irresolute did he seem.”
Another newly minted cardinal, the same Francesco Soderini whose secretary Machiavelli had been when the two called on Cesare after his capture of Urbino, described him now as “changeable, irresolute, and suspicious.” Cesare was not, however, entirely without hope or incapable of making plans. He sent instructions to Michelotto to move his part of the Borgia treasure from Cesena to Ferrara, where Lucrezia, presumably, would be able to keep it safe.

Cesare’s claims on the Romagna, Venice’s interference in the region after Alexander’s death, the return of some of the warlords earlier expelled by Cesare—together these things presented Pope Julius with the first great crisis of what was going to be another extraordinarily eventful reign. The question was whether the pope should make Cesare a junior partner or cast him aside along with his money, his troops, and his connections. It came down to a judgment as to whether Cesare could be depended upon to serve the pope’s interests at least as assiduously as he was sure to pursue his own.

Probably Julius would have decided to get along without Cesare; he would show repeatedly, throughout his reign, that he had no interest in sharing what he regarded as rightfully belonging to the Church with anyone. In any case he didn’t have to decide; Cesare resolved the matter for him by abruptly leaving Rome and galloping downriver to Ostia, where he boarded one of the papal galleys and ordered its captain to take him up the coast to Genoa. The captain in question, unfortunately for Cesare, was a della Rovere loyalist and a suspicious one. Instead of putting to sea, he took Cesare into custody and sent a messenger racing back to Rome to inform the pope. Again everything was suddenly going wrong: the same developments in the Romagna that had driven Cesare to depart for Genoa—resumed aggressiveness by Venice above all—were emboldening Julius to take a firmer line. He dispatched a delegation of trusted cardinals to Ostia, where they presented Cesare with a list of demands. Julius insisted that Cesare surrender all his vicariates, returning them to direct rule by the Church. He was to reveal the secret passwords, the countersigns, that the Spaniards commanding
his remaining Romagna
rocca
were insisting on hearing as proof that Cesare really did want them to surrender. Cesare refused and by doing so sealed his fate.

Julius sent the entire papal guard to Ostia to bring Cesare back to the Vatican, where he was given comfortable rooms ordinarily reserved for visiting cardinals. Gian Giordano Orsini urged the pope to have him killed, but Julius was in no hurry to do away with someone in possession of so many valuable secrets. Shortly after his return to Rome, Cesare learned that Michelotto had been attacked while transferring his hoard of Vatican gold to Ferrara and was now a prisoner. Almost simultaneously a smaller caravan of Borgia treasure, this one bound for Ferrara from Rome, was seized in Tuscany by Giovanni Bentivoglio. Instead of returning it to the Vatican, Bentivoglio locked it up in his own palace at Bologna. Cesare offered ten thousand ducats for the release of Michelotto and was refused.

Cesare by this point was giving evidence of falling apart under the weight of failure and fear. His sending of representatives to Florence to negotiate a
condotta
—Cesare’s agents were told to inform the
signoria
that he would soon be in Tuscany at the head of an army—struck Machiavelli as not just pathetic but evidence that the duke he had once admired so deeply was losing touch with reality. Julius intensified the pressure by announcing his intention to conduct investigations into the deaths not only of Lucrezia’s husband the duke of Bisceglie but of Cesare’s brother Juan, Giulio Cesare Varano of Camerino and his three sons, Astorre Manfredi of Faenza, the last Gaetani lord of Sermoneta, and others. His zeal for incriminating evidence caused him to have Michelotto brought to Rome and, along with other Borgia retainers, put under torture.
Cardinal Lloris again visited Cesare and found him so “confused” and “irresolute” that he appeared to have “lost his wits.”

The last weeks of 1503 and the first of 1504 were marked by Julius II’s relentless but unsuccessful efforts to get the passwords out of Cesare and the stubborn refusal of Cesare’s Romagna lieutenants to surrender their
rocca
. The loyalty of those lieutenants almost defies belief.
At one point, having somehow learned the password for Cesena, the pope gave them to a Borgia attendant named Pedro d’Oviedo and sent him off with instructions to induce the two men in command there, the brothers Pedro and Diego Ramires, to open their gates. The brothers’
response was to seize Oviedo, torture and kill him, and put his body on display. They would never surrender, they declared, until they knew that Cesare was free. Julius, when he learned of this, was convinced that the Ramires were acting on secret instructions from Cesare himself. The Spanish cardinals had a hard time dissuading the pontiff from throwing Cesare into a dungeon in the Castel Sant’Angelo. He consented to having the prisoner moved instead to the Borgia Tower, to the chamber in which Bisceglie had been strangled years before. The torture of Michelotto and others, meanwhile, was adding to the pope’s frustration by producing nothing of use.

After many weeks of fruitless discussion, the leader of the Spanish cardinals in Rome, a onetime protégé of Alexander VI named Juan de Vera, managed to broker an agreement that ended the deadlock. Vera had intervened on behalf of Ferdinand of Spain, who had just become undisputed master of the entire kingdom of Naples thanks to a fresh round of victories by Gonsalvo and wanted papal approval of his conquests. Julius for his part was now focused on driving the Venetians out of the Romagna, where they were eagerly gobbling up territory, and to accomplish that he needed possession of Cesare’s remaining strongholds. Cesare was driven to deal not by any strategic considerations—he no longer possessed the means to play that game—but by a simple, desperate wish to be released. He agreed to order all his commanders in the Romagna to surrender in return for his freedom and the right to keep his movable property—particularly the gold still held for him in Genoa.

In mid-February, in the custody of Spanish cardinal Bernardino López de Carvajal, Cesare was taken from the Vatican to the Tiber for transportation to Ostia. There is a poignant description of him, while awaiting the galley that was to take him away, mounting a horse and galloping up and down the riverbank: it is the picture of a young man brimming with vitality, half-mad with frustration, and overjoyed to be released from confinement, treating himself to a few minutes of wild freedom.

Upon arriving at Ostia, he was once again locked up, remaining a prisoner for another two months while the agonizingly slow process of getting his Romagna commanders to give up their fortresses was finally
brought to completion. Lucrezia’s father-in-law Duke Ercole, asked to offer Cesare asylum in Ferrara, refused.