The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (42 page)

Felice was aware of her son’s hot-headedness and, for as long as she was able, she attempted to keep him away from Rome and out of the reach of Napoleone. But this became more difficult as Girolamo grew to manhood. In
1530
, Felice had sent him to stay with his sister Julia deep in the south at Bisignano. Girolamo soon grew restless and Julia’s husband, the Prince of Bisignano, had to write to Felice, ‘Girolamo wants to return to Rome, and all the entreaties that I and the Princess have placed upon him will not dissuade him.’
⁴

As Girolamo grew to adulthood, so did his hatred and anger towards Napoleone. Felice had first viewed Napoleone as an impediment to the prosperity of her own sons and later as an unstable force she needed to neutralize. She might not have actively cultivated animosity towards Napoleone in her own children, but her decision to keep him away from them at all costs undoubtedly sharpened their perception of him as a monster, constantly plotting their downfall. While for Felice Napoleone was a dangerous nuisance, for Girolamo he was an adversary. Girolamo had no interest in his mother’s traditional methods of confronting and deflecting his half-brother, constantly seeking papal arbitration and support. Girolamo was a typical young noble of the Italian Renaissance, quick to anger where an insult was perceived. The male adolescent saw insults in the smallest of actions, which resulted all too readily in a willingness to fight and kill in order to restore his sense of honour and self-esteem. Napoleone and Girolamo were fighting over more than just the concept of honour. Their real battle was over the dearest thing to any man’s heart, his patrimony. Napoleone viewed Girolamo as the cuckoo in the nest, the one who had denied him his rightful place as his father’s successor. Napoleone also saw the dishonour of effectively being disinherited by the son of a pope’s bastard daughter. By his own logic, he was absolutely convinced of his own infinite superiority as the son of the bastard daughter of the King of Spain. Girolamo, in his turn, viewed his half-brother as an interloper who was refusing to accept his own father’s wishes, who had dedicated his life to disturbing his family’s peace, and who was a constant threat to his own seamless accession to the title of Lord of Bracciano.

In previous centuries, the great division in Rome had been between the Orsini and the Colonna families. Now the split was within the Orsini family. The vitriol between Francesco and Girolamo on one side and Napoleone on the other far outstripped their hatred for any other family. Tales of the brothers’ enmity travelled beyond Italy. It was not in France’s interests to see division between members of the one Roman noble family on which France had always been able to count for support. The French ambassador wrote to Felice on behalf of King Francis I, informing her,

I have no need to mention the affection and servitude that your husband and yourself have shown towards the French crown, and to His Majesty. However, His Majesty is greatly displeased to learn of the contention between your sons and the Abbot their brother, as he has let me know. He feels certain that where there is such a close tie of blood matters should end lovingly, and he does not believe this should be a difficult matter with so many honourable personages as there are in your house. And I exhort your ladyship to willingly adopt and effectuate such matters.
⁵

Francis I laid the responsibility of restoring peace at Felice’s door. As the French King had given Napoleone Gian Giordano’s
12
,
000
ducat pension, which Felice had asked him to confer on Francesco, she hardly regarded him as an ally. Yet even had Felice wished to accommodate Francis, events were soon to reach beyond her, or indeed anyone else’s, control. Girolamo’s aggressive challenges to Napoleone sent his half-brother into ever-increasing spirals of rage and belligerence. At the beginning of
1532
, Napoleone, who was no friend to the Pope, had received from Clement VII a safe conduct valid for one year, providing he reached an accord with his brothers. But by now such a treaty had become psychologically impossible for both parties.

chapter 13

The War of Vicovaro

Since relinquishing the abbothood of Farfa, Napoleone had been able to concentrate on his skills as a warrior, which he had been exercising since invading Palo and in the aftermath of the Sack of Rome. He was now a
condottiere
, a soldier for hire like so many of his relatives, including his father, and he had been employed by Florence in action against the Medici. Napoleone’s military service had made him wealthy enough to afford troops of his own, men recruited in part from the sprawling Orsini estates. He was now a force in his own right, and he was intent on flexing this military might.

Felice had decided that Girolamo’s own bellicose instincts might be better channelled by organized soldierly activity. In September
1532
, despite some aversion to the Gonzaga family, she had given her nineteenyear-old son leave to serve under Ferrante Gonzaga to fight against the Turks in Hungary. Girolamo had men of his own, and had sent two hundred of them ahead to Mantua, leaving himself all but unprotected, with a company of only ten men. Somehow, Napoleone received word of his halfbrother’s vulnerability just as Girolamo was preparing to leave Vicovaro, the Orsini castle to the south of Rome. Losing no time, Napoleone marched on his family’s home, at the head of a force of three hundred men. At Vicovaro, as a report of
11
September to Venice had it, Girolamo was ‘taken prisoner by his brother, named Signor Napoleone, the former Abbot of Farfa...as there are differences between the brothers’.
¹
These differences were, of course, the fortresses and fiefs that Napoleone ardently believed were his fair share of his patrimony. And that was the ransom he demanded for the release of Girolamo.

September and October
1532
brought a great deal of anguish and inner conflict for Felice. Her younger son was now being held hostage by his mentally unstable half-brother, who had been nursing a deep hatred of him since the day Girolamo became Orsini heir, at the age of five. Felice wrote, with some poignancy, to her son Francesco that Napoleone was holding Girolamo prisoner ‘in the rooms where you were brought up as children’.
²
Felice was forced to reconcile an image of Girolamo as a little boy playing in those rooms with one of him as a nineteen-year-old held there under the watch of an armed guard, in mortal danger.

Many in her position might have compromised and given in to Napoleone’s demands. While Felice wanted Girolamo released as soon as possible, she had not spent the last fifteen years of her life holding on tight to the Orsini patrimony for her children only to have Napoleone wrench it from them. She had no reason to believe that Napoleone would keep to the terms of any agreement. As she wrote to Francesco, although Napoleone claimed all he wanted, in exchange for Girolamo’s freedom, were the towns of Castelvecchio and San Gregorio, estates to the south of Rome, she did not trust him. ‘I am very much afraid’, she concluded, ‘that Girolamo is in danger of death.’
³
Cardinal del Monte, her father’s former secretary and the future Pope Julius III, remembered her kindness to him as a young man, and wrote to her to give her encouragement: ‘My most illustrious mother. I have seen what it is to be the son of such a mother, and so I have every hope for Signor Girolamo.’
4

Felice set to work on her son’s behalf. It would not be easy to take back Vicovaro. The castle was set in far more hostile terrain than Bracciano. It was much more mountainous and rocky, and was a favourite hideout for fugitives from Rome. A corps of cardinal negotiators, including Gian Domenico de Cupis, Cardinal Franciotto Orsini and Cardinal Giovanni Salviati set off for Vicovaro. Also
en route
was a body of a thousand men led by the papal commander Luigi Rodomonte (also known as Alysior or Alvise) Gonzaga marching south to Vicovaro. Clement VII authorized the movements of Luigi and his troops. He had no love for Napoleone, who had once plotted to assassinate him. He considered Vicovaro, and Felice’s children, as under his protection, and he wished to ‘remove Napoleone from that place and restore it to his brothers’.
⁵

Military action was, however, the last resort. As the Urbino ambassador reported to Francesco Maria, it was known ‘how little reason governs Signor Napoleone’.
⁶
He commented that accounts of Napoleone’s ‘bestialities’ would take too long to tell, but did remark that to judge Napoleone from his actions no one could ever know that Girolamo was his own brother.

Felice wrote to Luigi Gonzaga, ‘I am most certainly grateful to God for your virtue and wisdom, and I am troubled, knowing as I do, of what little prudence Napoleone shows, and I despair of him not harming my son. I beg you to act in accordance with your usual prudence to save the life of my son, for in doing so you will be saving a creature of His Holiness, as well as a servant of yourself. Forgive me if I am too fretful but you must remember that I am a mother.’
⁷
However, the fretful mother also understood the realities of military activity, and the same pen issued the following practical instructions to her servant Pietro Vicario of Sancto Polo: ‘This part of the estate must contribute to the expense of the soldiers. So you must go immediately to Campagno and obtain four
rubbio
of grain, two from Scrofano, one from Formello and two from Isola.’
⁸
The soldiers camped at the base of the castle needed feeding, one of the primary considerations of a long campaign. Without adequate supplies, an army could become mutinous, and the events of the Sack of Rome were fresh in everyone’s mind.

The Urbino ambassador’s description of the activities at Vicovaro changed from the ‘affair at Vicovaro’ to the ‘war of Vicovaro’, with the realization that what was occurring was a full-bloodied siege. The tediousness of siege warfare, for either side, can only be imagined, the long days of doing absolutely nothing in all weathers, in excessive heat or in pouring rain. Siege strategy was in large part a war of attrition, the besieged normally being the losing side because their supplies would eventually run out. In this instance, Napoleone had the advantage of a hostage. Consequently, considerable time was devoted to attempts to negotiate an agreement between the two sides of this embattled family, to find, as the Urbino ambassador put it, ‘concord from the discord’. But proceedings stalled, and at the end of September Clement sent Luigi north for a period to quell an insurrection in the Adriatic port of Ancona, before recalling him back to Vicovaro. This time, word was sent to Venice: ‘The Pope has supplied six pieces of artillery’, cannons and mortars.
⁹

As Felice continued to refuse to accept Napoleone’s price for Girolamo, Napoleone sought ways to put more pressure on her. She received a letter sent in Girolamo’s name designed to appeal to her maternal sensibilities. However, the language of the letter is such that it is doubtful Girolamo himself was its author: ‘Illustrious mother,’ went the letter,

Up until today I had every faith in you as a mother, but now I am doubtful of the care you have for my life, and I should tell you that this will be the last letter that you receive from me. I have found more mercy from our capital enemy Signor Napoleone than I have from you. He is content to let me write to you to tell you, should you wish to do something for my health, which is so bad I more greatly desire death than life...If you were to comply with Napoleone’s wishes, and meet with his satisfaction, I shall see myself free from Vicovaro.
¹⁰

Given that the author of the letter wrote in a clear hand, while Girolamo’s usual style was a near-indecipherable scrawl, Felice might well have seen this letter as a fake, a fraudulent attempt to wrench sympathy from her. She did not respond.

The stand-off between stepmother and stepson continued, and the papal troops waited, camping outside the walls of Vicovaro in the damp autumnal weather. Luigi Gonzaga sent word to Felice on
18
October that he thought they would be ready to storm the fortress within three days. The problem was that it had begun to rain, which greatly hindered their progress in scaling Vicovaro’s walls. The weather did indeed deter the papal troops. Reports sent to Urbino on
25
October said that the attempt to penetrate the castle had brought little success. There were greater casualties among the papal troops than among those inside, among them Luigi Gonzaga himself, who received a shoulder wound from an arrow. It turned gangrenous, and he died a long and slow death, lingering until December of that year.

Still Felice did not cede ground. She persuaded the Pope to send in more men from the garrisons at Ostia and Civitavecchia. Her strategic sense did not desert her. Realizing that she might well need military support from Urbino, but being reluctant to ask for it until it was absolutely necessary, she wrote a melancholy letter to Francesco Maria’s son, Guidobaldo. Lamenting the lack of progress made by the troops under Luigi Gonzaga, she told Guidobaldo, ‘I am sure Your Highness can understand how, among all the other afflictions and pains that I have had, my maternal love moves me to even greater lamentation, and you know what an affectionate servant Your Highness possesses in my son. I hope that God in his mercy will cause this affliction to cease...’
¹¹
But Felice did more than rely on the assistance of others. She herself paid for soldiers led by the mercenary Francesco da Cinguli, which were sent to Vicovaro on
28
October. Despite her deep involvement in the Vicovaro siege, Felice did not neglect her duties as Orsini governor. During the siege, among other actions, she authorized the release of a horse and other belongings of the late Guido Corso, ‘our good and faithful servant’ to his widow, Madonna Angela; the release of the son of another servant, Basilio de Montepoli, from prison, and attended to the selling of Bracciano’s hay.