The Tigress of Forli (26 page)

Caterina intended to use these deaths as a lesson. As soon as night fell, her town criers communicated her demand that all the belongings stolen from her palace be returned. By daybreak, everything except what had been stolen by the fugitive Orsis was piled outside Ravaldino.

May 2 was the day of reckoning for the Orsi family. Ludovico and Checco had fled, leaving their father, wives, daughters, and grandchildren behind. Babone dragged the eighty-year-old Andrea Orsi out of his hiding place in the Convent of Saint Dominic. After tying a rough rope about the man's wizened neck, Babone hauled him through the streets to his own palace. The beating of drums summoned the citizens to the house, where soldiers, builders, and artisans were waiting with various tools. As Orsi and the Forlivesi watched, the elegant palace was destroyed. Babone loomed over the bent elder, taunting him as each frescoed wall fell to the ground and graceful plaster molding was smashed with a pickax. The remains of the Orsi stronghold were then set alight like a funeral pyre for the family who could no longer call Forlì home. Several excited citizens brought home precious objects looted from the Orsis' home as prize spoils for the countess. Caterina refused them, although the Orsis had made good their escape with jewels stolen from her.

His sons gone, Andrea Orsi knew he would have to bear the punishment for the family. They all had devised the plot together around his kitchen table, and although weak in body, he had always insisted that for the rebellion to succeed, all the Riario family must die. Wheezing and coughing in the dust, Andrea cursed his sons for their stupidity: not for their crimes, but for their failures.

As Babone shoved him onto the executioner's podium, however, the anger of the proud noble dissolved as his hands started to tremble. "People of Forlì!" he called out. "Say a prayer for my soul and remember to be wiser than I have been." The words of the Orsi patriarch closed the rebellion. Now all that awaited was his death.

Andrea Orsi's execution was Babone's masterpiece. The old man was tied to a board, with only his head hanging unsupported off the edge. His feet were raised as the plank was tied to the back of a horse, so that his head lay on the ground. Babone then spurred the horse to a canter, dragging Orsi behind it as the old man's head bounced against the hard cobblestones of the square. Three times around the piazza Orsi was dragged, in a bloody parody of the possession ceremony that the Orsis had coveted, until the skull had fractured and Andrea Orsi's head was reduced to a bloody pulp.

As Andrea Orsi's body lay in the square, Caterina announced a reward of a thousand ducats for the return of the fugitive murderers alive, and five hundred for their corpses.
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But despite her efforts, the Orsis would elude her for years.

After the execution of Andrea Orsi, Caterina summoned the Orsi women. Seven terrified wives, sisters, and daughters had been left behind, one clutching her infant son. The countess then freed all of them and allowed them either to remain in Forlì or to return to their paternal homes.

Caterina then turned to her rescuers and guests, inviting the Milanese generals and local nobles to lunch in the fortress. The noble generals enjoyed a cheerful banquet with Caterina, who impressed them with her knowledge of strategy and her interest in new developments in artillery. But the meal was more than a pleasant diversion. As evening fell, the head of every family in Forlì was summoned to the Ravaldino fortress. The generals retired to another room while several hundred anxious husbands and fathers gathered at the foot of the castle, the encroaching darkness fueling their fears as to what night might bring. Soldiers sorted the men into groups of twenty-five and led them into the castle. In the main chamber, they saw Caterina sitting upon a high throne, illuminated by torchlight. A large Bible sat on a table in front of her, its parchment pages gaping open to display the sentence "In the beginning was the Word." Each man was called forward by name and read a contract guaranteed by the duke of Milan. The document outlined the duties and privileges of good citizens and the punishments for betrayal. With one hand on the Bible and with eyes fixed on the countess, they vowed fidelity to Ottaviano, lord of Forlì, and to Caterina, the regent. Afterward, the relieved subjects were ushered into the next room, where the famous generals toasted and congratulated them, with warm assurances that under Caterina's rule they would prosper in peace. In lieu of a papal sanction of her regency, Caterina had obtained the authority to rule from her own subjects.

May 4 fell on a Sunday, and after a Mass of thanksgiving, the countess convoked the Council of Eight for one last session. Mindful of the brutal deaths they had witnessed in the piazza, the men trembled as they entered the countess's chambers. They had cooperated willingly with Savelli and the Orsis and had rudely dismissed the envoys of Milan and Bologna who had arrived to aid Caterina; they knew there was much to answer for. But for the most part Caterina administered only verbal lashings, although her words stung like strokes of a whip. Four members of the treacherous council were simply dismissed, since Caterina realized they had acted out of fear rather than conviction.

But Niccolò Pansechi, Girolamo's notary and tax collector, was another matter. After having reaped the profits of persuading Girolamo to reinstall the
dazi
, Niccolò had then turned and joined the murderers of the very man who had made him rich.

Pansechi stood before a stone-faced Caterina, the rope of the penitent dangling from his throat. Aware of the gruesome deaths of the conspirators, the traitorous noble tried to find excuses to save his own neck. Caterina pounced. "Traitor!" she exclaimed. "This is the thanks we get for giving you money and position? Do you remember, traitor, how you told us the best thing would be to bring back the
dazi
?" Caterina continued, raising her voice so everyone from her immediate entourage of nobles and soldiers to the servants listening from the halls could hear. "Did you not, traitor, assure us that the people of Forlì were a vile and cowed mass of fools, and once the taxes were reinstated, they would never mention it again?" She rose to her feet in rage. "You are a disgrace! Get out of my sight."
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A trembling Pansechi was led off by the soldiers, his possessions confiscated and his house given over as barracks for Caterina's troops.

Simone de' Fiorini stumbled forward next. A huge man with bulging eyes set in a wide face, he towered over Caterina. The countess addressed him in deceptively mild tones, asking, "Oh, Simone, what did you do to my husband? You stabbed his body lying dead in the piazza. You called him a traitor." Her words felled the giant man like an ax. Simone sank to his knees, sobbing his excuses. His bent head shook as he begged forgiveness and protested that "mere curiosity" had spurred him to the piazza. Reaching his arms to Caterina he swore that he had attacked only the body of Antonio da Montecchio, the police chief who had come to Girolamo's aid, whom he hated for personal reasons. He fell silent, looking up at Caterina with his hands clasped. Caterina replied coldly, "I will take the same pity on you that you showed to my husband. I will leave you to be torn apart by the dogs."
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Her words were harsh, but Caterina knew the piazza had seen enough blood. She exiled Pansechi, Fiorini, and the remaining two council members who had assisted the Orsis, sending them to Milan, where they were to remain for the rest of their lives. Although the penalty for "breaking confines" was death, Pansechi escaped and went to Cotignola. Caterina was probably counting on his committing such a foolish act. She was immediately notified of his escape and sent out a squad of bounty hunters to bring him to Forlì. The greedy, shortsighted Pansechi disappeared into Ravaldino and was never heard from again. Even the groveling Fiorini made his own daring bid for freedom. Eight years after his exile, he left Milan and returned to Romagna to stir up trouble. Once again alerted, Caterina sent out a team of soldiers to capture him, but Fiorini showed surprising agility for such a large man and nimbly escaped out a back window. Caterina's men would pursue him for years but he would never be caught.

Caterina was ready to close this violent chapter of her life. A few more conspirators were rounded up and executed in the dungeons of Forlì, but it was time to turn the page. Caterina hired a new chief magistrate to prepare the documents retroactively legalizing the executions. After she was able to leave Ravaldino, Caterina ordered four public executions and five additional hangings in the fortress.
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The sons of Giovanni Nanni, a farmer who had been executed for the conspiracy at the Porta Cotogni with the Roffi family, were those who were hanged. The brothers had eagerly joined the Orsi plot, publicly announcing on several occasions that they relished the idea "of eating the heart of the countess and those of her children." Later biographers universally label Caterina's actions here as stemming from a vendetta, although Cobelli considered her merciful. Crimes against the state called for swift justice. As a point of comparison, almost eighty people had been executed on the same day of the attempt on Lorenzo de' Medici's life.
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The time would come when Caterina would succumb to blind vengeance, but in this case, she behaved as any ruler of her time would. Her enemies on the run, her adversaries exiled, her people reconciled, Caterina was ready to take the reins of Forlì.

The foreign armies left on May 7, bringing the exiles with them. Ottaviano rode with several Forlì nobles to Imola, where the city waited to affirm its loyalty to him. A contingent of soldiers remained in Forlì under the count of Bergamo, nicknamed "Brambilla," meaning "the war cry." This brave and personable warrior took over as the governor of Forlì in the place of Domenico Ricci, Girolamo's brother-in-law. Caterina also released Bishop Savelli and his assistants against the safe return of her mother and sister in Cesena. With her whole family finally reunited about her, she spent most of her time inside the fortress. To ensure that no outbreaks of violence would perturb the renewed tranquility, Caterina ordered that no citizen could bear arms without authorization and imposed a curfew.

Life slowly returned to normal in Forlì. The market reopened in the piazza and the workers returned to their fields. Caterina did not go back to the palace in the square, however, even though it had been restored after the devastation. She preferred to reside with her family behind the sturdy walls of Ravaldino. Although her rule had the approval of the Forlivesi, Caterina still worried about the pope. She awaited word from Rome that the pontiff had invested Ottaviano with the title of lord of Forlì, naming her as regent, yet none arrived. As May drew to a close, however, Caterina was heartened by an event almost as comforting as a papal confirmation. Cardinal Raffaello Riario arrived in Romagna. Caterina, already grateful for the fifty horsemen he had sent in her hour of need, rode out to meet the twenty-eight-year-old cardinal at Forlimpopoli, with Brambilla and a host of nobles. As he had done six years before, when the Riarios first moved to Forlì after the death of Sixtus, the cardinal brought an impressive entourage. He settled into the fortress of Ravaldino and assisted Caterina in her fledgling steps as sole ruler of two states. Cardinal Riario had grown in importance over the years, and now not only was cardinal camerlengo, in charge of running the conclave after a pope's death, but had gathered further titles and benefices and was even named archbishop of Pisa, although after his capture in the wake of the Pazzi conspiracy, he never set foot in that diocese. Now extremely wealthy, he assisted Caterina in reestablishing her household. Cardinal Riario stayed with the family for several months and Forlì started the summer in the spirit of a joyous family reunion.

Meanwhile, a scandal had developed in nearby Faenza. Delighted chroniclers sped to get the inside story of the most titillating murder of the year. Galeotto Manfredi, ruler of Faenza, who had penned the particularly scabrous account of Caterina's retort at Ravaldino, was murdered on May 31, 1488, by his wife, Francesca Bentivoglio. The daughter of Caterina's close ally Giovanni Bentivoglio, the lord of Bologna, Francesca had married Galeotto Manfredi in 1482. But a few years earlier, during a period of exile in Ferrara, Galeotto had fallen in love with Cassandra, the daughter of a local pharmacist, aptly called "La Pavona" ("the Peacock") by her fellow townspeople. According to rumor, the smitten Galeotto had secretly married the beauty. His official wedding to Francesca Bentivoglio didn't put a damper on Galeotto's affair; he moved Cassandra to Faenza and installed her in a convent where he could visit her regularly. Francesca spent the first few years of marriage ignorant of the affair and even bore Galeotto a son, Astorre, in 1485. But Cassandra's outraged father repeatedly visited Galeotto to complain, and word of this soon reached Francesca. Attempting to confront her husband, she was blocked and beaten by one of his friends, Fra Silvester, a renegade Franciscan brother who lived riotously under the protective wing of Galeotto. Infuriated and also frightened, for wife poisoning was common in Romagna, she returned to her father's fold in Bologna in 1487. Through the intervention of Lorenzo de' Medici, Francesca was persuaded to return to her husband a few months later. They lived separate lives, but Francesca's fury did not abate.

On May 29, 1488, Francesca sent urgent word to her husband that she was deathly ill and begged him to bring her a doctor. But in her semidark room, Francesca was actually quite well, and in the company of three assassins, armed with ropes, swords, and daggers, she awaited Galeotto. Two days and two nights they lay in wait, until he finally arrived with a doctor. Francesca's personal servant, Rigo, detained the doctor outside the door, allowing Galeotto to enter alone. Young, strong, and alert, he sensed danger the instant he crossed the threshold. When the first assassin threw a rope around his neck, Galeotto was quick to react and struggled free, but Francesca did not let her prey escape. Stepping behind her husband, she drove a dagger into his back, and Galeotto fell at her feet, lifeless.
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