The Tigress of Forli (37 page)

Without replying, Caterina stood on the rampart, listening. Encouraged, the duke pressed his suit. He offered her land, compensation, and even a home in Rome if that was what she preferred. The promises of the pope and his son would be guaranteed by illustrious witnesses, including one of French royal blood. Cesare's seductive words, however, were laced with unmistakable warnings. Even if the countess remained indifferent to the prospect of horrible bloodshed among her people, certainly she would balk at the idea of all of Italy laughing at her, ridiculing her for the futile and wasteful defense of her tiny dominion.

Caterina's face still gave no indication of her thoughts. She stood erect until Cesare's last pleas were carried off by the wind. She let silence fill the void of his empty promises, and then she spoke.

While gracefully acknowledging Cesare's fulsome compliments, she noted that Cesare had overlooked her greatest quality. She was the daughter of a man who knew no fear, and like her father, she would follow her chosen course to the end. She curtly reminded her antagonist that unlike him, she bore an honorable name. Never would she disgrace her forefathers and the glorious house of Sforza by conceding victory to a lesser house without a fight. Moreover, she added, "all of Italy knows the worth of the Borgia word. The bad faith of the father has removed any credit from the son." It was of no matter whom they brought as witnesses. If "the principal was false," she said, "so would be its satellites."
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Then she issued a few warnings of her own. The indefatigable countess boasted that the walls of her fortress were holding strong and that word had gone out to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, husband to her sister Bianca Maria. Reinforcements would arrive at any moment. Having done some military recognizance of her own, Caterina knew Cesare was still waiting for his heavy artillery to arrive, and his troops were restless, awaiting their pay. Finally, she stated that her refusal to accept his ignoble offers, unworthy of her Sforza heritage, would garner only respect throughout the whole world. Even if she should die on this battlefield, her name would live on forever. As her last words rang though the chilly morning air, Caterina saluted the duke, turned on her heel, and disappeared into the keep.

A baffled, angry Cesare rode back to his quarters. This insufferable woman had bested him in front of both armies. Her calm self-assurance remained unmoved by his charm, promises, or threats. The soldiers had heard her call the pope a liar. He would have to show them that this woman could not insult him so blatantly nor dismiss him so easily.

A few hours later, Cesare rode back to the fortress and the trumpeter again gave the signal for a parley. Caterina had used the time to develop a scheme of her own. If the pope's insolent son thought that he was such a magnet for women, let that be his downfall. For this encounter, Caterina put aside the mien of the tough warrior and became the elegant countess who had also broken her share of hearts. Instead of appearing at the ramparts, Caterina ordered the drawbridge to be lowered and walked out to the midpoint.

Cesare dismounted and strode toward the drawbridge, stopping at the edge of the moat. Caterina approached him, coming to the edge of the bridge. The onlookers saw the duke earnestly try to persuade the countess to cede the castle. Caterina looked up at the tall soldier and into his eyes, as if trying to read the sincerity of his offer. A few moments later, her shoulders drooped and her brow furrowed as if reconsidering her position. Cesare, pressing his advantage, reached for her arm. A gesture from Caterina indicated that they should enter the castle to discuss terms, and she walked back toward the fortress. Cesare made to follow suit, but as he stepped onto the drawbridge, it started to rise. Cesare leapt back just in time to escape capture. Enraged, embarrassed, and no doubt frightened by his narrow escape, the pope's son erupted in a flood of obscenities.
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He walked to the edge of the moat and roared so that everyone in his camp could hear that a reward of a thousand ducats awaited anyone who captured Caterina dead. Caterina, now back on the ramparts, retorted that she would give five thousand ducats for the corpse of the Borgia captain. Caterina enjoyed standing on the ramparts and taunting an enemy. She had outwitted the College of Cardinals on the bastions of the Castel Sant'Angelo and bested Giralamo Riario's assassins from this very wall a decade earlier. In such verbal jousts, Cesare never stood a chance.

Diarists, ambassadors, and the simply curious flocked to Forlì to witness the most ruthless man in Italy thwarted by this fearless woman. Sadly, Leone Cobelli was not among the onlookers, as he lay dying at the time of the siege. After a lifetime of following Caterina's adventures, Cobelli would not recount her most noble hour; his last written words cursed the French: "those barbarians and people without law." Andrea Bernardi was now the sole local chronicler for the troubled city, but this barber-scribe had found a friend in Cesare, who took an avid interest in how this showdown would be recorded. Flattered by praise and honors, Bernardi allowed the Borgia prince to read and edit his manuscript, leaving future readers to wonder what Cesare may have added or omitted. The other witnesses produced a fast-paced crossfire of letters resembling the fiery exchange of artillery between the two camps, some favoring Caterina, others backing Cesare. Every head of state had eyes and ears at Forlì the siege of the tiny town potentially held massive ramifications for the other polities.

Time would be a deciding factor for both camps. The political tides were shifting once again, possibly in Caterina's favor. Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, whom Louis XII had left in charge of Milan, had already earned the disapproval of the Milanesi, and Duke Ludovico began to seem preferable to the tyrant. Ludovico had wasted no time while in Germany; there he had recruited an army and soon would be ready to march on Milan. The moment Ludovico began his siege of the city, the king of France would seek to defend it and therefore recall his soldiers employed in Cesare's Romagna campaign. The Borgia commander would be left alone. Adept at intrigue, Duke Ludovico had even devised a strategy to keep Venice at bay. Through various agents at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Ludovico had succeeded in stirring up the old Turkish enmity toward Venice. The Turks exploited Venice's distraction with Italian politics to seize several territories in the Adriatic. The ease of their capture emboldened the Ottoman army to venture onto Italian soil and attack Venetian holdings in Friuli. Like the tentative rays of sunshine peeking through the overcast January morning, hope stirred in the hearts of the defenders of Forlì. Well-informed of unfolding events by spies and agents, Caterina understood that she needed to keep her defenses strong and her spirits up.

Many military experts observing the siege of Forlì thought that Caterina's fortress was strong enough to withstand the wait until the French called back their troops. Giovanni Sforza, lord of Pesaro (and the discarded husband of Lucrezia Borgia), wrote encouragingly to the marquis of Mantua, predicting that with her men and her provisions, Caterina could hold out against Cesare for at least four months.

Ravaldino was built along a trapezoidal plan, with long curtain walls anchored by squat towers. The keep stood at the northern short end of the fort, a forty-five-foot square tower with thick walls and rounded corners. The space within the walls had always been used for military exercises and reviews, and during peaceful periods the countess had even beautified it with a garden; now the citadel operated like a well-run factory. Stations for making cannonballs, repairing swords, and delivering medical treatment were lined up in a neat row. A deep moat surrounded the whole structure, with access to it only through drawbridges and tunnels. Opposite the keep and along the western wall, Caterina had constructed
rivellini,
heavily built triangular defensive structures detached from the main curtain walls. These miniature forts, pointing like spearheads at the enemy, presented formidable obstacles to soldiers rushing to surmount the walls. Each narrow opening of a
rivellino
held three cannons, allowing the defenders a wide range of fire.

Until Caterina's time, castles like Ravaldino were considered impregnable. But warfare had changed. Old-fashioned battering rams and fire from low heavy cannons would have glanced off the slanted bastions at the base of the castle, but the new firearms could direct shots at the straight walls above. The moat had kept archers out of range, but the latest projectiles crossed it easily. If the walls gave, Forlì's four months would be reduced to four hours. Taking stock of her situation, Caterina knew Cesare had arrived with almost twelve thousand men. Flemish, German, and Swiss mercenaries comprised the bulk of his infantry, but King Louis had given him two thousand well-trained veteran troops and he commanded two thousand experienced Spanish soldiers as well, who were the backbone of Cesare's army. They seemed inexhaustible compared to the thousand faithful soldiers inside the walls of Ravaldino. Cesare also possessed copious artillery. Seventeen smaller movable guns—"iron mouths" as they were called—were pointed at Caterina's walls. Five big cannons, unwieldy but powerful, were pounding at her fortifications. Cesare also had eleven lithe falconet guns, the latest in artillery. Only about three feet long, they peppered the defenders with two- to three-pound iron balls. The fanciest weapon in Cesare's armory was one he had brought from Rome: the Tiverina, named after the Tiber River. Nine feet in length, it could fire projectiles the size of a soccer ball instead of the usual three- to four-inch shot. Caterina knew her fortress was strong, but these advanced firearms rendered her walls vulnerable.

Likewise, Cesare had problems to contend with. Like Caterina, he demanded discipline from his troops, but it was much harder to control twelve thousand soldiers from numerous countries who were working for a paycheck. The French soldiers from the king's standing army were needed to keep them in line. And not all was well with the Forlivesi who had capitulated to him. Already they were beginning to rue their decision. Forced to billet his soldiers, they soon found themselves turned out of their homes. Artisans could only watch as their shops were taken over by the army's blacksmiths or used as stables; any Forlivesi who hesitated to comply received a savage beating. Looting, rape, and other forms of brutality were common. Even Saint Mercuriale fell victim. Having discovered that the makeshift shrine to the saint rested above the monument to the French soldiers killed by Guido di Montefeltro in 1282, the French contingent among Cesare's troops knocked the statue of the saint into the mud and hacked it to pieces, declaring that the patron saint of Forlì "did not deserve to be above the bones of our dead." The townspeople gathered the pieces and brought them into the church, as they had done with the broken bodies of those murdered and left in the square. To quell any spirit of resistance in Forlì, the Borgia commander made every man, woman, and child, even priests and Jews, wear the white cross of the penitent. Cesare then decreed that anyone carrying weapons would be immediately hanged and any attack against his soldiers would receive an exemplary punishment.

Frustrated by Caterina's resistance, and alarmed by the French soldiers' admiration for her, he had raised the bounty on her head to ten thousand ducats, but still no one was willing to betray her. Cesare then searched for ways to get into the castle. On December 27, he ordered his troops to dig a tunnel under the moat to the castle, a futile exercise that actually benefited the Forlivesi. The energy the soldiers expended digging into the frozen earth meant less time for them to torment the townspeople. Cesare then ordered the falconets to be planted all around the keep, planning to throw all his firepower at Caterina's stronghold and blast her out.

On December 28, Cesare started hammering Ravaldino in earnest. With the morning light reflecting off the muzzles of the falconets, they resembled silver streams feeding into the moat. The bombardment took out one of the defense towers and left Caterina's beloved Paradise a ruin, but she was undaunted. The keep remained intact; she moved in there. Her return fire caused Cesare even greater damage. Borgia's French artillery expert, Costantino da Bologna, was killed. A loud lament went up from the enemy camp, and the French exclaimed that the king would have happily given ten thousand ducats to bring that valuable man back to life again. Caterina had also selected her artillery chief with care. Bartolomeo Bolognesi's cannons responded shot for shot to Cesare attacks, and he remained ever-vigilant to respond to any careless exposure on the part of the enemy. He "never fails to salute any who pass by," wrote an observer to the duke of Milan, recounting that Duke Cesare had grown so exasperated that he was offering a thousand ducats for Bolognesi's corpse and two thousand for him alive.

News of the extraordinary defense on the part of one courageous woman spread like wildfire through Italy. The diarist Antonio Grumello from Pavia wrote at the time, "There has never been seen a woman with so much spirit."
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"She has shown herself a female of great governance," wrote one commentator from her old enemy Venice. "Certainly this woman could be called a Virago."
⁴
Virago, derived from
vir,
the Latin word for "man," denoted a woman who possessed qualities that the Renaissance associated with men: strength, standing, and importance. Caterina was one of the few women of her age to be referred to that way. Public opinion, at least, seemed to be in Caterina's favor. Ottaviano was trying to find reinforcements for his mother, and the Florentines secretly promised to send soldiers; the hardest part would be getting them into the fortress. It took a clever ruse to do so.

On one freezing January morning, a group of men came chanting though Cesare's camp. Wearing traveling cloaks and carrying the traditional staff of the pilgrim, they begged safe transit through Forlì on their journey to Rome for the Holy Year. Promising to pray for those who let them pass, the band made its way toward Ravaldino. Suddenly the drawbridge was lowered and they all rushed inside: forty extra men to defend the fortress.