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 CELEBRATED CRIMES 
 
 VOLUME II 
 
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^le^anbre JDmnas 
 
 CELEBRATED CRIMES 
 
 TRANSLATED 
 
 BY I. G. BURNHAM 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAVURES 
 
 AFTER 
 
 ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY DE LOS RIOS, PRODHOMME 
 
 WAGREZ, ETC. 
 
 VOLUME II 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. RICHMOND & CO. 
 
/ 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 COPYRIGHTED 1 895, BY G. B< 
 
 H V G I | 
 
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 255212 ' 0 
 
 BO * row W>t I -'"-p U#«A*T 
 
 chsstnijt hill. maps. 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL II. 
 
 The Boegias 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 , . 1 
 

 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 THE BORGIAS 
 
 After Drawings by Jacques Wagrez and Jules Gamier. 
 
 Francesco Borgia Seeks His Mother and Sister to 
 Inform Them of the Expected Election of His 
 Father to the Papacy . .. Fronts. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Alexander VI. Visiting His Daughter Lucrezia . . 48 
 
 The Body of Francesco Borgia, Duke of Gandia, 
 Murdered by Csesar Borgia, Thrown Into the 
 
 Tiber.136 
 
 Don Alphonso of Aragon, Husband of Lucrezia, 
 
 Murdered by Order of the Borgias.192 
 
 The Accidental Poisoning of Alexander VI. and of 
 His Son, Csesar Borgia, Duke of Romagna . . 240 
 
The Borgias. 
 
 Vol. II.—1. 
 
X 
 
CELEBRATED CRIMES. 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 1492-1507. 
 
 On the eighth of April, 1492, in a sleeping apartment 
 of the Carreggi Palace, a league or more from Florence, 
 three men were grouped about a bed on which a fourth 
 lay dying. 
 
 The first of the three, who was seated at the foot of 
 the bed, half concealed by the heavy curtains of gold 
 brocade, was Ermolas Barbaro, author of the treatise on 
 “Celibacy,” and of the “ Studies upon Pliny,” who, being 
 at Rome the year before as Ambassador from the Repub¬ 
 lic of Florence, had been appointed Patriarch of Aqui- 
 leia by Innocent VIII. 
 
 The second who was kneeling, and holding a hand of 
 the moribund in his own, was. Angelo Politiano, the 
 Catullus of the fifteenth century, a highly cultivated 
 genius of the antique type, whose polished Latin verses 
 would have enabled him to pass anywhere for a poet of 
 the Augustan period. 
 
 The third who was standing against one of the 
 twisted columns of the canopy, and following with an ex¬ 
 pression of deep sadness the progress of the disease upon 
 the dying man’s face, was the illustrious Pico of Miran- 
 dola, who could speak twenty-two different languages 
 
 (3) 
 
4 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 when he was but twenty years old, and who offered to 
 reply in each of the twenty-two to seven hundred ques¬ 
 tions to be propounded to him by the twenty most learned 
 men in the whole world, if they could be got together at 
 Florence. 
 
 The dying man was Lorenzo the Magnificent; he had 
 suffered since the beginning of the year from a fierce 
 and obstinate fever, aggravated by the gout, which was 
 hereditary in his family, and, realizing at last the utter 
 inutility and powerlessness of the draughts of dissolved 
 pearls, administered by the charlatan Leoni di Spoleto, 
 who adapted his remedies to the wealth rather than to 
 the needs of his patient, he had concluded that he must 
 be reconciled to part with his sweet-voiced mistresses 
 and his silver-tongued poets, and to leave behind his 
 luxurious palaces. He had sent, therefore, to request 
 the Dominican monk, Girolamo Francesco Savonarola, 
 to visit him and give him absolution for his sins, which, 
 if committed by a man less highly placed, would have 
 been called crimes. 
 
 It was not, however, without some secret dread, as 
 against which the flattery of his friends was powerless, 
 that the voluptuary and usurper awaited the coming 
 of the stern, ascetic preacher, whose words shook Flor¬ 
 ence to her foundations, and upon whose forgiveness all 
 his hopes of the other world rested. For Savonarola 
 was one of those men of marble, who, like the statue of 
 the Commander, knock at the doors of riotous livers, in 
 the midst of their fetes and orgies, to tell them that the 
 time has come when they must begin to think of the 
 hereafter. 
 
 Born at Ferrara, whither his family, which was one of 
 the most illustrious in Padua, had been induced to go by 
 Marquis Nicolas d’Este, he was, at twenty-three years 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 5 
 
 of age, led by an irresistible vocation for the life of a 
 priest, to run away from his father’s house, and take the 
 vows at the Dominican convent in Florence. He was 
 then appointed by his superiors to give lessons in philo¬ 
 sophy, and during the early years of his novitiate had 
 to contend with all the disadvantages of a weak and 
 discordant voice, defective pronunciation, and, more 
 than all else, with complete physical prostration, brought 
 about by too great abstinence. 
 
 Thenceforth Savonarola condemned himself to abso¬ 
 lute seclusion, and disappeared in the depths of the 
 convent, as if the stone had rolled back across the door 
 of the tomb. Kneeling upon the cold flags, praying 
 without cessation before a wooden crucifix, his mind 
 raised to the highest pitch of exaltation by vigils and 
 penances, he soon passed from mere meditation to seeing 
 visions, and began to feel in his heart the secret, pro¬ 
 phetic impulse which summoned him to preach the refor¬ 
 mation of the Church. 
 
 The reformation preached by Savonarola, however, 
 was more reverential than that preached by Luther, 
 which it preceded by about twenty-five years, and 
 showed more respect to existing institutions, while 
 attacking men ; its aim being to bring about a change 
 of human dogmas, but not of the divine faith itself. 
 His appeals were not like those of the German monk, 
 to men’s reason, but to their imaginations; with him 
 logic always held a subordinate place to inspiration; he 
 was not a theologian, but a prophet. 
 
 Nevertheless, although he had thus far yielded to the 
 authority of the Church, he had already raised his voice 
 in opposition to the temporal power. In his eyes religion 
 and liberty were two virgins of equal sanctity, so that 
 Lorenzo seemed to him no less guilty in violating the 
 
6 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 one, than Innocent VIII. in dishonoring the other. The 
 result was that so long as Lorenzo lived his life of profli¬ 
 gate, careless luxury, Savonarola consistently refused, 
 despite the most persistent urging, to seem to sanction 
 by his presence a power he regarded as illegitimate. 
 But when Lorenzo on his death-bed sent for him, that 
 was another matter. The austere monk set out at once, 
 bareheaded and barefooted, hoping to save not the dying 
 man’s soul alone, but the liberty of the republic. 
 
 Lorenzo, as we have said, was awaiting Savonarola’s 
 arrival with impatience mingled with anxiety, and when 
 he heard his steps approaching, his pale face assumed a 
 more cadaverous hue than before, as he raised himself 
 upon his elbow, motioning to his three friends to leave 
 the room. They obeyed at once, and had hardly passed 
 out at one door, when the curtain at the other was raised 
 and the monk appeared upon the threshold, pale of face, 
 and with grave and impassive mien. Lorenzo dei Medici, 
 as his eye fell upon him, read in his face the inflexibility 
 of a statue, and fell back upon his bed with a sigh so 
 deep that it might have been his last. 
 
 The monk glanced about the room, as if to make sure 
 that he was alone with the moribund ; then he walked 
 with slow and solemn step toward the bed. Lorenzo 
 watched him draw near, apparently in deadly terror, 
 and when he reached his side, he cried: 
 
 “ Oh ! my father, I have been a great sinner ! ” 
 
 “ God’s mercy is infinite,” the preacher replied, “ and 
 I am authorized to extend God’s mercy to thee.” 
 
 “ Do you think that God will forgive my sins ? ” cried 
 the dying man, feeling hope revive in his breast when he 
 heard those words which he little expected to hear from 
 the monk’s lips. 
 
 “ Sins and crimes as well, God will forgive everything,” 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 7 
 
 Savonarola replied. “ God will forgive thy frivolous 
 amusements, thy adulterous connections, and thy obscene 
 entertainments; so much for thy sins. God will forgive 
 thee for having promised two thousand florins reward to 
 the man who should bring you the heads of Dietisalvi, 
 Nerone Nigi, Angelo Antinori and Nicolo Soderini, and 
 twice that sum to him who should deliver them to you 
 alive; God will forgive thee for putting to death upon 
 the scaffold, or the gibbet, the son of Papi Orlandi, 
 Francesco di Brisghella, Bernardo Nardi, Jacopo Fres- 
 cobaldi, Amoretto Baldovinetti, Pietro Balducci, Ber¬ 
 nardo di Bandino, Francesco Frescobaldi, and more than 
 three hundred others, whose names, albeit less illustrious 
 than theirs, were no less dear to Florence; so much for 
 thy crimes.” 
 
 At each of these names, which Savonarola pronounced 
 slowly and with his eyes fixed upon the dying man’s 
 face, Lorenzo uttered a groan, which proved that the 
 monk’s memory was only too accurate. 
 
 “ Do you really believe, father,” he asked, doubtfully, 
 when the catalogue was ended, “ that God will forgive 
 everything, both sins and crimes ? ” 
 
 “ Everything,” said Savonarola ; “ but only on three 
 conditions.” 
 
 “ What are they ? ” 
 
 “First, that thou dost have unquestioning faith in 
 the power and mercy of God.” 
 
 “ Father,” replied Lorenzo eagerly, “ such faith I 
 already feel in the inmost depths of my soul.” 
 
 “ Second, that thou dost restore the property of other 
 people, which thou hast unlawfully confiscated and 
 retained.” 
 
 “ Shall I have time, father ? ” 
 
 “ God will give thee time.” 
 
8 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Lorenzo closed his eyes as if to reflect more at his 
 ease. 
 
 “Yes, father, I will do it,” he said, after a moment’s 
 silence. 
 
 “ Third,” continued Savonarola, “ that thou dost 
 restore to the republic her former independence and 
 freedom of action.” 
 
 Lorenzo, with a convulsive movement, rose to a sitting 
 posture, gazing into the Dominican’s eyes to see if he 
 were not mistaken and had really heard aright. Savon¬ 
 arola repeated his words. 
 
 “ Never! never! ” cried Lorenzo, falling back upon 
 the bed, and shaking his head vigorously; “ never! ” 
 
 The monk without another word took a step toward 
 the door. 
 
 “ Oh ! my father! my father! ” shrieked the dying 
 man, “ do not leave me thus. Have pity on me ! ” 
 
 “ Have thou pity on Florence,” retorted the monk. 
 
 “ But, Florence is free, my father; Florence is happy.” 
 
 “ Florence is enslaved, Florence is poor,” cried Savon¬ 
 arola ; “ poor in genius, poor in wealth, and poor in 
 gallant hearts. Poor in genius, because thy son Pietro 
 will come after thee, Lorenzo; poor in wealth, because 
 thou hast maintained the splendor of thy family, and 
 the credit of thy treasury with the funds of the republic ; 
 poor in gallant hearts, because thou hast despoiled the 
 lawful magistrates of the authority which the constitu¬ 
 tion gave them, and hast turned thy fellow-citizens aside 
 from the twofold civil and military career, in which they 
 were wont to display all the virtue and valor of the 
 olden time, before thou hadst enervated them by thy 
 luxurious mode of life, so that when the day comes, a 
 day which is not far distant,” continued the monk, 
 whose eyes flashed, as if he were reading the future, 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 9 
 
 “ when the barbarians pour down from the mountains, 
 the walls of our cities, like the walls of Jericho, will 
 crumble and fall at the first blast of their trumpets.” 
 
 “ And you wish me, on my death-bed, to relinquish 
 the power on which rests the glory of my whole life? ” 
 
 “ It is not I who wish it, but the Lord,” replied 
 Savonarola coldly. 
 
 “ Impossible ! impossible ! ” muttered Lorenzo. 
 
 “ Very well! die then as thou hast lived,” cried the 
 monk, “ surrounded by thy courtiers and flatterers, and 
 may they destroy thy soul as they have destroyed thy 
 body! ” 
 
 With that the implacable Dominican, deaf to the 
 shrieks of the moribund, withdrew from the room with 
 the same expression and the same measured step with 
 which he entered it, seeming to soar above petty human 
 affairs like a spirit already released from its earthly bonds. 
 
 Ermolao, Politiano and Pico, who had overheard all 
 that passed, rushed back into the room at the cry which 
 Lorenzo uttered when the priest disappeared ; they found 
 him hugging tightly in his arms a crucifix which he 
 had torn from the headboard of his bed. In vain did 
 they try to soothe him with words of comfort. Lorenzo 
 replied only by sobs ; and within an hour after the scene 
 we have described he died, with his lips glued to the 
 feet of the crucifix of Christ, in the arms of his three 
 friends, the most highly favored of whom, although they 
 were all young men, was destined to survive him no 
 more than two years. 
 
 “ As his demise was destined to entail disaster,” says 
 Nicolo Machiavelli, “ Heaven saw fit to send most 
 unambiguous warnings of what was to come; the 
 dome of the Church of Santa Reparata was struck by 
 lightning and Rodrigo Borgia was chosen pope.” 
 
10 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Toward the close of the fifteenth century, that is to 
 say, at the period when our narrative opens, the square 
 of St. Peter’s at Rome was very far from presenting the 
 imposing spectacle which in these days of ours bursts 
 upon the vision of those who approach it by way of the 
 Piazza dei Rusticucci. 
 
 The basilica of Constantine was no longer in exist¬ 
 ence^ and that of Michel Angelo, the monument of 
 thirty popes, representing the labor of three centuries, 
 and an outlay of two hundred and sixty millions, was 
 not then erected. The former structure, after weather¬ 
 ing the storms of eleven hundred and forty-five years, 
 had reached a dangerous condition of decay about 1440, 
 and Nicolas V., the artistic predecessor of Julius II. 
 and Leo X., caused it to be torn down, as well as the 
 temple of Probus Anicius, which adjoined it, and on its 
 site had laid the foundations of a new temple designed 
 by the architects Rosselini and Baptista Alberti. But 
 a few years later, Nicolas V. being no more, and the 
 Venetian Paul II. being unable to give more than five 
 thousand crowns toward continuing the work of his 
 predecessor, the work of construction came to a standstill 
 when the walls were hardly above ground, and the effect 
 produced was that of a building born dead, an even 
 more melancholy sight than a ruin. 
 
 As to the square itself, it had not, as the reader will 
 readily understand from what we have said thus far, the 
 beautiful colonnade by Bernini, nor the gushing foun¬ 
 tains, nor the Egyptian obelisk, which, according to 
 Pliny, w T as erected by Pharaoh Nuncorus in the city of 
 Pleliopolis, and transported to Rome by Caligula, and by 
 him placed in the circus of Nero, where it remained 
 until 1586. As the circus of Nero was situated upon 
 the very spot where St. Peter’s stands to-day, as the base 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 11 
 
 of the obelisk covered the site of the present sacristy, it 
 must then have seemed to shoot up like a gigantic 
 needle amid the half-hewn columns of the uneven walls, 
 and the rough unfinished blocks of stone. 
 
 To the right of this infant ruin rose the Vatican, a 
 superb Tower of Babel upon which all the famous 
 architects of the Roman school have tried their hands 
 for a thousand years. At this time its two magnificent 
 chapels were not built, nor its twelve great halls, its 
 twenty-two courts, its thirty staircases and two thousand 
 apartments ; for Sextus V., that sublime swineherd who 
 did so many things in his five years’ incumbency of the 
 papal chair, had not then added to it the vast eastern 
 wing overlooking the court of St. Damasus. But it was 
 already a venerable and sacred palace, hallowed by 
 memories of the olden time, in which Charlemagne was 
 entertained when Leo III. placed the imperial crown 
 upon his head. 
 
 On the ninth of August, 1492, all Rome, from the 
 Porta del Popolo to the Coliseum, and from the Baths 
 of Diocletian to the castle of San Angelo seemed to have 
 assembled by appointment upon the Square of St. 
 Peter’s. So dense was the multitude that it overflowed 
 into the adjacent streets, which radiated from the square 
 like the rays of a star, and masses of people could be 
 seen, like a waving, many colored carpet, swarming 
 over the basilica, grouped in clusters on the blocks of 
 stone, clinging to the columns, passing in at the doors 
 of the houses and reappearing at the windows, in such 
 numbers and so crowded together that it seemed as if 
 each window were walled up with heads. Now this 
 whole vast multitude had its eyes fixed upon a single 
 point in the Vatican, for the conclave was in session 
 therein, and as Innocent VIII. had been dead but 
 
12 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 sixteen days, the choice of a pope was in progress. 
 Rome is the city of elections; from her foundation to 
 the present time, a period of some twenty-six centuries, 
 she has continually elected her kings, her consuls, her 
 tribunes, her emperors and her popes; so it is that Rome, 
 during the sessions of the conclave, seems afflicted with 
 a peculiar fever which impels every citizen toward the 
 Vatican or Monte Cavallo, according as the scarlet-clad 
 assemblage is convened in one or the other of those 
 palaces. In truth, the accession of a new pope is an 
 affair of great moment for the whole world; for the 
 average duration of the reigns of all the popes from St. 
 Peter to Gregory XVI. being about eight years, each 
 period of eight years is a season of tranquillity or con¬ 
 fusion, of justice or injustice, of peace or war, according 
 to the character of the successful aspirant. 
 
 Never, perhaps, from the d ay when St. Peter’s first 
 successor took his seat on the pontifical throne down to 
 the present interregnum, had the public unrest been so 
 noticeable as at this moment, when the whole popula¬ 
 tion had assembled, a vast, breathless throng upon the 
 Square of St. Peter’s and the streets leading to it. Nor 
 was this condition of men’s minds altogether without 
 reason, for Innocent VIII. (who was called the father of 
 his people because he had increased the number of his 
 subjects by eight sons and as many daughters), after a 
 life passed in debauchery, had breathed his last after a 
 long illness, during which two hundred and twenty 
 murders were committed in the streets of Rome, if we 
 may believe the journal of Stefano Infessura. 
 
 The reins of power passed, according to the established 
 custom, into the hands of the cardinal camerlingo, who 
 always exercises supreme authority during an interreg¬ 
 num. But the duties devolving upon him were many 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 13 
 
 and arduous. He had to attend to the coining of money, 
 stamped with his name and arms ; to the dressing, shav¬ 
 ing and embalming of the dead pope’s body, and laying 
 it away after nine days devoted to the funeral rites in 
 the recess where the mortal remains of the last pope are 
 placed provisionally until the body of his successor 
 takes its place, and consigns it to its final resting-place; 
 he had also to superintend the walling up of the doors 
 of the apartments in which the conclave holds its 
 sessions, and the window opening on the balcony from 
 which proclamation of the election is made. Conse¬ 
 quently he had no time to devote to police matters, so 
 that the carnival of murder went gaily on and the people 
 were loudly calling for an energetic hand to force the 
 swords and daggers back into their sheathes. 
 
 So it was that the eyes of this vast multitude were, 
 as we have said, fixed upon the Vatican, and particularly 
 upon a certain chimney, whence the first signal was 
 expected to issue, when suddenly, as the bells were ring¬ 
 ing the Ave Maria, that is to say, just as night was 
 beginning to fall, loud shouts, mingled with roars of 
 laughter rose from the crowd, a discordant medley of 
 threats and raillery. The demonstration was caused by 
 the appearance of a thin column of smoke which issued 
 from the top of the chimney in question and rose straight 
 into the air. This smoke was equivalent to an announce¬ 
 ment that Rome was still without a master, and that the 
 world had not yet a new pope; for it was caused by 
 burning the ballots in token that the cardinals had not 
 as yet found it possible to agree. 
 
 This tiny column of smoke had scarcely appeared, to 
 disappear almost immediately, than the whole of the 
 vast multitude, well aware that nothing more was to be 
 expected that night and that the proceedings were 
 
14 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 suspended until ten o’clock the next morning, the hour 
 at which the cardinals began their voting for the day,— 
 the multitude, we say, withdrew in an uproarious, satiri¬ 
 cal mood, as the crowd scatters after the last piece of 
 an exhibition of fireworks ; so that in a very short time, 
 on the spot where a whole city was collected a few 
 moments before, no one was to be seen save a few belated 
 sightseers who lived in the neighborhood or upon the 
 square itself, and were, therefore, in less haste than the 
 others to return home. But these last groups dwindled 
 away gradually by the time that the clocks rang the 
 half after nine, for at that hour the streets began to be 
 unsafe, and soon the silence was broken only by the 
 hurried step of some solitary passer-by. The doors 
 closed one after another, the lights that shone in the 
 windows were extinguished, and when ten o’clock struck, 
 houses, squares and streets were plunged in utter dark¬ 
 ness, save for one of the windows of the Vatican, in 
 which a light was still burning. 
 
 As the clock struck, a man wrapped in a cloak rose 
 like a shadow against one of the columns of the unfin¬ 
 ished basilica and, creeping slowly and cautiously among 
 the blocks of stone which lay around the foundations of 
 the new temple, walked out as far as the fountain which 
 stood in the centre of the square on the present site of 
 the obelisk of which we have already spoken. There 
 he stopped, doubly concealed by the darkness of the 
 night, and the shadow of the fountain, and having 
 looked around to make sure that he was alone, he drew 
 his sword and struck its point three times upon the 
 pavement, striking fire at every blow. This signal, for 
 such it was, did not pass unnoticed; the solitary lamp 
 which was still burning in the Vatican at once went out 
 and, at the same moment a packet was thrown from the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 15 
 
 window, and struck the ground a few steps away from 
 the man in the cloak. Guided unerringly by the metallic 
 sound which it gave forth when it came in contact with 
 the flagstones, he put his hand upon it at once, notwith¬ 
 standing the darkness and, as soon as he had it in his 
 possession, walked rapidly away. 
 
 He maintained his swift pace without pausing, half 
 way along Borgo-Vecchio, when he turned to the right 
 down a street at the end of which was a madonna with 
 her lighted lamp. He drew near the lamp and took 
 from his pocket the object he had picked up, which was 
 neither more nor less than a Roman crown, but it was 
 so made as to unscrew, leaving a hole in the centre, in 
 which was a letter, which he to whom it was addressed 
 began to read at the risk of being recognized, in such 
 haste was he to learn its contents. 
 
 We say at the risk of being recognized because, in 
 his eagerness, the nocturnal prowler threw back the 
 hood of his cloak and, as his head was fairly within the 
 circle of light shed by the lamp, it was easy to distin¬ 
 guish the features of a handsome youth of some twenty- 
 five or twenty-six years, clad in a violet doublet, slashed 
 at shoulder and elbow, so as to show his shirt, and hav¬ 
 ing upon his head a cap of the same color, with a long 
 black plume drooping over his shoulder. To be sure, 
 his halt was not a long one, for he had no sooner finished 
 reading the letter, or rather the note, which had been 
 conveyed to him in such an unusual and mysterious 
 way, than he replaced it in his silver wallet and, rear¬ 
 ranging his cloak so that it concealed all the lower part 
 of his face, started off again at the same swift pace, 
 passed through Borgo San-Spirito and turned into Via 
 della Longara, which he followed as far as the Church 
 of Regina Coeli. When he reached that point he 
 
16 
 
 THE BOKGIAS. 
 
 knocked three times at the door of a handsome house. 
 The door was immediately opened, and he ran swiftly 
 up the staircase into a room where two women were 
 awaiting him with evident impatience. 
 
 “Well! Francesco, what news?” they cried in uni¬ 
 son as soon as he appeared. 
 
 “ Good news, mother! good news, sister! ” he replied, 
 kissing the one and giving his hand to the other ; “ our 
 father has gained three votes to-day, but he still lacks 
 six of a majority.” 
 
 “ Pray, is there no means of purchasing them ? ” cried 
 the elder of the ladies, while the other, without speak¬ 
 ing, seconded the inquiry with an eloquent look. 
 
 “ Yes, indeed, mother,” the youth replied, “ and that 
 selfsame thought occurred to my father. He gives 
 Cardinal Orsino his palace at Rome with his castles of 
 Monticello and Soriano; to Cardinal Colonna the abbey 
 of Subiaco; to Cardinal St. Angelo the bishop’s palace 
 at Porto, with its furniture and wine-cellar; to the 
 Cardinal of Parma the town of Nepi; to the Cardinal 
 of Genoa the Church of Santa-Maria-in-via-Lata; and 
 to Cardinal Savelli the Church of Santa-Maria Mag- 
 giore, and the town of Civita-Castellana; as for Cardi¬ 
 nal Ascanio Sforza he knows that we sent him day 
 before yesterday four mules laden with money and plate, 
 and he has undertaken to hand five thousand ducats to 
 the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice.” 
 
 “ But how are we to make known Rodrigo’s inten¬ 
 tions to the others ? ” asked the elder woman. 
 
 “ My father has anticipated everything, and has in¬ 
 vented a very simple means; you know, my mother, 
 how much ceremony is used about carrying their dinner 
 to the cardinals.” 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 17 
 
 “Yes, it is carried on a litter, in a great basket bearing 
 the arms of the cardinal for whom it is intended.” 
 
 “ My father has purchased the bishop who inspects 
 the dinners; to-morrow is a flesh day, and chickens for 
 roasting will be sent to Cardinals Orsino, Colonna, 
 Savelli, St. Angelo, Parma and Genoa; each chicken 
 will contain a deed of gift in due form, executed by me 
 in my father’s name, of the houses, palaces or churches 
 destined for each recipient.” 
 
 “ Excellent,” said his mother; “ now I am sure that 
 all will go well.” 
 
 “ And by the grace of God,” interposed the younger 
 woman with an ironical smile, “ our father will be 
 pope.” 
 
 “ A happy day for us! ” exclaimed Francesco. 
 
 “ And for Christianity,” rejoined his sister with still 
 greater irony. 
 
 “ Lucrezia, Lucrezia,” said the mother, “ you do not 
 deserve the happiness which is in store for us.” 
 
 “ What matters it, if it comes all the same ? Besides, 
 you know the old proverb mother mine: ‘ Large fami¬ 
 lies are blessed of the Lord,’ so what may we not expect 
 for ours which bears so strong a resemblance to those of 
 the patriarchs ? ” 
 
 As she spoke she cast upon her brother a look of such 
 significance that the young man blushed; but as he had 
 other things to think of for the moment than his inces¬ 
 tuous love, he ordered four servants to be awakened; 
 and while they were dressing and arming themselves to 
 attend him, he signed the six deeds of gift to be sent to 
 the cardinals the following day ; for, as he did not wish 
 to be seen at their places of abode, it had occurred to 
 him to deliver them under cover of the darkness to the 
 confidential servants who were to see that they were 
 
 Vol. II.—2. 
 
18 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 handed them at the dinner hour as agreed. When the 
 documents were executed in proper form, and the ser¬ 
 vants ready, he went away with them, leaving the two 
 women to dream golden dreams of their future gran¬ 
 deur. 
 
 At early dawn the people came hurrying to the square 
 again, as eager and excited as before, and at ten o’clock 
 in the morning the column of smoke began again its 
 accustomed task of announcing, amid laughter and 
 imprecations, that no one of the cardinals had secured a 
 majority. The report began to gain currency, however, 
 that the choice was narrowed down to three aspirants, 
 Rodrigo Borgia, Guilio della Rovere, and Ascanio 
 Sforza ; for the people knew nothing of the four mules 
 laden with plate and money which had been sent to the 
 last named, and in consideration of which he had turned 
 his votes over to his rival. 
 
 At the height of the excitement caused by this fresh 
 diversion, the sound of sacred music was heard ; it came 
 from a procession of monks, ordered by the cardinal 
 camerlingo as a means of inducing heaven to decree the 
 prompt election of a pope, and was on its way from the 
 Church of Ava Coeli to the capitol, stopping before the 
 principal Madonnas, and in the most frequented 
 churches. As soon as the crucifix which was carried at 
 the head of the procession appeared, absolute silence 
 fell upon the crowd, and every one kneeled where he 
 stood; a period of silent, devout meditation succeeded 
 the tumult and confusion which had reigned supreme a 
 few moments earlier, and assumed a more threatening 
 character at each fresh column of smoke. Many people 
 believed that the procession was intended to serve a 
 political, as well as a religious end, and that its influence 
 was likely to be as great on earth as in heaven. At all 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 19 
 
 events if such was the design of the camerlingo, he was 
 not at fault, and the effect produced was such as he de¬ 
 sired ; when the procession had passed on, although the 
 laughter and horse-play continued, the shouts and 
 threats were heard no more. Thus the day slipped by, 
 for at Rome no one works ; every one is either a cardinal 
 or a lackey, and lives, one knows not how. The crowd 
 was more dense than ever about two in the afternoon, 
 when another procession, which was as successful in 
 causing renewed uproar, as the earlier one in enforcing 
 silence, crossed the square of St. Peter’s; it was the 
 dinner procession. The people greeted it with their cus¬ 
 tomary shouts of laughter, with no suspicion, in their 
 irreverence, that this second procession was more effica¬ 
 cious than the first, in that it was to be the means of 
 making a new pope. 
 
 The Ave Maria rang as on the preceding day, and 
 found expectation disappointed once again; as the 
 clocks struck half after eight, the smoke appeared once 
 more at the mouth of the chimney. But as a report 
 was at the same time sent out from within the Vatican, 
 to the effect that there would in all probability be an 
 election the next day, the good people possessed their 
 souls in patience. It had been a very hot day, too, and 
 accustomed. as they were to shade and idleness, they were 
 so exhausted, and so scorched by the sun that they had 
 not the strength to shout. 
 
 The following morning, August 11, 1492, was dark 
 and stormy, but the crowd was not prevented thereby 
 from thronging as before, the streets, squares, doorways, 
 houses and churches. Indeed the state of the weather 
 was a downright blessing to them, for though it was still 
 hot, there was no scorching sun. 
 
 Toward nine o’clock a terrific storm burst over the 
 
20 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Transtevere; but what mattered rain, lightning and 
 thunder! The people were thinking about something 
 entirely different, they were expecting their pope; he 
 had been promised them that day, and it was easy to see 
 from the prevailing temper that there would be trouble 
 if the day passed without an election. As the hours 
 flew by, the excitement became constantly more intense. 
 Nine o’clock struck, half after nine, and quarter to ten, 
 and nothing transpired to fulfill or wreck their hopes. 
 At last the first stroke of ten rang out, and all eyes were 
 fixed on the chimney; the strokes followed each other 
 slowly, and each found an echo in the great heart of the 
 multitude. The tenth and last stroke died tremblingly 
 away in space, and a tremendous shout from a hundred 
 thousand throats succeeded the deathlike silence : 
 
 “ Non v’e fumo ! There is no smoke! ” 
 
 That is to say :“We have a pope.” At that moment 
 the rain began to fall; but it fell unheeded, so great 
 were the joy and impatience of the populace. At last a 
 small stone fell from the walled-up window opening on 
 the balcony, on which all eyes were fastened ; a roar of 
 applause greeted its fall. The opening gradually 
 increased in size, and in a few moments was sufficiently 
 large to allow a man to step out upon the balcony. 
 
 Thereupon Cardinal Ascanio Sforza’s face appeared; 
 but just as he was in the act of stepping forth he seemed 
 to take alarm at the thunder and lightning, hesitated a 
 moment, and finally retreated. Immediately the whole 
 multitude burst out with the fury of a tempest, shouting, 
 yelling and cursing, and threatening to demolish the 
 Vatican and seek the pope for themselves. At that, 
 Cardinal Sforza, more alarmed by the storm of popu¬ 
 lar indignation than by the raging of the elements, 
 came out upon the balcony, and made the following 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 21 
 
 announcement between two peals of thunder, and amid 
 a breathless silence which seemed incomprehensible to 
 one who had heard the uproar which preceded it: 
 
 “ I am the messenger of glad tidings: the Most Illus¬ 
 trious and Most Reverend Signor Rodrigo Lenzuolo 
 Borgia, Archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal Deacon of 
 San Nicolas-in-Carcere, and Vice Chancellor of the 
 hierarchy, has been chosen pope, and has assumed the 
 name of Alexander VI.” 
 
 The news of this selection was greeted with outspoken 
 satisfaction. Rodrigo Borgia had the reputation of 
 being a dissolute man, it is true, but libertinage ascended 
 the papal throne with Sextus V. and Innocent VIII., so 
 that there was nothing novel to the Romans in the strange 
 spectacle of a pope with a mistress and five children. 
 The most essential thing at the moment was that the 
 power should fall into strong hands, and it was even 
 more important for the tranquillity of the Holy City 
 that the new pope should inherit the sword of St. Paul 
 than the keys of St. Peter. 
 
 In like manner, the dominating characteristic of the 
 fetes which were given on this occasion was the predom¬ 
 inance of the martial element over the religious; and it 
 seemed as if they were celebrating the accession of a 
 young conqueror to a temporal throne, rather than the 
 election of a gray-haired cardinal to the papal chair. 
 Nothing was to be seen or heard but prophetic inscrip¬ 
 tions and word-play upon the name of Alexander, which 
 for the second time seemed to promise universal empire 
 to the Romans. On the very evening after the election, 
 indeed, amid the brilliant illuminations and blaze of 
 fireworks, which transformed the city into one vast lake 
 of fire, the following inscription was greeted with frantic 
 applause by the people: 
 
22 
 
 t 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 “ Under Csesar in former days the victories of the 
 Roman arms made Rome a queen at home, and mistress 
 of the whole world; but Alexander will promote her 
 glory even more than Csesar; for Csesar was but a man, 
 while Alexander is a god.” 
 
 The new pope had no sooner gone through with the 
 necessary formalities attendant upon his exaltation and 
 paid to each of the cardinals the stipulated price of his 
 simony than he cast his eyes from the commanding 
 eminence of the Vatican upon that vast political chess¬ 
 board known as Europe, upon which he hoped to 
 control the movements of the pieces according to the 
 dictates of his genius. 
 
 The world had arrived at one of those critical periods 
 of transformation which mark the closing of one epoch 
 and the opening of another. In the East, Turkey; in 
 the South, Spain ; in the West, France ; and in the North, 
 Germany, were on the point of assuming, with the rank 
 of great nations, the influence which they were destined 
 to exert in the future over states of secondary importance. 
 
 Let us then, with Alexander, take a rapid survey of 
 them, and see what their respective attitudes were with 
 regard to Italy, upon which the covetous eyes of all 
 were longingly fixed. 
 
 Constantine Paleologus Dragozes, besieged by three 
 hundred thousand Turks, appealed in vain to all Chris¬ 
 tendom for aid; he was determined not to survive the 
 loss of his empire, and was found among the dead near 
 the Tophana Gate when Mahomet II. entered Constanti¬ 
 nople on the thirtieth of May, 1453. After a long 
 reign, which earned for him the surname of Fatile, or 
 the Conqueror, Mahomet died, leaving two sons, the 
 elder of whom ascended the throne under the title of 
 Bajazet II. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 23 
 
 The new Sultan’s accession, however, was not effected 
 with the ease which his right of primogeniture and his 
 father’s choice promised. Djein, his younger brother, 
 better known as Zizim, based his claim upon the fact 
 that he was Porpliyrogmitus ,* that is to say that he was 
 born after Mahomet became sultan, while Bajazet, whose 
 birth antedated his father’s accession, was naught but 
 the son of a private individual. It was a wretched 
 quibble, but in a land where might makes right, it was 
 sufficient ground for a war. The two brothers, each at 
 the head of an army, met on Asian territory in 1482. 
 Djein was defeated after a battle lasting seven hours. 
 Hotly pursued by his brother, w T ho gave him no time to 
 collect the scattered remnant of his army, he was com¬ 
 pelled to take ship at a seaport in Cilicia, and make his 
 escape to Rhodes, where he sought the protection of the 
 Knights of St. John. They did not dare to offer him 
 an asylum on their island which lay so near to the coast 
 of Asia, but sent him to France, where he was kept under 
 close guard in one of their commanderies, notwithstand¬ 
 ing the urgent entreaties of Cait Bey, Sultan of Egypt, 
 who was in revolt against Bajazet, and wished to have 
 the young prince in his army to give his rebellion some 
 similitude to lawful warfare. A similar request was 
 made, with a similar object, by Mathias Corvinus, King 
 of Hungary; Ferdinand, King of Aragon and Sicily, 
 and Ferdinand of Naples. 
 
 Bajazet, who was well aware of the danger of such a 
 rival, if he should once enter into an alliance with any 
 one of the princes with whom he was at war, sent am¬ 
 bassadors to Charles VIII. of France, offering him, if he 
 would agree to detain Djein in his dominions, a consid¬ 
 erable pension, and the sovereignty of the Holy Land 
 
 * Born to the purple. 
 
24 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 as soon as Jerusalem should be wrested from the Sultan 
 of Egypt. The French king accepted, but thereupon 
 Innocent VIII. intervened, and put in a claim of his 
 own to Djein, ostensibly to procure the support of his 
 name to a crusade he was preaching against the Turks, 
 but in reality to put his hand upon the pension of forty 
 thousand ducats promised by Bajazet to any one of the 
 princes of Christendom, who would undertake to be his 
 brother’s gaoler. 
 
 Charles VIII. did not dare to refuse a request of the 
 spiritual head of the Christian world, when supported 
 by such blessed arguments; so that Djein left France, 
 in company with D’Aubusson, Grand Master of the 
 Knights of St. John, in whose special charge he was, 
 and who had agreed to give him up in consideration of 
 a cardinal’s hat. 
 
 On the thirteenth of March, 1489, the unfortunate 
 youth, upon whom so many conflicting interests were 
 centred, made his formal entry into Rome, mounted 
 upon a noble horse, and clad in a superb Eastern cos¬ 
 tume, between the Prior of Auvergne, nephew of 
 D’Aubusson, and Francesco Cibo, the pope’s son. 
 
 He had remained at Rome ever since, and Bajazet, 
 true to the promise which he had such a vital interest 
 in keeping, had paid the sovereign pontiff his pension of 
 forty thousand ducats with scrupulous promptitude. 
 
 So much for Turkey. 
 
 Ferdinand and Isabella were the rulers of Spain, and 
 were laying the foundations of that world-wide domin¬ 
 ion, which made it possible for Charles V. to say, twenty- 
 five years later, that the sun did not set upon his terri¬ 
 tories. These two sovereigns, who are known to history 
 by the distinctive name of “ Catholic,” had made them¬ 
 selves masters of every part of Spain, one after another, 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 25 
 
 and driven the Moors from Granada, their last foothold 
 in the peninsula; while two men of daring and genius, 
 Bartholomew Diaz and Christopher Columbus, were 
 discovering for their benefit, one a lost world, and the 
 other a world, the existence of which was unsuspected. 
 By virtue of their victories in the old world, and their 
 discoveries in the new, Ferdinand and Isabella had 
 acquired a degree of influence at the court of Rome 
 which none of their predecessors had enjoyed. 
 
 So much for Spain. 
 
 On the thirtieth of August, 1483, Charles VIII. be¬ 
 came King of France, in succession to his father, Louis 
 XI., who, by numberless executions, had reduced the 
 kingdom to a state of tranquillity befitting the accession 
 of an infant and the regency of a woman. A glorious 
 regency it was, too, and resulted in demolishing the pre¬ 
 tensions of the princes of the blood, and in putting an 
 end to civil strife by uniting to the crown all the re¬ 
 maining great independent fiefs. At the time of which 
 we are writing Charles VIII. was about twenty-two 
 years of age, and was, if we may believe La Tremouille, 
 a prince of great heart, though small in stature. On 
 the other hand, according to Commenes, he was a mere 
 child, hardly fit to leave the nest, without wit or money, 
 physically weak, inordinately self-willed, and surrounded 
 by fools, instead of wise counsellors. Lastly, according 
 to the estimate of Guicciardini, who, being an Italian 
 may be somewhat prejudiced, he was a young man little 
 skilled in the motives which govern men’s actions, but 
 was carried away by an ardent desire to make his reign 
 a glorious one—a desire due rather to his fickle-minded- 
 ness and impulsiveness, than to a conviction of his own 
 genius; he abhorred fatigue and business of all kinds, 
 and when he did try to fix his attention upon it, he 
 
26 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 « 
 
 almost always showed himself to be devoid of caution 
 and judgment. If, by chance, anything about him did 
 seem at first glance to be worthy of praise, a closer 
 inspection generally developed the fact that there was 
 more vice than virtue in it. He was liberal, it is true, 
 but his liberality was without rhyme or reason. He was 
 sometimes immovable in his determination, but from ob¬ 
 stinacy, and not from well-grounded conviction; and 
 what his flatterers called amiability much better de¬ 
 served the name of insensibility to insult, or faint-heart¬ 
 edness. 
 
 If the last quoted author is to be believed his physical 
 appearance was even less attractive and corresponded 
 wonderfully well with his feebleness of mind and char¬ 
 acter. He was very small, with an enormous head, a 
 short, thick neck, high, broad shoulders, and long, thin 
 legs and thighs ; as his face was exceptionally ugly, ex¬ 
 cept for his glance, which had some little dignity and 
 force, and as his limbs were out of all proportion to each 
 other, he looked more like a monster than a man. 
 
 Such was the man whom fortune destined for a career 
 of conquest, and for whom heaven had greater glory in 
 store than he could bear. 
 
 So much for France. 
 
 The Imperial throne was occupied by Frederic III., 
 well surnamed the Peaceful, not because he had always 
 preserved peace, but because he was constantly whipped, 
 and so was always driven to sue for peace. The first 
 proof he gave of this philosophical forbearance was 
 during his journey to Pome to be crowned. While 
 crossing the Apennines he was attacked by brigands, 
 who robbed him, but whom he made no attempt to cap¬ 
 ture. The immunity from punishment enjoyed by these 
 petty thieves soon encouraged those who did business on 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 27 
 
 a larger scale to take a hand. Amurath seized a part 
 of Hungary, Mathias Corvin laid hold of Lower Aus¬ 
 tria, and Frederic consoled himself for these invasions 
 by repeating the maxim : 
 
 “ Forgetfulness is the only remedy for the loss of what 
 one holds dear.” 
 
 At the time of which we are writing he had reigned 
 fifty-three years; he had just arranged a marriage be¬ 
 tween his son Maximilian and Marie de Bourgogne, and 
 had placed his son-in-law, Albert of Bavaria, under the 
 ban of the empire, because he had put forward a claim 
 to the Tyrol. He was too much engrossed with his own 
 affairs, therefore, to have much time to give to Italy. 
 Furthermore, he was engaged in the quest for a devise 
 for the House of Austria, a matter of much greater 
 moment to a man of his disposition. This devise, which 
 Charles V. was almost to realize, was at last found, to 
 the great delight of the old Emperor, who concluded 
 that there was nothing more for him to do on earth after 
 this last proof of his wisdom; and so he died, August 
 19, 1493, leaving the empire to his son Maximilian. 
 
 This devise was nothing more than the five vowels, 
 A, E, I, O, U, representing the initial letters of these 
 five words: 
 
 Austriae Est Imperare Orbi Uni verso. 
 
 It is Austria’s destiny to rule the whole world. 
 
 So much for Germany. 
 
 Now that we have taken a cursory glance at the four 
 nations, which, as we have said, were in a fair way to 
 become European powers of first-rate importance, let us 
 look for a moment at the second-rate States, which 
 formed a circle about Rome nearer at hand, and would 
 serve as a buckler for the spiritual queen of the world, 
 if the fancy should seize one of the political giants we 
 
28 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 have described to stretch out his arms to attack her, 
 across the Adriatic or the Alps, the Mediterranean or 
 the Apennines. 
 
 These States were the Kingdom of Naples, the Duchy 
 of Milan, the magnificent Republic of Florence, and 
 the most serene Republic of Venice. 
 
 The Kingdom of Naples was in the hands of the aged 
 Ferdinand, whose birth was not only illegitimate, but 
 probably incestuous as well. His father, Alphonso of 
 Aragon, inherited the crown from Joanna of Naples, 
 who adopted him as her successor. But in order to 
 guard against the possibility of a failure of heirs, she 
 named two, instead of one, as she lay dying, so that 
 Alphonso had to maintain his rights against Rene. The 
 rival claimants quarreled over the crown for some time, 
 but at last the house of Aragon prevailed over the 
 house of Anjou, and during the year 1442, Alphonso’s 
 title was definitely established. We shall soon find 
 Charles VIII. asserting the rights of the rejected 
 claimant. 
 
 Ferdinand had neither the personal courage nor the 
 intellect of his father, and yet he triumphed over his 
 enemies one after another. He had two rivals, either 
 of whom was his superior in every respect. One was 
 his nephew, the Count of Viana, who used his uncle’s 
 illegitimacy as a pretext, and won over all the Aragon¬ 
 ese party; the other was Duke John of Calabria, who 
 was at the head of the Angevin faction. Nevertheless 
 he held them both off, and maintained himself upon the 
 throne by adopting a cautious line of action, which 
 often amounted to duplicity. He had a cultivated mind 
 and had been a student of the sciences, especially of the 
 science of legislation. He was of medium height, with 
 a large, well-shaped head; his face was open and honest 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 29 
 
 and surrounded by beautiful white hair, which fell over 
 his shoulders. Lastly, although he had done but little 
 to cultivate his physical strength by martial exercises, it 
 was so great that one day in the market place at Naples, 
 he seized a runaway bull by the horns and stopped him 
 in his tracks, despite his desperate struggles to escape. 
 
 The election of Alexander caused him great uneasi¬ 
 ness, and discreet as he ordinarily was, he let the remark 
 escape him, in the presence of the messenger who brought 
 him the news, that he w T as not pleased with the choice, 
 nor did he see how any Christian could be, for Borgia 
 had always been a bad man and would certainly be a 
 bad pope. He added that even if the choice were 
 an unexceptionable one and calculated to gratify every¬ 
 body else, it was no less certain to be fatal to the house 
 of Aragon, inasmuch as he was born a subject of that 
 house, and owed to it the rise and progress of his for¬ 
 tune ; for wherever reasons of State are involved, they 
 speedily cause the closest ties of kinship and affection 
 to be forgotten, much more the simple relation of subject 
 and debtor. 
 
 We see that Ferdinand gauged Alexander with his 
 usual perspicacity, which did not prevent him, however, 
 as will soon appear, from being the first to form an alli¬ 
 ance with him. 
 
 The Duchy of Milan belonged nominally to Giovanni 
 Galeasso, grandson of Francesco Sforza, who took 
 forcible possession on the twenty-sixth of February, 
 1450, and bequeathed it to his son, Galeasso Mario, 
 father of the youthful reigning prince; we say nomi¬ 
 nally because the real master of the Milanais at this 
 time was not the lawful heir, but his uncle, Ludovico, 
 surnamed II Moro, because of the mulberry tree which 
 figured in his coat of arms. Exiled with his two 
 
30 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 brothers, Philip, who was poisoned in 1479, and Ascanio, 
 afterward cardinal, he returned to Milan a few days 
 after the assassination of Galeasso Mario, which took 
 place in the Church of San Stefano, December 26,1476, 
 and assumed the regency, the Duke being then but eight 
 years old. From that time, although his nephew was 
 now twenty-two, Ludovico had continued to govern the 
 State, and in all probability would continue to do so for 
 a long time to come; for a day or two after the young 
 Duke manifested a purpose to take the reins into his 
 own hands, he fell suddenly ill, and it was said openly 
 that he had taken one of those lingering, deadly poisons, 
 which the princes of that day resorted to so frequently 
 that, even when a malady was due to natural causes, 
 people always sought to attribute it to some hidden 
 motive. However it may have been, Ludovico had sent 
 his nephew, who was too weak to attend to the affairs of 
 his duchy, to the Castle of Pavia, where he was pining 
 away under the care of his wife, who was a daughter of 
 Ferdinand of Naples. 
 
 Ludovico, himself, was an ambitious mortal, very bold 
 and very deep, equally familiar with the sword and with 
 poison, which he used indifferently, as occasion offered, 
 without any decided preference or repugnance for either, 
 and he was thoroughly determined to inherit from his 
 nephew whether he died or did not die. 
 
 Although Florence still retained the name of a 
 republic, it had gradually lost all the advantages of that 
 form of government, and belonged in fact, if not of 
 right, to Pietro dei Medici, to whom Lorenzo bequeathed 
 it as part of his inheritance, at the peril of his soul’s 
 salvation. Unfortunately the son had little of the 
 father’s genius; he was handsome, it is true, while 
 Lorenzo was extremely ugly ; his voice was harmonious 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 31 
 
 and pleasant to listen to, while Lorenzo always talked 
 through his nose; he was proficient in Greek and Latin, 
 conversed easily and agreeably, and wrote impromptu 
 verses almost as well as he who was called the Magnifi¬ 
 cent, but he was haughty and insolent in his bearing 
 toward those who had made a study of public affairs, 
 although he was himself profoundly ignorant therein. 
 He was devoted to all forms of pleasure and passionately 
 fond of women; and he gave unremitting attention to 
 those bodily exercises which were calculated to exalt 
 him in their eyes, especially the game of tennis, at 
 which he was very strong. He promised himself that as 
 soon as his period of mourning was passed, he would set, 
 not Florence alone, but all the world agog with the 
 splendor of his court and the magnificence and fame of 
 his fetes. So thought Pietro dei Medici, but heaven 
 willed otherwise. 
 
 The Most Serene Republic of Venice, of which Augus- 
 tino Barbarigo was doge, had attained the highest degree 
 of power and splendor at the time of which we are 
 writing. From Cadiz to the Palus Meotides not a 
 harbor was closed to her thousand ships; in Italy she 
 possessed, in addition to the banks of the lagoons (that 
 is to say, the city), the former Duchy of Venice, the 
 provinces of Bergamo, Brescia, Verona Vicenza and 
 Padua; she had the March of Trevisano, which included 
 Feltre, Belluno, Cadorin, the Polesine of Rovigo, and 
 the principality of Ravenna; she had Friuli, less 
 Aquileia; Istria, less Trieste ; on the eastern shore of 
 the Adriatic, Zara, Spalatro, and the Albanian coast; 
 the islands of Zante and Corfu in the Ionian Sea, 
 Lepanto and Patras in Greece, Meoron, Coron, Nauplia 
 and Argos in the Morea, and Candia and the Kingdom 
 of Cyprus in the Archipelago, in addition to several 
 
32 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 1 « 
 
 small towns and settlements on the coast. Thus, from 
 the mouth of the Po, to the eastern extremity of the 
 Mediterranean, the most serene republic was mistress of 
 the whole sea-coast, and Greece and Italy seemed to be 
 little more than suburbs of Venice. 
 
 In the territories not held by Naples, Milan, Florence 
 or Venice divers petty tyrants had established themselves, 
 and exercised absolute sovereignty within their narrow 
 limits. Thus the Colonna held sway at Ostia and 
 Nettuno, the Montefeltri at Urbino, the Manfredi at 
 Faenza, the Bentivogli at Bologna, the Malatesta at 
 Rimini, the Vitelli at Cita di Castello, the Beglioni 
 at Perouse, the Orsini at Vicovaro, and the princes 
 of Este at Ferrara. 
 
 And in the centre of this vast circle, composed of 
 great powers, secondary powers, and petty despotisms, 
 was Rome; the most elevated, but the weakest of all, 
 without influence, without territory, without means, and 
 without an army. 
 
 It was for the new pope to provide her with all these 
 essentials of power; let us see therefore what manner of 
 man was this Alexander VI., and how well fitted to 
 begin and carry out such an undertaking. 
 
 Rodrigo Lenzuolo was born at Valencia in Spain in 
 1430 or 1431. Through his mother he was descended 
 from a family which had royal blood in its veins, as 
 some authors assert, and which put forward claims to 
 the crowns of Aragon and Valencia before casting a 
 covetous eye on the tiara. From early childhood he 
 gave promise of marvelous quickness of wit, and as he 
 grew to man’s estate he displayed great aptitude for the 
 learned sciences, especially jurisprudence; the result 
 being that he won his first laurels as an advocate, a 
 profession in which his readiness in the discussion of the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 33 
 
 most intricate points soon brought him fame. However, 
 he soon wearied of it, and suddenly abandoned it for the 
 profession of arms which has father had followed before 
 him; but after a few exploits, in which he gave proof 
 of abundant self-possession and courage, he conceived a 
 distaste for that as well. As his father happened to die 
 and leave him a considerable fortune, just as a soldier’s 
 life began to pall upon him, he resolved to take up no 
 other profession, but to devote himself henceforth to the 
 gratification of his whims. About this time he became 
 the lover of a widow with two daughters; the widow 
 died, and Rodrigo took the daughters under his care, 
 and put one of them in a convent; as the other was 
 one of the most beautiful creatures imaginable he kept 
 her for his mistress. She was the celebrated Rosa Van- 
 ozza, by whom he had five children: Francesco, Caesar, 
 Lucrezia, Guiffry, and a fifth whose name is unknown. 
 
 Rodrigo had withdrawn from public affairs and was 
 devoting himself unreservedly to his mistress and his 
 children, when he learned that his uncle, who had 
 always shown as much affection for him as if he were his 
 own son, was chosen pope under the name of Calixtus 
 III. He was so deeply in love at that time, however, 
 that his passion imposed silence upon his ambition, and 
 he was almost terrified at his uncle’s elevation, which 
 would doubtless compel him to return to public life. 
 Consequently, instead of hastening to Rome, as any 
 other would have done in his place, he contented him¬ 
 self with writing his Holiness a letter, wherein he 
 solicited the continuance of his good will, and wished 
 him a long and prosperous pontificate. 
 
 This self-restraint on the part of one of his relatives, 
 contrasting so strongly with the exhibitions of greed 
 and ambition which greeted the new pontiff at every 
 
34 
 
 i 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 step, made a deep impression upon Calixtus; he knew 
 Rodrigo’s worth, and at a moment when he was liter¬ 
 ally besieged by men of less than mediocre talent, 
 the estimable qualities of this young man who kept so 
 modestly in the background, assumed vast proportions 
 in his eyes. He therefore wrote at once to Rodrigo that 
 he must leave Valencia for Rome on receipt of the letter. 
 
 This command dislodged Rodrigo from the comfort¬ 
 able retreat he had made for himself, and in which he 
 would perhaps have passed his life in contented retirement, 
 had not fortune taken him by the hand and led him forth. 
 
 He was happy, he was rich, and the evil passions 
 which were natural to him, were at least slumbering, if 
 not altogether dead. He was alarmed for himself at 
 the thought of changing the quiet, peaceful life he was 
 leading for the life of ambition and excitement which 
 was promised him, and instead of obeying his uncle at 
 once, he delayed the necessary preparations for his 
 departure, hoping that Calixtus would forget. But it was 
 not to be; two months after the pope’s letter, a Roman 
 ecclesiastic arrived at Valencia, bearing Rodrigo’s ap¬ 
 pointment to a living worth twenty thousand ducats a 
 year, and a positive order to the appointee to take pos¬ 
 session of his benefice at once. 
 
 Delay was no longer possible, and Rodrigo obeyed. 
 He was reluctant, however, to part from her who had 
 been the source of all his happiness for eight years. So 
 Rosa Vanozza left Spain at the same time, and while he 
 proceeded to Rome, she betook herself to Venice, accom¬ 
 panied by two confidential servants, and under the charge 
 of a Spanish gentlemen, named Manuel Melchiori. 
 
 Fortune fulfilled all the promises she had made to 
 Rodrigo; the pope received him as a son, and created 
 him Archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal-deacon, and Vice- 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 35 
 
 chancellor, in rapid succession. In addition to all this 
 Calixtus bestowed upon him a revenue of forty thousand 
 ducats; so that when he was barely thirty-five years old 
 Rodrigo was as wealthy and powerful as many a prince. 
 
 He was somewhat reluctant to accept the cardinalate, 
 which required his constant presence at Rome, and would 
 have preferred to be vicar-general of the church, a posi¬ 
 tion which would have given him more opportunity to see 
 his mistress and his family ; but his uncle reminded him 
 of the possibility that he might some day succeed him, 
 and from that moment the thought of becoming the 
 supreme ruler of kings and peoples took such hold of 
 Rodrigo that it filled his mind to the exclusion of every¬ 
 thing else. 
 
 Thenceforth the young cardinal began to manifest 
 that monumental hypocrisy which helped to make him 
 the most perfect incarnation of evil that ever existed on 
 earth. He was no longer the same man; with words 
 of humility and repentance ever upon his lips, his head 
 bent as if beneath the weight of his past transgressions, 
 treating as dross the wealth he had acquired, which 
 ought, he said, to be restored to the poor, as it was right¬ 
 fully theirs, he passed his life in churches and monaster¬ 
 ies and hospitals, and established even in the eyes of his 
 enemies, so says his biographer, the reputation of a 
 Solomon for wisdom, a Job for patience, and a Moses 
 for the dissemination of God’s word. Rosa Vanozza 
 alone was able to estimate the pious cardinal’s conver¬ 
 sion at its real worth. 
 
 It proved to be exceedingly well for him that he had 
 acquired this reputation for sanctity, for his patron died 
 after a reign of three years, three months and nineteen 
 days, and thenceforth he had only his own merit to 
 sustain him against the numerous enemies his rapid rise 
 
36 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 in fortune had made for him. During the whole of the 
 pontificate of Pius II. he held aloof from public affairs, 
 and did not make his appearance again until the acces¬ 
 sion of Sextus IV. who gave him the Abbey of Subiaco, 
 and sent him as legate to the Kings of Aragon and 
 Portugal. On his return, which took place under 
 Innocent VIII. he decided to bring his family to Rome, 
 and they came thither under the escort of Don Melchiori, 
 who thenceforth passed for Vanozza’s husband, and took 
 the name of Count Ferdinand of Castile. 
 
 Cardinal Rodrigo welcomed the noble Spaniard as a 
 compatriot and friend ; and he, with the view of leading 
 a very secluded life, hired a house on Via della Longara, 
 near the Church of Regina Coeli, on the banks of the 
 Tiber. After passing the day in prayer and pious 
 works, Rodrigo repaired thither every evening and laid 
 aside his mask. It was commonly reported, although no 
 one could prove it, that infamous things took place in 
 that house ; people talked of incestuous relations between 
 the father and daughter, and between the brothers and 
 their sister, and in order to put an end to these reports, 
 Rodrigo sent Caesar to Pisa to study, and married 
 Lucrezia to a young Aragonese nobleman; thus only 
 Vanozza and two of her sons remained at the house. 
 Such was the condition of affairs when Innocent 
 VIII. died and Rodrigo Borgia was chosen to succeed 
 him. 
 
 We have seen by what means the choice was brought 
 about. The five cardinals who had no part in the 
 simoniacal transaction, namely the Cardinals of Naples, 
 Sienna, Portugal, Sancta-Maria-in-Porticu and Saint 
 Peter-in-Vinculis, protested loudly against the election, 
 which they declared to have been a shameless piece of 
 jobbery; but Rodrigo had obtained a majority of votes, 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 37 
 
 it mattered little by what means, and despite their 
 protests Rodrigo was none the less the two hundred 
 and sixteenth successor of St. Peter. 
 
 Although he had reached the goal of his ambition, 
 Alexander VI. did not dare to lay aside at once the 
 mask which Cardinal Borgia had worn so long; but he 
 could not altogether conceal the joy his elevation caused 
 him, and when he learned that the ballot had at last 
 decided in his favor, he raised his arms, and cried in 
 tones of heartfelt satisfaction : 
 
 “ Am I really pope ? Am I really Christ’s vicar on 
 earth ? Am I really the keystone of the arch of the 
 Christian world ? ” 
 
 “Yes, Holy Father,” replied CardinalAscanio Sforza 
 —the same who sold him the nine votes at his disposal 
 in the conclave, for four mules laden with money and 
 plate—“ and we hope by your election to promote the 
 glory of God, the repose of the Church, and the happi¬ 
 ness of Christendom, since you were designated by the 
 Omnipotent Himself as being more worthy than your 
 brethren.” 
 
 Brief as this reply was it afforded the new pope an 
 opportunity to recover his self-possession, and he said 
 humbly, folding his hands upon his breast: 
 
 “We trust that God will accord us His mighty aid, 
 notwithstanding our weakness, and that He will do for 
 us what He did for the Apostle, when He placed the 
 keys of heaven in his hands, and entrusted to him the 
 government of the Church, a burden which would be 
 too heavy for a mortal without divine assistance. But 
 God promised him that His Holy Spirit should be his 
 guide; He will do as much for us I hope. And we 
 doubt not that you will, one and all, exhibit the divine 
 spirit of obedience which is due to the head of the 
 
38 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Church, in imitation of that which Christ’s flock were 
 compelled to show to the prince of the apostles.” 
 
 When he had finished, Alexander arrayed himself in 
 pontifical garb and ordered the slips of paper upon 
 which his name was written in Latin to be thrown from 
 the windows of the Vatican, as if to bear to the four 
 corners of the earth the news of the great event which 
 was to change the face of Italy. 
 
 The same day couriers were despatched to all the 
 European courts. 
 
 Caesar Borgia learned of his father’s election at the 
 University of Pisa, where he was a student. In his 
 ambitious dreams he had often dwelt upon the possibility 
 of such an occurrence, and his joy was almost beyond 
 bounds. He was at this time a young man of some 
 twenty-two years, skilled in all bodily exercises, espe¬ 
 cially in feats of arms; he could ride the most unman¬ 
 ageable horses without a saddle, and cut off the head of 
 a bull with a single blow of his sword. He was arrogant, 
 jealous and deceitful and, in the words of Tommasi, 
 great among the impious as his brother Francesco was 
 good among the great. Of his features, different authors 
 who were his contemporaries left descriptions which vary 
 widely. Some painted him as a monster of ugliness, 
 while others, on the contrary, cannot praise his beauty 
 too highly. The explanation of this seeming contradic¬ 
 tion lies in the fact that at certain times in the year, 
 especially in spring, his face was covered with pustules, 
 which made him a horribly disgusting object while they 
 lasted; but at other times he was the black-haired youth 
 with pale face and fawn-colored beard whom Raphael 
 has shown us in his fine portrait of him. Historians, 
 chroniclers and painters, however, are all agreed as to 
 his piercing, masterful glance, in which there shone an 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 39 
 
 ever-burning flame, imparting to it something infernal 
 and uncanny. Such was the man whose wildest hopes 
 fate had brought to fruition, and who took for his 
 device: 
 
 “ Aut Ccesar aut nihil .” 
 
 Csesar traveled post to Rome with some of his close 
 friends; the marvelous effect of the change in his 
 fortune was apparent in the respectful humility with 
 which he was everywhere greeted as soon as he reached 
 the gates of the city. At the Vatican the respectful 
 demeanor of those whom he encountered was even more 
 marked; the great men bowed to the ground before him 
 as one greater than themselves, and the result of all this 
 homage was to arouse his impatience to such an extent 
 that he hurried at once to the pope’s presence to kiss 
 his feet, without taking time to visit his mother or any 
 other member of his family. His father had been 
 notified of his arrival, and was awaiting him in the 
 centre of a numerous and brilliant circle of cardinals, 
 with his three brothers standing behind him. 
 
 His Holiness greeted him pleasantly, but did not 
 indulge in any demonstrations of paternal affection; he 
 simply stooped and kissed him on the forehead and 
 asked him some questions concerning his health and his 
 journey. Csesar replied that he was very well and 
 entirely at the service of his Holiness; and that, so far 
 as his journey was concerned, any little inconvenience or 
 fatigue he had suffered was much more than atoned for by 
 his extreme gratification at the privilege of bending the 
 knee in reverential worship before an incumbent of the 
 chair of St. Peter who was in every way so worthy to 
 fill it. With these words, leaving Csesar on his knees 
 and resuming his own seat, from which he had risen in 
 order to embrace him, the Pope composed his features 
 
40 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 into an expression of great seriousness, and spoke as 
 follows, in a sufficiently loud tone to be heard by all, 
 and so slowly that everyone could remember and weigh 
 well every word: 
 
 “We are very sure, Csesar, that you rejoice heartily 
 to behold us raised to this great eminence, so far above 
 our deserts, to which it has pleased God, in His wisdom, 
 to call us. It is due to us that you should so rejoice, in 
 the first place because of our past and present affection 
 for you, and secondly, because you may expect to receive 
 from our pontifical hand such benefactions as your good 
 works show you to be worthy of. But if your joy—and 
 we say this to you as we have said it to your brother— 
 if your joy is founded upon other considerations, you 
 have made a great mistake, Csesar, and will find yourself 
 wofully deceived. We aspired with undue ardor, it 
 may be, to the papal throne, and we humbly confess it 
 in this presence; to attain our end we adopted every 
 means which human ingenuity could suggest, but we 
 acted as we did taking a solemn oath to our own conscience 
 that when we had once reached the goal, we would 
 follow no other path than that which leads to the truest 
 service of God and the greatest glory of the Holy See, 
 to the end that the glorious memory of our future deeds 
 may efface the shameful memory of what we have done 
 in the past. In this way, I trust, we shall leave a path 
 marked out for our successors on which they will find 
 the footsteps of a true pope, if not the traces of a saint. 
 
 “ God, who gave His sanction to the means we 
 adopted, now looks to us for the fitting result, and we 
 are disposed to liquidate in full the great debt we have 
 contracted to Him; therefore we do not propose to 
 incite His justice to stern reprisals by fraudulent prac¬ 
 tices. There is but one thing which could operate as 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 41 
 
 a hindrance to our good intentions; that would be too 
 great an interest in your fortunes. Thus we have armed 
 ourselves in advance against the influence of the ties of 
 blood, and we have prayed God to guide our feet that 
 we stumble not in our dealings with you; for a pope 
 cannot tread the path of nepotism without falling, and 
 he cannot fall without striking a heavy blow at the 
 honor of the Holy See. We shall bemoan to the end 
 of our days the errors to which we owe our knowledge 
 of this truth, and God grant that our uncle, Calix- 
 tus, of blessed memory, be not carrying to-day in 
 purgatory the burden of sins of which we were more 
 guilty than he ! Alas ! he was rich with every virtue, 
 his intentions were of the best, but he loved his own 
 family too well, and of all his family, he loved ourself 
 the best. He allowed this love for all his kindred to 
 lead him blindly, and he concentrated upon a few heads 
 only, and those the least worthy perhaps, the benefac¬ 
 tions which should have gone to satisfy the just claims 
 of a great number. In brief, he bestowed upon our 
 family treasures which it was wrong for him to amass at 
 the expense of the poor, or which he should, at least, 
 have devoted to a better use. He despoiled the domains 
 of the Church, which were restricted enough before, of 
 the Duchy of Spoleto and other rich possessions in 
 order to make them feudatory to us, and he placed upon 
 our weak shoulders the vice-chancellorship, the vice¬ 
 prefecture of Rome, the vicar-generalship of the Church, 
 and numberless other of the more important functions, 
 which, instead of being thus monopolized by us, should 
 have been conferred upon those whose merits qualified 
 them therefor. There were those, too, who were raised 
 to eminent station on our recommendation, who had no 
 other claim thereto than the too partial patronage 
 
42 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 accorded them by us, while others were excluded for no 
 other reason than the jealousy which their noteworthy 
 qualifications inspired in our mind. 
 
 “ In order to wrest the Kingdom of Naples from 
 Ferdinand of Aragon, he kindled a terrible war, the for¬ 
 tunate issue of which had no other result than to add 
 to our fortune, while a disastrous issue could not have 
 failed to bring discredit and shame upon the Holy See. 
 In short, by allowing himself to be swayed at will by 
 those who sacrificed the public good to their private 
 interests, he caused great harm, not only to the papal 
 throne, not only to his own renown, but, most lamentable 
 of all, to his conscience. And yet, O all-wise judgments 
 of God! although he devoted himself so earnestly and 
 untiringly to establishing our fortune upon a firm basis, 
 he had no sooner left vacant the lofty position which 
 we occupy to-day than we were cast down from the 
 height to which we had ascended and given over to the 
 fury of the people and the vindictive hatred of those 
 Roman nobles who looked upon themselves as insulted 
 by our amiable partiality for their enemies. Thus it 
 came about, Caesar, not only that we were thrown down, 
 as I said but now, from the summit of grandeur which 
 we had attained, and deprived of the worldly goods and 
 the dignities which our uncle had heaped at our feet, but 
 that we and our friends, in order to save our lives, were 
 fain to condemn ourselves to voluntary exile, which 
 alone made it possible for us to avoid the tempest evoked 
 by the disclosure of our too great fortune. This was to 
 our mind conclusive proof that, inasmuch as God has 
 no difficulty in confounding the plans of His creatures 
 when those plans are unjust, it is a great mistake for a 
 pontiff to devote himself more earnestly to the advance¬ 
 ment of a family which can endure but a few short 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 43 
 
 years at most, than to the true glory of the Church, 
 which is eternal. And, furthermore, it proved that those 
 politicians are egregious fools, who, when they are 
 entrusted with a government which was not inherited 
 by them and does not pass to their heirs, erect the edifice 
 of their greatness upon any other foundations than upon 
 the consistent display of lofty virtue for the benefit of 
 all alike, and who think to assure the long duration of 
 their power by any other means than those which hold 
 in check the unexpected whirlwind, which, springing up 
 during a period of perfect calm, may blow up a hurri¬ 
 cane—may, that is to say, conjure up a host of enemies, 
 any one of whom, if in deadly earnest, will do them 
 more injury than the deceptive demonstrations of assist¬ 
 ance from a hundred so-called friends can undo. 
 
 “ If you and your brothers choose to follow the praise¬ 
 worthy course which we have laid before you, you will 
 form no wish which will not be gratified on the instant; 
 but if you adopt the opposite course, if you have cher¬ 
 ished hopes that our affection will make us indulgent 
 to your dissolute life, you will very soon have abundant 
 proof that we hold our high office for the behoof of the 
 Church, not of our family, and that, as the vicar of Christ 
 on earth, we propose to do what we shall deem to be 
 for the good of Christendom, and not what you may 
 deem to be for your interest; and with this understand¬ 
 ing, Csesar, receive our pontifical blessing.” 
 
 With these words, Alexander VI. rose, laid his hands 
 upon the head of his son, who was still kneeling, and 
 withdrew to his apartments, without requesting him to 
 follow. 
 
 The young man was struck dumb by this long 
 harangue, which corresponded so ill with his expectations, 
 and which destroyed his dearest hopes at a blow. He 
 
44 
 
 i 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 rose to his feet, dizzily, and staggering like a drunken 
 man, and hurried away from the Vatican to seek his 
 mother, of whom he had not thought at first, but to 
 whom he turned in his perplexity. 
 
 The Vanozza had all the vices and all the virtues of 
 a Spanish courtesan, superstitiously devoted to the wor¬ 
 ship of the Madonna, fond of her children to the point 
 of weakness, and slavishly submissive to the will of 
 Rodrigo, in whatever direction it was manifested; but 
 she trusted with all her soul in the permanence of a 
 power which had not failed her in thirty years, and, like 
 the serpent, she was certain of suffocating with her folds, 
 when she could not fascinate with her glance. She knew 
 the profound hypocrisy of her old lover, and consequently 
 had no trouble in allaying Caesar’s fears. 
 
 Lucrezia was with Vanozza when Caesar arrived; 
 under the very eyes of their mother the young people 
 exchanged a kiss of more than fraternal warmth, and 
 before they separated they made an appointment for the 
 same evening. Lucrezia was separated from her hus¬ 
 band, to whom Rodrigo paid a pension, and lived in 
 perfect freedom at her palace on Via-del-Pellegrino. 
 
 At the appointed hour Caesar made his appearance at 
 her abode, but he found his brother Francesco there be¬ 
 fore him. The two young men had never been fond of 
 each other, but as their hearts were of entirely different 
 mould Francesco’s hatred was but the instinctive dread 
 of the stag for the hunter; while Caesar’s was the crav¬ 
 ing for vengeance and thirst for blood which never die 
 in the heart of the tiger. The brothers embraced never¬ 
 theless, the one in a spirit of good-will, the other hypo¬ 
 critically ; but at the moment of meeting, the thought 
 of their twofold rivalry in the good graces of their 
 father and their sister brought a burning blush to 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 45 
 
 Francesco’s cheeks, and a deathly pallor to those of Cae¬ 
 sar. They both sat down, each determined not to take his 
 leave before the other, when there was a knock at the 
 door, and a rival was announced before whom both had 
 no choice but to withdraw ; it was their father. 
 
 Vanozza did well to reassure Caesar. To say truth, 
 Alexander VI., while declaiming against the abuse of 
 nepotism, had already formed a shrewd idea of the use 
 to which he might put his sons and his daughter politi¬ 
 cally ; for he knew that he could safely rely upon Caesar 
 and Lucrezia for anything he might ask, if not upon 
 Francesco and Guiffry. 
 
 Indeed the sister was the fitting complement of the 
 brother, with a licentious imagination, a scoffer at religion 
 by nature, and ambitious from self-interest, Lucrezia had a 
 greedy craving for debauchery, flattery, titles, gold, jew¬ 
 elry, soft stuffs, and superb palaces. A true Spaniard for 
 all her fair hair, a true courtesan beneath her demure ex¬ 
 terior, she had the head of a Madonna of Raphael, and 
 the heart of Messalina; thus was she dear to Rodrigo, 
 both as daughter and as mistress, for he saw reflected in 
 her, as in a magic mirror, all his own passions and all 
 his own vices. Lucrezia and Caesar were to him as the 
 apple of his eye, and with him they formed the diaboli¬ 
 cal trinity which sat for eleven years upon the papal 
 throne, an impious parody of the Holy Trinity. 
 
 However, at first there was nothing to give the lie to 
 Alexander’s enunciation of the principles by which he 
 proposed to govern his actions, in his harangue to Caesar; 
 the first year of his pontificate surpassed the hopes of 
 which the Romans formed at the time of his election. 
 He provided for stocking the public granaries with such 
 liberality that from time immemorial there had not been 
 such marvelous abundance, and in order that the lowest 
 
46 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 classes might share in the general good fortune, he fur¬ 
 nished funds from his private store to enable the very 
 paupers to partake of this feast from which they had so 
 long been excluded. 
 
 The public security was provided for in the early days 
 of his reign, by a vigorous and vigilant police force, and 
 by a court composed of four learned doctors of irre¬ 
 proachable reputation, whose duty it was to take cogniz¬ 
 ance of all the crimes committed at night, which were 
 so common under the preceding incumbent that their 
 very number made apprehension impossible. Their 
 earliest judgments offered a salutary warning by their 
 vigorous severity, which neither the rank nor wealth of 
 the culprits availed to lighten. This contrasted so 
 strongly with the corruption of the last reign (when the 
 vice-chamberlain was accustomed to retort in public to 
 those who reproached him for the venality of the officers 
 of the law :—“ God does not desire the death of a sin¬ 
 ner, but that he should live and pay ”),—that the capital 
 of the Christian world believed for a moment that the 
 halcyon days of the early popes had returned. 
 
 Thus, after a year of power, Alexander VI. had won 
 back the spiritual credit which his predecessors had lost. 
 It remained for him to establish his political credit upon 
 a firm foundation, in order to accomplish the first part 
 of his stupendous plan. To attain that end, he had the 
 choice of two alternatives—alliance or conquest. He 
 thought best to begin by seeking alliances. The Aragon¬ 
 ese nobleman who married Lucrezia when she was only 
 the daughter of Cardinal Borgia was not a man of suffi¬ 
 cient eminence either by birth, wealth or intellect, to ex¬ 
 ert any influence in promoting the schemes of Pope 
 Alexander VI.; so the separation became a divorce, and 
 Lucrezia Borgia was free to marry again. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 47 
 
 Alexander VI. undertook two negotiations at once. He 
 needed an ally who could keep watch in his interest upon 
 the actions of the States which surrounded him. 
 
 Giovanni Sforza, grandson of Alexander Sforza, who 
 was the brother of Francesco I., called the Great, Duke 
 of Milan, was Lord of Pesaro. The topographical situa¬ 
 tion of that place on the shore of the Adriatic, between 
 Florence and Venice was wonderfully well adapted for 
 his purposes, so he turned his eyes thither in the first 
 place, and as Sforza’s interests were one with his, he 
 soon became Lucrezia’s second husband. 
 
 At the same time overtures had been made to Al- 
 phonso of Aragon, heir presumptive to the crown of 
 Naples, looking to an alliance between his natural 
 daughter, Donna Sancia, and Guiffry, the pope’s third 
 son; but as the aged Ferdinand desired to gain the 
 utmost possible advantage from the alliance, he dragged 
 out the negotiations to an interminable length, objecting 
 that the children were not of marriageable age, and that 
 there was consequently no occasion for haste in the mat¬ 
 ter of their betrothal, however much he might desire the 
 honor of such a connection. The matter remained at 
 that point to the great dissatisfaction of Alexander VI., 
 who was not deceived as to the real meaning of this 
 postponement, but construed it as a refusal, which it 
 really was. He and Ferdinand thus continued to oc¬ 
 cupy their former positions, as political gamesters of 
 equal skill, waiting until the cards should take a favor¬ 
 able turn for one or the other. Fortune was on Alex¬ 
 ander’s side. 
 
 Italy, although calm to all outward appearance, felt 
 instinctively that the calmness was nothing more than 
 that which ordinarily precedes a storm. She was too 
 rich and too happy not to be an object of envy to all 
 
48 THE BOEGIAS. 
 
 the other nations. The negligence and jealousy of the 
 Florentine Republic had not yet transformed the plains 
 of Pisa into a swamp, the wars of the Colonna and Or- 
 sini had not changed the fertile Roman Campagna into 
 an untilled desert; the Marquis of Marignano had not 
 razed to the ground a hundred and twenty villages in 
 the Republic of Sienna alone; the maremma was injuri¬ 
 ous to health, but had not become deadly; and Flavio 
 Blondo, writing in 1450 of Ostia, which has no more 
 than thirty inhabitants to-day, said of that city that it 
 was somewhat less flourishing than in the time of the 
 Romans, when it could boast of fifty thousand. 
 
 The Italian peasants were, perhaps, the happiest part 
 of the population. Instead of being scattered about 
 over the country, they lived in villages, enclosed by 
 walls, which helped to protect their harvests, their cattle 
 and their implements ; such of their houses as are stand¬ 
 ing to-day, prove that they lived more comfortably, and 
 that their dwellings were more artistic and in better 
 taste than those of the bourgeoisie in our cities at the 
 present time. Then, too, this union of interests, and 
 concentration of individuals in fortified villages gradu¬ 
 ally bestowed upon them an importance which the 
 French peasants and German serfs did not enjoy. They 
 bore arms, had a common treasury, elected their magis¬ 
 trates, and when they fought, it was to defend their 
 native land. 
 
 Commerce, too, was in a no less flourishing condition 
 than agriculture. Italy, in those days, was covered with 
 factories for working silk, wool, hemp, furs, alum, sul¬ 
 phur and bitumen ; such of these materials as were not 
 indigenous to Italy were brought to her seaports from 
 the Black Sea, Egypt, Spain and France, and frequently 
 were shipped back to the place whence they came, after 
 
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THE BORGIAS. 
 
 49 
 
 their value had been doubled by the labor and skill of 
 the practiced craftsman. The rich man brought his 
 goods, and the poor man his labor; the one was sure 
 that he would not lack hands for the work, and the other 
 that he would not lack work for his hands. 
 
 Nor had art fallen behind her sisters. Dante, Giotto, 
 Brunelleschi and Donatello were dead, but Ariosto, 
 Raphael, Bramante and Michel Angelo were rising 
 above the horizon; Rome, Florence and Naples had 
 inherited the master-pieces of antiquity, and the manu¬ 
 scripts of JEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides had taken 
 their places beside the marbles of Xantippus, Phidias 
 and Praxiteles, by virtue of the conquest of Mahomet II. 
 
 The principal sovereigns of Italy, as they let their eyes 
 wander over these abundant harvests, these wealthy vil¬ 
 lages, these flourishing factories, and these marvelous 
 works of art, and then fixed them upon the savage, im¬ 
 poverished, warlike peoples by whom they were sur¬ 
 rounded, realized that they were destined to become 
 some day to the other nations what America was to 
 Spain—that is to say, a rich gold-mine to be worked for 
 all it could be made to yield. Consequently, as early as 
 1480, Naples, Milan, Florence and Ferrara formed an 
 offensive and defensive league, ready to withstand the 
 attacks of foes within as well as without—on the penin¬ 
 sula itself, as well as beyond the Alps. Ludovico Sforza, 
 who was most deeply interested in maintaining this 
 league, because he was nearest to France, whence the 
 attack seemed most likely to come, saw in the election 
 of a new pope an additional means, not only of solidify¬ 
 ing the league, but of exhibiting it to Europe in all its 
 might. 
 
 Upon every new election, it was customary for all the 
 Christian nations to send a special embassy to Rome, to 
 
 Vol. II.—4. 
 
50 
 
 i 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 renew their respective oaths of allegiance. It occurred 
 to Ludovico Sforza to arrange that the ambassadors of 
 the four allied powers should enter Rome on the same 
 day, and that a single one of them, the representative 
 of the King of Naples, for instance, should be delegated 
 to take the oath in the name of all four. 
 
 Unfortunately, this plan consorted ill with the mag¬ 
 nificent plans of Pietro dei Medici. That vain-glorious 
 young man, who was the chosen ambassador of the Flor¬ 
 entine Republic, saw in the mission his countrymen had 
 entrusted to him an opportunity to gratify his love of 
 display, and to exhibit his vast wealth. From the day 
 of his appointment his palace overflowed with tailors, 
 jewelers, and purveyors of fine stuffs; and the result 
 was a superb wardrobe, every garment of which was 
 adorned with precious stones from the family treasure- 
 chest. All his jewels, probably the finest in Italy, were 
 sewn upon the coats of his pages, and one of them, his 
 favorite attendant, was to wear a pearl necklace, worth 
 the enormous sum of one hundred thousand ducats— 
 nearly a million of our present money! The Bishop of 
 Arezzo, Gentili, once the preceptor of Lorenzo dei Med¬ 
 ici, was Pietro’s colleague in the embassy, and upon him 
 devolved the duty of acting as spokesman; he had pre¬ 
 pared an elaborate harangue, and relied as confidently 
 upon his eloquence to charm the ears of his hearers, as 
 Pietro upon his superb display to dazzle their eyes. But 
 Gentili’s eloquence would go for naught, if the ambassa¬ 
 dor of the King of Naples were to be the spokesman, 
 and Pietro’s pompous magnificence would be altogether 
 thrown away if he entered Rome in a crowd with the 
 other ambassadors. These two weighty considerations, 
 which were endangered by the suggestion of the Duke 
 of Milan, changed the whole face of Italy. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 51 
 
 Ludovico Sforza had already procured Ferdinand’s 
 consent to his plan, when the old king, at the solicita¬ 
 tion of the Medicis, suddenly retracted his promise. 
 Sforza inquired as to the reason of this sudden change, 
 and learned that it was Pietro’s influence which had 
 outweighed his own. As he never dreamed of the real 
 motives for his opposition, he saw in it proof of the 
 existence of a secret league against himself, and attrib¬ 
 uted the change of policy to Lorenzo’s death. Whatever 
 the explanation, however, the result was visibly preju¬ 
 dicial to him, as Florence, the long-time ally of Milan, 
 deserted her for Naples. He determined to throw a 
 counter-poise into the scales, and disclosed the whole 
 affair to Alexander VI., suggesting to him the formation 
 of an offensive and defensive alliance, to which the 
 Republic of Venice should be admitted ; Duke Hercules 
 III. of Ferrara was to be called upon at the same time 
 to declare for one or the other of the two leagues. 
 
 Alexander, who was aggrieved by Ferdinand’s treat¬ 
 ment of him, accepted Sforza’s proposition, and a treaty 
 of confederation was signed April 22, 1493, whereby 
 the new allies agreed to maintain an army of twenty 
 thousand horse and ten thousand foot to preserve the pub¬ 
 lic peace. Ferdinand looked with apprehension upon the 
 formation of this league; but he believed that he had a 
 sure means of neutralizing its effects by despoiling Lud¬ 
 ovico Sforza of his power, which, although it could not 
 yet be called a usurpation, had extended long beyond 
 the proper limit of its duration; for, although young 
 Galeasso, his nephew, had reached the age of twenty-two, 
 Sforza still continued to act as regent. He, therefore, 
 called upon him in positive terms to turn over the 
 sovereign power to his nephew, under pain of being 
 declared a usurper. 
 
52 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 It was a terrible blow; but its danger for him who 
 dealt it lay in the probability that it would drive 
 Ludovico into one of those political combinations, in 
 which he was an adept, and from which he never shrank, 
 no matter how hazardous they might be. And that was 
 what actually happened; Sforza, disturbed in the quiet 
 possession of his duchy, determined to aim a blow at 
 the stability of Ferdinand’s seat upon his throne. 
 
 Nothing could be easier of accomplishment. He was 
 well aware of the warlike inclinations of Charles VIII. 
 and he was familiar with the claims of France to the 
 Kingdom of Naples. He sent two ambassadors to urge 
 the young king to assert the rights of the House of 
 Anjou, which the House of Aragon had usurped, and 
 increased the temptation to engage in this distant and 
 hazardous enterprise by offering him the privilege of 
 free passage through his territories. 
 
 With Charles VIII.’s well-known character, such a 
 proposition could not fail of acceptance. A magnificent 
 prospect lay spread out before him as if by enchant¬ 
 ment, for what Ludovico Sforza offered was really the 
 lordship of the Mediterranean, a protectorate over the 
 whole of Italy; and an open road, by way of Naples 
 and Venice to the conquest of Turkey or of the Holy 
 Land, according as he should decide to avenge the 
 disaster of Nicopolis or of Mansourah. The proposition, 
 therefore, was eagerly welcomed, and a secret treaty of 
 alliance was signed by Count Charles Belgiojoso and 
 the Count of Calazzo for Sforza, and the Bishop of 
 Saint-Malo and the Seneschal of Beaucaire for Charles 
 VIII. 
 
 The terms of the treaty were: 
 
 That the King of France should attempt the conquest 
 of the Kingdom of Naples; 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 53 
 
 That the Duke of Milan should give the King of 
 France the right to pass through his territories, and 
 should accompany him with five hundred lances ; 
 
 That the Duke of Milan should allow the King of 
 France to equip as many ships as he wished at Genoa; 
 
 That the Duke of Milan should loan the King of 
 France two hundred thousand ducats to be handed him 
 when he set out upon the expedition. 
 
 Charles VIII., on his side, agreed: 
 
 To defend the personal right of Ludovico Sforza to 
 rule over the Duchy of Milan against whomsoever should 
 undertake to deprive him thereof; 
 
 To leave in the town of Asti, which belonged to the 
 Due d’Orleans by inheritance from his grandmother, 
 Valentine Visconti, two hundred French lances, who 
 would always be at hand to bear aid to the house of 
 Sforza; and 
 
 To hand over to his ally the principality of Tarento 
 immediately after the conquest of the Kingdom of 
 Naples. 
 
 The treaty was no sooner concluded than Charles 
 VIII., who took a somewhat exaggerated view of the 
 benefit to accrue to him under it, set about clearing 
 away all the obstacles which might delay or impede his 
 expedition—a very necessary precaution, as his relations 
 with the great powers were far from what he would have 
 liked them to be. 
 
 In the first place, Henry VII. of England, had 
 landed at Calais with a formidable army and was threat¬ 
 ening to invade France anew. 
 
 In the second place, Ferdinand and Isabella, of Spain, 
 if they had not helped to bring about the fall of the 
 House of Anjou, had, at least assisted the Aragon 
 branch with men and money. 
 
54 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Lastly, the war with the King of the Romans had 
 taken on a new lease of life because of Charles VIII.’s 
 sending back Margaret of Burgundy to Maximilian, 
 her father, and his subsequent marriage to Anne of 
 Brittany. 
 
 By the treaty of Etaples, November 3, 1492, Henry 
 VII. agreed to put an end to his alliance with the King 
 of the Romans, and bound himself not to pursue his 
 conquests. This cost Charles VIII. seven hundred and 
 forty-five thousand golden crowns, in addition to the 
 expense of the war in Brittany, for which he reimbursed 
 Henry. 
 
 By the treaty of Barcelona, January 19, 1493, Ferdi¬ 
 nand, the Catholic, and Isabella, agreed not to furnish 
 assistance to their cousin, Ferdinand of Naples, and to 
 place no obstacles in the way of the French King’s 
 plans in Italy. These concessions cost Charles VIII. 
 Perpignan, the county of Roussillon, and Cerdagne, 
 which Joanna of Aragon gave to Louis XI. in pledge 
 for a loan of three hundred thousand ducats, and which 
 he refused to return on repayment of that sum, so well 
 did the old royal fox appreciate the value of those gates 
 of the Pyrenees, which he could close from within in 
 case of war. 
 
 Lastly, by the treaty of Senlis, May 23, 1493, Max¬ 
 imilian consented to forgive France for the affront he 
 had received from her king. The price of this conde¬ 
 scension was the counties of Burgundy, Artois, Charolais 
 and the lordship of Noyers, which Charles received as 
 Margaret’s marriage portion, together with the towns of 
 Aire, Hesdin, and Bethune, which he agreed to deliver 
 to Philip of Austria on the day that he attained his 
 majority. 
 
 By dint of these sacrifices, the young king found 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 55 
 
 himself at peace with his neighbors and in a position to 
 undertake the enterprise suggested by Ludovico Sforza, 
 which enterprise owed its origin, as we have said, to the 
 refusal of the Florentine and Neapolitan embassies to 
 accede to his plan of a joint entry into Rome, and the 
 appointment of one spokesman for all, said refusal, in 
 turn, being inspired by Pietro dei Medici’s desire to 
 display his superb jewels, and Gentili’s to deliver his 
 harangue. 
 
 Thus the vanity of a preceptor and the vain-glory of 
 his pupil, were to cause a convulsion of the earth, 
 extending from the Gulf of Tarento to the Pyrenees. 
 
 Alexander VI., standing at the centre of this tremen¬ 
 dous convulsion, of which Italy had not yet felt the 
 first shock, took advantage of the instinctive absorption 
 of men’s minds in what was impending to disregard for 
 the first time the principles set forth in the grandiloquent 
 speech which we reported above, by bestowing the red 
 hat upon his nephew, Giovanni Borgia, who was made 
 Archbishop of Mont Real and Governor of Rome by 
 the last pope. This promotion, which was allowed to 
 pass without comment in view of the antecedents of the 
 person in question, was intended as a sort of experiment, 
 and its success encouraged him soon after to raise Caesar 
 Borgia to the Archbishopric of Valencia, a benefice 
 which he, himself, held before becoming pope. But in 
 this instance the trouble was caused by the recipient of 
 the favor. The impetuous, hot-headed youth, who had all 
 the instincts and all the vices of a captain of condottieri , 
 found it very difficult even to pretend to possess any of 
 the virtues of a churchman; but as he knew from his 
 father’s own mouth that the higher secular dignities 
 were reserved for his elder brother, he decided to accept 
 what was offered him for fear he would get nothing else. 
 
56 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 
 One result was, however, that his hatred for Francesco 
 increased tenfold, for thenceforth he was his rival in 
 ambition as well as in love. 
 
 Suddenly, Alexander, at the moment when he expected 
 it least, found the old King Ferdinand making friendly 
 overtures to him again. The pope was too clever a 
 politician to bid them welcome until he knew what they 
 portended ; he soon learned the plot that was being con¬ 
 cocted at the French court against the King of Naples, 
 and everything was clear to his mind. 
 
 Thereupon he at once imposed certain conditions as 
 the price of his alliance. 
 
 He demanded that the hand of Donna Sancia, 
 Alphonso’s natural daughter, should be bestowed upon 
 Guiffry, his third son. 
 
 He demanded that she should bring to her spouse as 
 her dowry the principality of Squillace, and the county 
 of Cariati, with an income of ten thousand ducats and 
 the office of prothonotary, one of the seven great offices 
 of the crown which were independent of the royal 
 authority. 
 
 He demanded for his eldest son, whom Ferdinand, the 
 Catholic, had already created Duke of Gandia, the 
 principality of Tricarico, the counties of Chiaramonte, 
 Lauria, and Carinola, with an income of twelve thousand 
 ducats, and the first of the seven great offices which 
 should fall vacant. 
 
 He demanded that Virginio Orsino, his ambassador 
 at the Neapolitan court, should obtain the third of these 
 great offices, which was that of Constable, and the very 
 greatest of all. 
 
 Finally, he demanded that Guilio della Rovere, 
 one of the five cardinals who protested against his 
 election, and who had entrenched himself at Ostia, 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 57 
 
 where the oak which gave him his name and formed his 
 crest is still carved on all the walls, should be driven 
 from the town, and that the town should be turned over 
 to him. 
 
 Everything that Alexander demanded was granted. 
 
 In return he simply bound himself not to deprive the 
 House of Aragon of the investiture of the Kingdom of 
 Naples, which his predecessors had bestowed upon that 
 house. It seemed a heavy price to pay for a mere 
 promise, but that promise, if it were kept, ensured the 
 legitimacy of Ferdinand’s reign. For Naples was a 
 fief of the Holy See, and the pope alone possessed the 
 power to determine the justice of each competitor’s 
 claims; the continuance of the investiture, therefore, 
 was of the utmost importance to the House of Aragon, 
 at a time when the House of Anjou was arming to dis¬ 
 possess her. 
 
 Thus we see that in this first brief year of his pon¬ 
 tificate Alexander had taken long strides in the direction 
 of increasing the temporal power of the Holy See. To 
 be sure, he possessed personally the least extensive 
 territories of all the Italian powers, but through the 
 marriage of his daughter, Lucrezia, with the Lord of 
 Pesaro, he already had one hand upon Venice, while the 
 other reached to the farthest limits of Calabria by 
 means of Donna Sancia’s marriage to the Prince of 
 Squillace, and the cession of territory to the Duke of 
 Gandia. 
 
 When this treaty, which brought him such great 
 increase of power and influence was signed, he made 
 Csesar, who complained bitterly that he was always 
 omitted in the distribution of his father’s favors, Car¬ 
 dinal of Santa-Maria-Novella. But as there was no 
 precedent in the history of the Church for clothing a 
 
58 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 bastard in the purple, the pope found a few false witnesses 
 who swore that Caesar was the son of Count Ferdinand 
 of Castile; truly an invaluable man was Don Manuel 
 Melchiori, who played the role of father with the same 
 imperturbable gravity with which he formerly played 
 the husband. 
 
 The nuptials of the illegitimate offspring of the pope 
 and of Alphonso of Aragon were celebrated with great 
 splendor and with the twofold pomp of royalty and 
 Holy Church. As the pope had stipulated that the 
 newly married pair should live at Rome, Cardinal Caesar 
 Borgia undertook to make fitting arrangements for their 
 arrival and reception, while Lucrezia, whose influence 
 over her father was vastly greater than a woman had 
 ever before been known to wield at the papal court, 
 determined to do everything in her power to add to the 
 eclat of the occasion. Caesar therefore went out to 
 receive the young people with a brilliant, and richly 
 equipped escort of nobles and cardinals, while Lucrezia 
 awaited their arrival in an apartment of the Vatican 
 with the loveliest and noblest of the women of Rome. 
 A throne was erected there for the pope and, at his feet, 
 cushions for Lucrezia and Donna Sancia. 
 
 “ The general appearance of the assemblage,” says 
 Tommaso Tommasi, “and the conversation which was 
 carried on there for some hours would have led one to 
 think that the occasion was an audience given by some 
 superb royal voluptuary of ancient Assyria rather than 
 the severely simple consistory of a Roman pontiff, who 
 ought, in everything he does, to add lustre to the sanctity 
 of the name he bears. But,” ironically adds the same 
 historian, “ if the Pentecostal vigil was marked by these 
 seemly performances, the ceremonies with which the 
 Descent of the Holy Spirit was celebrated on the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 59 
 
 following day were no less seemly, and in accordance 
 with the true spirit of religious observance; for this is 
 what the master of ceremonies has to say thereof in his 
 daily journal: 
 
 “ ‘ The pope entered the chapel of the Holy Apostles, 
 and by his side upon the marble desk where the canons 
 of St. Peter’s are accustomed to intone the Epistle and 
 Gospel, were seated his daughter, Lucrezia, and Sancia, 
 his daughter-in-law, while round about them, to the end¬ 
 less shame of the Church, and the scandal of the people, 
 were many other Roman women much more worthy to 
 dwell in the domain of Messalina than in St. Peter’s 
 city.’ ” 
 
 Thus, at Rome and at Naples, the rulers slept while 
 the storm was gathering; thus they wasted time and 
 money in vain and profitless display, while the French, 
 wide awake and on the alert, were already waving aloft 
 the torches with which they were to set Italy on fire. 
 
 The fact that Charles VIII. was bent on conquest was 
 no longer matter of doubt to anybody. The young king 
 had sent to the different Italian States an embassy con¬ 
 sisting of Perron de Baschi, Briconnet, D’Aubigny, and 
 the president of the parliament of Provence. Their 
 mission was to ask the co-operation of the Italian princes 
 in restoring the House of Anjou to its rights in the 
 Kingdom of Naples. 
 
 The embassy applied at first to the Venetians, whose 
 assistance and advice they invoked in behalf of the 
 king, their master. But the Venetians, true to their 
 system of politics, which had procured for them the 
 name of the “ Jews of Christendom,” replied that they 
 could not promise assistance to the young king, as they 
 were obliged to be always on the watch for aggressions 
 from the Turk; and as to giving him advice, it would 
 
60 
 
 i 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 be altogether too presumptuous for them to offer it to a 
 prince who was surrounded with such experienced gen¬ 
 erals, and such wise ministers. 
 
 Perron de Baschi, failing to obtain any other reply set 
 out for Florence. Pietro dei Medici received him at an 
 extraordinary session of his council, to which he had 
 summoned for this solemn occasion, not only the Sev¬ 
 enty, but also all the gonfalonniers, who had sat in the 
 assembly of nobles for the past thirty-four years. The 
 French ambassador acquitted himself of his errand, 
 which was to request that the republic would permit 
 the French army to pass over its territories, and would 
 agree to furnish the necessary provisions and forage for 
 cash. The “ Magnificent ” republic made answer that 
 if Charles VIII. were proposing to march against the 
 Turks rather than against Ferdinand, they would be 
 only too eager to grant all that he desired; but that 
 they were bound to the House of Aragon by a treaty 
 of alliance, and could not break it by such concessions 
 as the King of France asked at their hands. 
 
 The ambassadors next went to Sienna. The poor 
 little republic, terrified at being so honored as to be 
 thought of, replied that it was their wish to maintain 
 absolute neutrality; and that they were too weak to 
 declare themselves beforehand either for or against such 
 rivals, as they would naturally be compelled to side with 
 the party which proved to be stronger. 
 
 Armed with this response, which had the merit of 
 frankness, at least, the French envoys went on to Rome, 
 and were granted an audience of the pope, whom they 
 requested to invest their sovereign with the title of King 
 of Naples. 
 
 Alexander replied that, inasmuch as his predecessors 
 had so invested the princes of the House of Aragon, he 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 61 
 
 could not dispossess them unless he should be convinced 
 that the House of Anjou had a stronger claim to the 
 title than its present holder. He also reminded Perron 
 de Baschi that Naples was a fief of the Holy See and 
 therefore the choice of her sovereign was the prerogative 
 of the pope alone; so that to attack the present sover¬ 
 eign was virtually to attack the Church herself. 
 
 The result of the embassy, as will be seen, did not 
 promise a large amount of assistance to Charles VIII., 
 so he determined to rely entirely upon his ally Ludovico 
 Sforza, and to leave all questions to be decided by the 
 fortune of war. 
 
 The news of the death of Ferdinand which reached 
 him about the same time confirmed him in that resolu¬ 
 tion. The old king, on his return from a hunting expe¬ 
 dition, was attacked by a severe catarrhal cough, which 
 brought him to death’s door in two days, and on the 
 twenty-fifth of January, 1494, he breathed his last, at 
 the age of seventy, after a reign of thirty-six years, 
 leaving the throne to his eldest son, Alphonso, who was 
 at once named as his successor. 
 
 Ferdinand’s decease did not belie his title of the 
 “ Happy,” for he quitted the world just as the fortunes 
 of his family were on the point of changing for the 
 worse. 
 
 The new king, Alphonso, was no novice in the art of 
 war; he had already fought against the Venetians and 
 Florentines, and had driven the Turks out of Otianto; 
 he was reputed, also, to be as subtle a manipulator as his 
 father of the devious politics then so much in vogue at 
 the various Italian courts; so that he did not despair of 
 numbering among his allies the very one of his foes with 
 whom he was at war when he first heard of the claims 
 put forward by Charles VIII.; we refer to Bajazet II. 
 
62 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 He consequently sent Camillo Pandone, one of his confi¬ 
 dential ministers, to Bajazet, to impress upon him that 
 the expedition to Italy was only a pretext, on the part 
 of the King of France, to put himself in a more advan¬ 
 tageous position with relation to the territories conquered 
 by the Mahometans, and that when he was once upon the 
 Adriatic, Charles had but a sail of a day or two to reach 
 Macedonia, whence he could march upon Constantinople 
 by land. He therefore asked Bajazet for six thousand 
 horse and as many foot, to assist him in upholding their 
 mutual interests, and agreed to pay them as long as they 
 remained in Italy. Pandone was to be joined at Taranto 
 by Giorgio Bucciarda, sent by Alexander VI., with in¬ 
 structions to appeal to the Turk for aid against the 
 Christians, in the pope’s name ! 
 
 Meanwhile, pending the arrival of Bajazet’s reply, 
 which might be delayed for some months, Alphonso re¬ 
 quested a meeting between the pope, Pietro dei Medici 
 and himself, to take counsel concerning matters of urg¬ 
 ent concern. They appointed to meet at Yicovaro, near 
 Tivoli, and the three were punctually on hand at the 
 appointed time and place. 
 
 Alphonso, before leaving Naples, laid out the plan of 
 campaign for his sea forces, and gave his brother Frederic 
 the command of a fleet of thirty-five galleys, eighteen 
 large war vessels, and twelve smaller craft, with orders 
 to wait at Livorno for the fleet which Charles VIII. was 
 fitting out in the harbor of Genoa, and keep watch of 
 its movements; he, therefore, desired particularly to 
 concert with his allies a scheme of operations on land. 
 He had at his immediate disposal, without reckoning 
 the contingent to be furnished by his allies, one hundred 
 squadrons of heavy cavalry, twenty men to the squad¬ 
 ron, and three thousand cross-bowmen and light horse. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 63 
 
 He proposed, consequently, that he should march at 
 once into Lombardy, excite a revolution in favor of his 
 nephew, Galeasso, and drive Ludovico Sforza out of 
 Milan before he could receive assistance from France; 
 so that Charles VIII., immediately upon crossing the 
 Alps, would find an enemy waiting, whom he would 
 have to fight, instead of the ally who had promised him 
 a free passage, and men and money. 
 
 This was the proposition of a clever politician as well 
 as a bold captain, but as each one of the three had come to 
 the meeting to promote his own interests, and not for the 
 good of all, it was coldly received by Pietro dei Medici, 
 who found that no more prominent part was assigned 
 him in the war than that to which an attempt had been 
 made to relegate him in the matter of the embassy, and 
 was flatly rejected by Alexander VI., who proposed to 
 use Alphonso’s troops for his own ends. He reminded 
 him that one of the conditions of his agreement not to 
 disturb his title to the crown of Naples was that Car¬ 
 dinal Giulio della Rovere was to be expelled from Ostia, 
 and that place to be delivered to him. Moreover, the 
 benefits which had accrued to Virginio Orsini as the 
 result of his embassy to Naples, had excited the ire of 
 Prosper and Fabricio Colonna against this favorite of 
 Alexander VI., and almost all the villages in the neigh¬ 
 borhood of Rome belonged to them. Now, the pope 
 could not exist in the midst of such powerful enemies, 
 and it was certainly of the utmost importance that he 
 who was the head and heart of a league of which the 
 others were but the body and limbs, should lead a tran¬ 
 quil life; therefore, the first and most important point 
 was to deliver him from them all. 
 
 Although Alphonso clearly understood the reasons for 
 Pietro dei Medici’s cold reception of his plan, while 
 
64 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Alexander did not even put him to the trouble of seek¬ 
 ing for his, he was none the less compelled to bow to 
 their decisions, and leave the former to defend the 
 Apennines against the French, while he assisted the 
 other to rid himself of his Roman neighbors. He 
 therefore pressed on the siege of Ostia, and gave a part 
 of his light horse to Yirginio, who was already in com¬ 
 mand of two hundred of the pope’s men-at-arms; this 
 little force was to be stationed about Rome, and keep 
 the Colonna to their allegiance. He divided the rest 
 of his troops into two parts, one of which he entrusted 
 to his son Ferdinand, with instructions to stir up the 
 petty princes throughout Romagna to raise and equip 
 the contingents they had promised, while he with the 
 other watched the defiles of the Abruzzi. 
 
 On the twenty-third of April, at three in the morn¬ 
 ing, Alexander was rid of the first and most inveterate 
 of his enemies. Giulio della Rovere, realizing the im¬ 
 possibility of holding out longer against Alphonso’s 
 troops, went on board a brigantine which set him ashore 
 again at Savona. 
 
 From that day Yirginio Orsino carried on, without 
 cessation, the famous guerrilla warfare, which has made 
 of the Roman Campagna the most poetic desert in the 
 whole world. 
 
 Meanwhile, Charles VIII. was at Lyons, not only un¬ 
 certain as to the best route for him to take into Italy, 
 but beginning to reflect upon the many hazardous 
 chances of such an expedition. Except from Ludovico 
 Sforza he had utterly failed to find sympathy or co-opera¬ 
 tion anywhere, so that it seemed more than probable 
 that he might expect to find himself opposed, not by 
 Naples alone, but by all Italy. He had expended in 
 his preparations almost all the money he had at his 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 65 
 
 disposal; Madame de Beaujeu and the Due de Bourbon 
 were making a great outcry against the undertaking, 
 and Briconnet, who originally advised it, no longer 
 dared to support it. More irresolute than ever, the king 
 had already countermanded the orders issued to several 
 bodies of troops who were in movement, when Cardinal 
 Giulio della Rovere, driven from Italy by the pope, 
 arrived at Lyons and was granted audience by the 
 king. 
 
 The cardinal hastened to the king’s presence, con¬ 
 sumed by hatred, but with hope in his heart, and found 
 him on the point of abandoning the project upon which 
 this bitter foe of Alexander VI. based all his dreams of 
 vengeance. He told Charles VIII. how his enemies 
 were divided among themselves, and how each of them 
 was pursuing his own private end. Pietro dei Medici, 
 the gratification of his love of display, and the pope, 
 the aggrandizement of his family. He reminded him 
 that he had fleets all equipped in the harbors of Ville- 
 franche, Marseilles, and Genoa, whose expensive arma¬ 
 ments would all go for naught, and that he had sent his 
 grand equerry Pierre d’Urfe on ahead to prepare luxur¬ 
 ious apartments in the Spenola and Doria palaces. 
 Lastly, he impressed upon him that ridicule and abuse 
 would be heaped upon him from all sides if he aban¬ 
 doned an undertaking he had proclaimed with such a 
 flourish of trumpets, and to prepare for which he was 
 obliged to conclude these treaties of peace so burdensome 
 as those with Henry VII., Maximilian, and Ferdinand, 
 the Catholic. Giulio della Rovere reckoned wisely when 
 he appealed to the young king’s pride ; Charles did not 
 hesitate another instant. He ordered his cousin, the 
 Due d’Orleans, afterward Louis XII., to take command 
 of the French fleet, and sail with it to Genoa; he 
 Vol. II.—5. 
 
66 THE BOKGIAS. 
 
 despatched a courier to Antoine de Bessay, Baron of 
 Tricastel, calling upon him to march to Asti with the 
 two thousand Swiss infantry he had levied in the Cantons; 
 and he himself set out from Vienne, in Dauphine, on the 
 twenty-third of August, 1494, crossed the Alps at 
 Mount Geneve without meeting with the slightest 
 attempt at opposition from anybody, and entered Pied¬ 
 mont and Montferrat, which were at that time governed 
 each by a regent—the sovereigns of the two principali¬ 
 ties, Charles-Jean Aime and Guillaume-Jean being but 
 six and eight years of age respectively. 
 
 The regents came to meet Charles, one at Turin, the 
 other at Casal, each attended by a numerous and 
 brilliant retinue, and each covered with jewels and 
 precious stones. Charles, who was perfectly well aware 
 that, notwithstanding all their effusive friendliness, they 
 had both concluded treaties with his enemy, Alphonso 
 of Naples, received them with entire courtesy and begged 
 them to prove the friendship for himself which they 
 were so loud in protesting, by loaning him the diamonds 
 with which they were bespangled from head to foot. 
 The regents could not do otherwise than comply with a 
 request which was equivalent to a command. They 
 took off their necklaces, rings and ear-rings, for which 
 Charles gave them a receipt in detail and then put them 
 in pledge for twenty-four thousand ducats. With that 
 sum in his strong-box he set out for Asti, of which the 
 Due d’Orleans had, as we have said, retained the 
 sovereignty; and there he was joined by Ludovico Sforza 
 and Prince Hercules of Este, Duke of Ferrara, his 
 father-in-law. They brought with them not only the 
 troops and money promised, but a retinue composed of 
 the most beautiful women in Italy. 
 
 The balls, f£tes, and j oustings began on a scale of 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 67 
 
 magnificence surpassing anything that had ever been 
 seen in Italy. But they were suddenly interrupted by 
 the King’s illness. It was the first outbreak in Italy of 
 the contagion brought from the New World by Christo¬ 
 pher Columbus, and called by the Italians, the French 
 plague, and by the French the Italian plague. The 
 probability is that a part of Columbus’ crew, who came 
 from Genoa or its neighborhood had already come back 
 from America, bringing with them that awful scourge as 
 the price to be paid for the rich mines of gold. 
 
 However, the King’s indisposition did not prove to 
 be so serious as was feared at first. He recovered in a 
 few weeks and went on to Pavia, where the young Duke 
 Giovanni Galeasso lay dying. He and the King of 
 France were cousins-german, sons of two sisters of the 
 House of Savoy, so that Charles could not in common 
 decency refrain from paying him a visit. He went, 
 therefore, to the castle where he dwelt, more like a 
 prisoner than like its lord. He found him half-reclining 
 upon a couch, pale and emaciated, by dissipation said 
 some, by a slow, but deadly poison said others. But 
 however desirous the poor youth may have been to 
 complain of his fate, he dared say nothing, for his uncle, 
 Ludovico Sforza, did not leave the King of France 
 alone with him for an instant. But just as Charles was 
 rising to take his leave, a door was thrown hastily open 
 and gave entrance to a young woman, who threw herself 
 at the King’s feet. It was Galeasso’s wife, and she im¬ 
 plored her cousin to take no hostile step against her father, 
 Alphonso, or her brother, Ferdinand. Sforza frowned 
 anxiously and threateningly, for he did not know what 
 impression this incident might produce upon his ally; 
 but he was soon reassured. Charles replied that he had 
 gone too far to recede, that the glory of his name, as 
 
68 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 well as the interest of his realm was at stake, and that 
 they were subjects of too great importance to be sacri¬ 
 ficed to his feeling of compassion, although it was very 
 deep and sincere. The poor woman, whose last hope 
 was shattered, threw herself sobbing bitterly into her 
 husband’s arms, while Charles and Sforza left the room. 
 Galeasso’s doom was sealed. 
 
 Two days later Charles set out for Florence, accom¬ 
 panied by his ally, but they had gone no farther than 
 Parma when they were overtaken by a courier, who 
 informed Sforza that his nephew was dead. Ludovico 
 at once apologized to Charles for leaving him to continue 
 his march alone, but said that the matters which 
 required his presence at Milan were of so great moment 
 that he must return thither without an hour’s delay. 
 He had nothing less to do than ensure his own peaceable 
 succession to the victim of his ambition. 
 
 Charles VIII. continued his journey, not without 
 uneasiness. The sight of the dying prince had moved 
 him deeply, for he was sure in his inmost heart that 
 Sforza had murdered him, and a murderer might easily 
 be a traitor. Thus he was marching through a strange 
 country with a declared enemy in front of him and a 
 doubtful friend in his rear. They were just beginning 
 to enter the mountainous district and, as the army had 
 no supply of provisions, but lived by foraging from day to 
 day, the least forced halt would leave them without food. 
 Immediately before them was Fivizzano, which was 
 nothing but a long, straggling village, surrounded by a 
 wall, but beyond Fivizzano were Sarzane and Pietra 
 Santa, which were fortified places, looked upon as 
 impregnable; furthermore, the country was unhealthy, 
 especially in October, and produced nothing but oil, 
 drawing its supply of grain even from other provinces, 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 69 
 
 so that a whole army might be wiped out there in a few 
 days by famine and miasmatic air, without reckoning upon 
 the means of resistance which the nature of the ground 
 offered in profusion. The situation was a serious one, 
 but the vain-glory of Pietro dei Medici came to Charles’ 
 assistance. 
 
 Pietro had, our readers will remember, entered into 
 an undertaking to prevent the French from passing 
 through Tuscany; but when he saw the enemy coming 
 down from the Alps, he felt less confidence in his own 
 strength, and appealed for help to the pope. But the 
 report of the ultramontane invasion no sooner reached 
 Romagna, than the Colonna declared that they were 
 soldiers of the King of France and, assembling all the 
 forces they could muster, took possession of Ostia, and 
 there awaited the coming of the French fleet to cover 
 their passage to Rome. The pope, therefore, instead of 
 sending troops to Florence, was obliged to call in all the 
 force at his command to guard the capital; but he did 
 send word to Pietro that if Bajazet sent him the troops he 
 had asked him for, he would place them at his disposal. 
 
 Pietro had come to no resolution and formed no plan, 
 when he learned at the same moment two startling pieces 
 of news. A jealous neighbor, the Marquis of Tordinovo, 
 had pointed out to the French, the weak spot in the 
 walls of Fivizzano, so that they had carried the place 
 by assault, and put the garrison and the inhabitants to 
 the sword. Furthermore, Gilbert de Montpensier, who 
 was watching the coast to keep open communication 
 between the French army and fleet, had fallen in with 
 a detachment sent by Paul Orsino to reinforce the gar¬ 
 rison of Sarzane and, after a sharp fight of an hour, 
 cut it in pieces. No quarter was granted the prisoners, 
 but every man that was taken was massacred. 
 
70 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 It was the first time that the Italians, who were accus¬ 
 tomed to the chivalrous modes of warfare of the fifteenth 
 century, had come in contact with the terrible dwellers 
 beyond the Alps, who were less advanced than they in 
 civilization, and looked upon war as a matter of life and 
 death and not as a scientific game. For this reason the 
 news of these two butcheries caused a great sensation at 
 Florence, the richest and most artistic city in Italy, as 
 well as the most flourishing. Everyone pictured the 
 French to himself as counterparts of the savage hordes 
 of ancient times who extinguished fire with blood, and 
 the prophetic words of Savonarola, who foretold the 
 ultramontane invasion and the destruction which would 
 follow in its wake, recurred to the minds of all. There¬ 
 upon the popular excitement rose to such a pitch that 
 Pietro dei Medici, determined to obtain peace at any 
 price, procured a decree from the authorities of the 
 republic, to the effect that an embassy should be sent to 
 the conqueror, and was so firmly resolved to place him¬ 
 self in the French king’s hands that he secured his own 
 appointment as one of the ambassadors. He left Florence 
 in company with four others and, when he reached 
 Pietra Santa, sent a request to Charles for a safe-conduct 
 for himself alone. On the following day Bri§onnet and 
 De Piennes came to meet him, and took him before the 
 King. 
 
 Notwithstanding his illustrious name, and the great 
 power which he possessed, Pietro dei Medici, in the eyes 
 of the French nobility, who considered it degrading to 
 engage in any business or profession, was nothing more 
 than a wealthy merchant, with whom it was not worth 
 while to stand very strictly on ceremony. So Charles 
 received him on horseback and asked him haughtily, in 
 the tone of a master addressing his underling, whence 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 71 
 
 came the assurance which led him to refuse him passage 
 through Tuscany. Pietro replied that his father, Lor¬ 
 enzo, concluded a treaty of alliance with Ferdinand of 
 Naples, with the express consent of Louis XI. himself; 
 and that he was compelled in honor to abide by the 
 terms of that treaty; but that he did not propose to 
 carry his devotion to the House of Aragon, and his 
 opposition to that of France any farther, and was there¬ 
 fore ready to do whatever Charles might demand at his 
 hands. 
 
 The King, who did not anticipate such profound hu¬ 
 mility, demanded that Sarzane should be put in his 
 hands; Pietro consented without a moment’s hesitation. 
 Thereupon, the King, with a view of seeing how far the 
 ambassador of the magnificent republic would carry his 
 deference, replied that this concession was very far from 
 satisfying him, and that he must have in addition the 
 keys of Pietra Santa, Pisa, Librafatta, and Livorno. 
 Pietro made no more demur than in the matter of Sar¬ 
 zane, and consented to hand over the places named upon 
 Charles’ simple word to restore them to him when the 
 conquest of Naples was achieved. 
 
 Lastly, when Charles saw how very easy to deal with 
 the negotiator sent to him proved to be, he demanded, 
 as a final condition, but a sine qua non of his royal pro¬ 
 tection, that the magnificent republic should loan him the 
 sum of two hundred thousand florins. Pietro, who was as 
 free with the treasure as with fortresses, replied that his 
 fellow-citizens would be happy to render their new ally 
 this service. 
 
 Charles, thereupon, furnished him with a horse to ride 
 and ordered him to go before him, and begin the fulfill¬ 
 ment of his agreements by delivering to him the four 
 strongholds he demanded. Pietro obeyed, and the 
 
72 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 French army, under the guidance of the grandson of 
 Cosmo the Great, and the son of Lorenzo the Magnifi¬ 
 cent, continued its triumphal march through Tuscany. 
 
 On his arrival at Lucca, Pietro learned that the con¬ 
 cessions he had made to the King of France had caused 
 tremendous excitement at Florence. The magnificent 
 republic thought that Charles would demand nothing 
 more than a simple passage through their territory, so 
 that the dissatisfaction at the news was universal, and 
 was increased by the return of the other ambassadors 
 whom Pietro did not so much as consult as to the steps 
 he took. 
 
 Pietro himself, deeming his return to Florence to be 
 essential, requested Charles’ permission to precede him 
 thither. As he had fulfilled all his promises, except 
 the loan, which must necessarily be negotiated at Flor¬ 
 ence, the King made no objection, and on the evening 
 of the day that he left the army, Pietro stole into his 
 palace on Via Larga, incognito. 
 
 The next day he proposed to make his appearance 
 before the seignorial body, but when he reached the 
 square of the old palace, he was met by the gonfalonnier 
 Jacobi di Nerli, who told him that it was useless for him 
 to try to go farther, and pointed out Lucas Corsini stand¬ 
 ing at the door, sword in hand, and with guards at his 
 back, under instructions to prevent his entrance, if he 
 tried to force his way in. 
 
 Pietro was so amazed at this opposition, the first he 
 had ever experienced, that he did not even try to make 
 head against it. He returned home, and wrote to his 
 brother-in-law, Paul Orsino, to come to him with his 
 gendarmes. Unfortunately for him, the letter was in¬ 
 tercepted. The seignorial body construed it as an at¬ 
 tempt to incite revolution, and called upon the citizens 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 73 
 
 to rise. The latter hastily seized their arms, rushed 
 from the houses, and assembled en masse upon the Square 
 of the Palace. Meanwhile, Cardinal Giovanni dei Medici 
 had taken horse, and, with the expectation of support 
 from the Orsino, was riding through the streets of Flor¬ 
 ence, followed by his retainers, and shouting his war 
 cry : 
 
 “ Palle! Palle! ” 
 
 But times were changed ; the cry found no echo, and 
 when the cardinal reached Via Delle Calzaioli, he was 
 greeted with such threatening murmurs that he began to 
 realize, that instead of trying to stir up a revolution in 
 Florence, the best thing he could do would be to leave 
 the city before the popular fury ran too high. He hur¬ 
 ried back to his palace, expecting to find his brothers, 
 Pietro and Giulio there; but they had made their escape 
 by the San Gallo gate, under the protection of Orsino 
 and his gendarmes. The danger was imminent, and 
 Giovanni undertook to follow their example, but wher¬ 
 ever he went the uproar which greeted him grew more 
 and more threatening. At last, realizing that his peril 
 increased with every moment, he alighted from his horse 
 and entered a house, the door of which was standing 
 open. This house, fortunately enough, communicated 
 in the rear with a Franciscan convent: one of the 
 brothers loaned the fugitive his frock, and under the 
 protection of that lowly garb, the cardinal succeeded in 
 leaving Florence, and joined his brothers in the Apen¬ 
 nines. 
 
 On the same day the Medici were declared traitors 
 and rebels, and ambassadors were sent to the King of 
 France. They found him at Pisa, in the act of restor¬ 
 ing her old-time independence to that city, which had 
 been eighty-seven years under the Florentine yoke. 
 
74 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Charles made no other response to the ambassadori than 
 to announce his purpose to march at once upon Flor¬ 
 ence. 
 
 The magnificent republic, as may well be imagined, 
 was terrified beyond description by this declaration. 
 She had no time to prepare for defence, nor strength to 
 defend herself as she was. Every powerful family, 
 however, assembled its retainers and vassals, and having 
 placed arms in their hands, awaited events, with a fixed 
 purpose not to begin hostilities, but to defend themselves 
 if attacked by the French. It was agreed that if any¬ 
 thing should make necessary a call to arms, the signal 
 should be given by a peal of bells on all the churches. 
 This resolution was likely to lead to more frightful re¬ 
 sults in Florence, perhaps, than in any other city. The 
 palaces of that day which have endured to our own time 
 are still veritable fortresses, and the everlasting combats 
 of Guelphs and Ghibellines had familiarized the Tuscans 
 with the methods of street warfare. 
 
 The King made his appearance at the San Friano gate 
 on the seventeenth of November at evening; he found 
 the whole body of the Florentine nobility assembled 
 there, arrayed in their most superb garments, accom¬ 
 panied by the clergy singing hymns, and by masses of 
 the people, to whom any change whatever was a change 
 for the better, and who hoped to regain some semblance 
 of liberty by the fall of the Medici. Charles VIII. 
 stopped an instant under a sort of gilded canopy, which 
 had been prepared for him, and answered by a few evas¬ 
 ive words the grandiloquent phrases addressed to him 
 by the seignorial body; then, having called for his 
 lance, he rested it upon his thigh and gave the order to 
 march into the city, which he traversed from end to end 
 with his army, alighting finally at the Medici palace 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 75 
 
 which had been made ready to receive him. On the 
 following day the negotiations began, but the respective 
 parties were very far from being in accord. The Flor¬ 
 entines had received Charles as a guest, whereas he had 
 entered the city as a conqueror. And so when the 
 deputies of the seignorial body suggested their willingness 
 to ratify the treaty made by Pietro dei Medici, the King 
 replied that that treaty was mere waste paper, as they 
 had expelled its author; that Florence was his by con¬ 
 quest as he had demonstrated the night before by riding 
 through her streets with lance in rest, and that he would 
 reserve the question of sovereignty to be decided accord¬ 
 ing to his good pleasure. He informed them further, 
 that on the morrow he would give them his ultimatum 
 in writing, and would let them know whether he would 
 reinstate the Medici in power or delegate his authority 
 to the seignorial body. 
 
 This response spread consternation broadcast in Flor¬ 
 ence, but the result was to strengthen the resolution of 
 the Florentines to defend themselves. 
 
 Charles was exceedingly amazed at what he saw in 
 his passage through the city of its overflowing population, 
 for not only were the streets through which he rode 
 almost impassable on account of the crowd, but the 
 houses, from roof to cellar, seemed to be bursting with 
 people. It is probable, indeed, that Florence contained 
 at this time something like a hundred and fifty thousand 
 souls. 
 
 On the following day the deputies called again upon 
 the King at the appointed hour and were admitted to 
 his presence, when the discussion began anew. At last, 
 when it became evident that they could reach no under¬ 
 standing, the royal secretary, who was standing at the 
 foot of the throne upon which Charles sat with his head 
 
76 
 
 i 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 covered, unfolded a paper and began to read the terms 
 proposed by the King of France. But before the read¬ 
 ing was a third done, the discussion broke out again 
 hotter than ever, and when Charles declared that those 
 terms should be accepted or he would order his trumpets 
 to sound, Pietro Capponi, the secretary of the republic, 
 often called the Scipio of Florence, snatched the shame¬ 
 ful capitulation from the hands of the King’s secretary 
 and tore it in pieces. 
 
 “ Sound your trumpets, if you choose, Sire,” he cried, 
 “ and we will sound our bells.” 
 
 With that he threw the pieces in the face of the 
 stupefied reader, and rushed from the chamber to give 
 the terrible word which would turn Florence into a 
 bloody battlefield. 
 
 Strange as it may appear, this audacious retort saved 
 the city. The French believed that the Florentines 
 must have some reliable resources of which they knew 
 nothing, or they would not dare to talk so boldly, espe¬ 
 cially to a foe who had thus far encountered no obstacle 
 whatsoever. The few discreet men who retained some 
 influence over the King advised him to abate his pre¬ 
 tentions and Charles eventually proposed more reasonable 
 terms, which were accepted, signed by both parties and 
 made public on the twenty-sixth of November, during 
 mass at the Church of Santa Maria. 
 
 These were the* terms: 
 
 The republic was to pay to Charles VIII. as subsidy 
 the sum of a hundred and twenty thousand florins in 
 three installments. 
 
 The decree of sequestration of the property of the 
 Medici was to be rescinded, as well as that which put a 
 price upon their heads. 
 
 The seignorial body were to agree to pardon the Pisans 
 
THE BORGIAS. 77 
 
 for their offences, on condition that they renewed their 
 allegiance to Florence. 
 
 Lastly, the republic was to recognize the claims of the 
 Duke of Milan to Sarzane and Pietra Santa, and those 
 claims were to he submitted to arbitration to decide 
 their money value. 
 
 The King of France, on his side, agreed to restore the 
 fortresses which had been placed in his hands when he 
 should either have made himself master of the City of 
 Naples or should have put an end to the war by a peace 
 or a two years’ truce, or when he should have taken his 
 leave of Italy for any reason. 
 
 Two days after the publication of this accommodation 
 Charles, to the vast delight of the seignorial body, 
 quitted Florence and marched toward Rome by way of 
 Poggibondi and Sienna. 
 
 The pope was beginning to share the universal alarm; 
 he had learned of the massacres of Fivizzano, Lunigiane, 
 and Immola; he knew that Pietro dei Medici had given 
 up the fortress of Tuscany, that Florence had surren¬ 
 dered at discretion, and that Catherine Sforza had come 
 to terms with the conqueror; he saw the scattered 
 Neapolitan troops passing through Rome, demoralized 
 and disheartened, on their way to the Abruzzi to 
 reorganize; so that he found himself without protection 
 against an enemy who was marching directly upon him, 
 with all Romagna in his power from sea to sea, and with 
 his forces extending in an unbroken line from Piombino 
 to Ancona. 
 
 Just at this time Alexander received Bajazet’s reply to 
 his request for assistance; it had been so long delayed be¬ 
 cause the papal envoy and the Neapolitan ambassador were 
 arrested by Giovanni della Rovere, brother of Cardinal 
 Giulio, at the moment of landing at Sinigaglia. They 
 
78 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 were the bearers of a verbal message to the effect that 
 the Sultan, to his great regret, could not assist his 
 Holiness with troops because he just then had his hands 
 full with three wars, one with the Sultan of Egypt, 
 another with the King of Hungary, and the third with 
 the Greeks of Macedonia and Epirus. But they were 
 accompanied by a favorite of the Sultan, who was 
 entrusted with a private letter for Alexander, in which 
 Bajazet offered, upon certain conditions, to furnish some 
 pecuniary assistance. Although the messengers were 
 arrested, as we have said, the Turk found a way to for¬ 
 ward his despatch to the pope, and we transcribe it in 
 all its artlessness. 
 
 “ Sultan Bajazet, son of Sultan Mahomet II. by the 
 grace of God Emperor of Asia and Europe, to the father 
 and master of all Christians, Alexander, by Divine 
 Providence Pope of Rome : 
 
 “ After the congratulations which we owe to your 
 Holiness, and which we offer with our whole heart, we 
 take leave to inform your Holiness by the mouth of your 
 envoy, Giorgio Bucciarda, that we have learned of your 
 convalescence with exceeding delight and satisfaction. 
 The said Bucciarda having informed us among other 
 things that the King of France, who is marching against 
 your Grandeur, has expressed a desire to have in his 
 hands our brother, Djein, who is now in your power— 
 a thing which would not only be against our wishes, but 
 which would have very disastrous results for your 
 Grandeur and for all Christendom—we have conceived, 
 in consultation with your envoy, Giorgio, a most excellent 
 scheme for your repose and honor, and for our personal 
 satisfaction at the same time. It would be well that our 
 brother, Djein, who, being a man, is mortal, and who is 
 in your Grandeur’s power, should depart this life at the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 79 
 
 earliest possible moment, because his decease, which 
 would be a blessing to him in his present position, would 
 be very useful to your Eminence and very conducive to 
 your repose, and, at the same time, very agreeable to 
 me, who am your friend. If this suggestion be accepted 
 by your Grandeur, as I trust it will be, owing to your 
 wish to oblige us, it will be much better, both for your 
 Grandeur’s welfare and for our satisfaction, that the 
 thing be done sooner, rather than later, and by the 
 surest method which can be employed, and that the said 
 Djein be made to pass from the sufferings of this world 
 to a happier and more tranquil world, where his soul 
 will find peace at last. If your Grandeur adopts this 
 plan and sends to us the body of our brother, we, Sultan 
 Bajazet, bind ourselves to deliver to your Grandeur, at 
 such place, and into such hands as you may appoint, 
 the sum of three hundred thousand ducats, wherewith 
 you can purchase some fine domain for your children, 
 and in order to facilitate such purchase, we will consent 
 to place the three hundred thousand ducats in the hands 
 of a third party, pending the fulfillment of these con¬ 
 ditions, so that your Grandeur may be quite certain to 
 receive them on the appointed day, in exchange for our 
 brother’s body. Furthermore, I engage my word to 
 your Eminence, for your greater security, that so long as 
 your Eminence sits upon the papal throne, no injury 
 shall be inflicted by me or mine, by my retainers or my 
 countrymen upon any Christian of any quality or condition 
 whatsoever, upon land or sea; and for your Grandeur’s 
 greater satisfaction and sense of security, and to the 
 end that no doubt may linger in your mind as to the 
 ultimate fulfillment of what I promise, I have sworn 
 and affirmed, in the presence of your envoy, Bucciarda, 
 by the true God whom we adore, and by our Holy 
 
80 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Gospel, that it shall be fulfilled, point by point, from 
 the first to the last. And now, to renew and make more 
 complete your Grandeur’s sense of security, and to re¬ 
 move every vestige of doubt from your heart, and 
 strengthen and deepen your conviction of my sincerity, 
 I, the said Sultan Bajazet, do hereby swear by the true 
 God who made heaven and earth, and all things that 
 are therein, I swear, I say, by the only God in whom we 
 believe and whom we adore, that I will scrupulously and 
 religiously hold to what I have said herein, and that I 
 will neither do nor attempt anything in future to the 
 prejudice of your Grandeur. 
 
 “ Done in our palace at Constantinople, the twelfth 
 of September of the year 1494 since the birth of Christ.” 
 
 This letter caused the Holy Father unbounded satis¬ 
 faction. A paltry four or five thousand Turks would 
 be of little service in his then plight, and would be 
 likely to compromise the cause of the supreme head of 
 Christendom rather than assist it; whereas three hun¬ 
 dred thousand ducats, that is to say, almost a million 
 lire, was a very convenient thing to receive under any 
 circumstances. To be sure, so long as Djein lived Alex¬ 
 ander received an income of a hundred and eighty 
 thousand lire, which represented a capital of nearly two 
 millions; but when one is in need of money, one must 
 make a sacrifice for cash. Notwithstanding, Alexander 
 did not come at once to a determination, other than to 
 act as circumstances might dictate. 
 
 But another matter, concerning which it was most 
 essential that he should come to a speedy conclusion, 
 was to the attitude he should adopt toward the King of 
 France. He refused at first to believe in the possibility 
 of the success of the French in Italy, and had staked 
 all the chances of the future eminence of his family 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 81 
 
 upon his alliance with the House of Aragon. But now 
 the House of Aragon was tottering to its fall, and a 
 volcano, more formidable than Vesuvius threatened to 
 destroy Naples. It was plain therefore that he must 
 change his policy, and make his peace with the victor¬ 
 ious King, which was by no means an easy thing to do, 
 as Charles bore him bitter ill-will because he had re¬ 
 fused to invest him with the Neapolitan crown, and had 
 confirmed the title of the House of Aragon thereto. 
 
 Alexander sent Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini to 
 the King of France to see what accommodation could be 
 arrived at. The choice appeared ill-advised at first 
 glance because the ambassador was the nephew of Pope 
 Pius II., who had waged unremitting warfare with the 
 House of Anjou; but Alexander, in acting thus, had a 
 secret motive, which his advisers could not fathom. He 
 guessed that Charles would not receive his envoy with¬ 
 out some demur, and that in the discussions which his 
 repugnance would necessarily lead to Piccolomini would 
 be sure to come in contact with the men who governed 
 the young King’s actions. Now, over and above his 
 ostensible mission for Charles VIII. Piccolomini had 
 secret instructions to be communicated to his most influ¬ 
 ential advisers. They w T ere Brigonnet and Philippe de 
 Luxembourg, and Piccolomini was authorized to offer 
 each of them a cardinal’s hat. 
 
 As Alexander had anticipated, his envoy was refused 
 an audience of the King, and was obliged to confer with 
 his advisers. The result was that Piccolomini returned 
 to Pome with the King’s refusal to listen to him, but 
 with the promise of Br^onnet and Luxembourg to use 
 whatever influence they possessed in favor of the Holy 
 Father, and to prepare the King’s mind to receive a sec¬ 
 ond embassy. 
 
 Vol. II.—6. 
 
82 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Meanwhile the French were approaching nearer and 
 nearer, never halting for more than forty-eight hours in 
 one place; so that the necessity of coming to some defi¬ 
 nite arrangement with Charles became more and more 
 urgent. He entered Sienna and Viterbo without strik¬ 
 ing a blow ; Yves d’Alegre and Louis de Ligny received 
 Ostia from the hands of the Colonnas; Civita Vecchia 
 and Corneto opened their gates; the Orsini made sub¬ 
 mission, and Giovanni Sforza, the pope’s son-in-law, 
 withdrew from the Aragonese alliance. Alexander 
 decided therefore that the moment had arrived for him 
 to abandon his ally, and sent to Charles the Bishops of 
 Concordia and Terni, and Monsignore Gratian, his own 
 confessor. They were instructed to renew the promise 
 of the cardinalate to Br^onnet and Philippe de Luxem¬ 
 bourg, and had full power to treat in their master’s name, 
 whether Charles chose to include Alphonso II. in the 
 treaty, or refused to sign except with the pope alone. 
 They found the King wavering between the innuendoes 
 of Giulio della Rovere, who, as an eye-witness of the 
 pope’s simony, urged upon him that he ought to assem¬ 
 ble a council, and procure the deposition of the un¬ 
 worthy head of the Church, and the secret support 
 accorded the pope by the Bishops of Mans and Saint 
 Malo. He finally decided to investigate matters for 
 himself, and without coming to any decision beforehand 
 he pursued his march, and sent the pope’s ambassadors 
 back to Rome, accompanied by the Marechal de Gie, 
 the Seneschal of Beaucaire, and Jean de Gannay, first 
 president of the Parliament of Paris. They were in¬ 
 structed to say to Alexander: 
 
 1st. That the King’s most earnest desire was to be 
 allowed to enter Rome without resistance, and that if 
 that were allowed, voluntarily and freely, he would 
 
THE BORGIAS. 83 
 
 respect the authority of the Holy Father and the privi¬ 
 leges of the Church. 
 
 2d. That the King wished that Djein should be placed 
 in his hands to be used as a weapon against the Sultan, 
 if the fancy should seize him to carry the war into 
 Macedonia or Turkey or the Holy Land. 
 
 3d. That all other matters were of such trifling im¬ 
 portance that they would easily be adjusted at the first 
 conference. 
 
 The ambassadors added that the French army was 
 within two days march of Rome, and that Charles would 
 probably appear in person to receive the reply of his 
 Holiness in the evening of the second day thereafter. 
 
 It was impossible to reckon much upon negotiations 
 with a prince whose movements were so expeditious as 
 that. Alexander notified Ferdinand that he must leave 
 Rome at the earliest possible moment in the interest of 
 his own safety, but Ferdinand refused to listen to the 
 suggestion and declared that he would not go out at one 
 gate until Charles actually entered at another. Even 
 so, his further stay in Rome was not long. On the sec¬ 
 ond day, about eleven in the morning, a look-out sta¬ 
 tioned on top of the Castle of San Angelo, whither the 
 pope had withdrawn, cried out that the advance-guard 
 of the enemy was in sight: immediately Alexander and 
 the Duke of Calabria went up to the terrace at the top 
 of the fortress, and made sure with their own eyes that 
 the soldier had told the truth. Not till then did 
 the Duke of Calabria take horse, and ride out of the 
 Porta San Sebastiano at the very moment that the 
 French vanguard halted five hundred paces from the 
 Porta del Popolo. It was the thirty-first of December, 
 1494. 
 
 At three in the afternoon, the whole army having 
 
84 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 come up, the advance-guard moved forward once more, 
 with drums beating and colors flying. 
 
 “It consisted,” says Paulus Jovius, an eye-witness 
 (History, Book II, Page 41), “ of Swiss and Germans, 
 with tight-fitting short coats, of all colors of the rain¬ 
 bow. They were armed with short, sharp swords, like 
 those of the ancient Romans, and carried ashen lances 
 ten feet long with a narrow, pointed head; about a 
 fourth part of them carried, instead of lances, halberds 
 with heads made in the shape of an axe, and with a 
 four-cornered point; these weapons were used to cut or 
 thrust indifferently. The first rank of each battalion 
 wore helmets and shields, which protected the head and 
 breast, so that when .they were fighting they presented 
 to the enemy a triple line of steel, which rose and fell 
 like the quills of a porcupine. To every thousand 
 soldiers a company of a hundred fusileers was attached. 
 The officers wore waving plumes upon their helmets to 
 distinguish them from their soldiers.” 
 
 After the Swiss infantry came the Gascon cross-bow¬ 
 men ; there were five thousand of them, and they wore 
 a very simple uniform in striking contrast to the rich 
 costume of the Swiss, the shortest of whom was at least 
 a head taller than any one of them. They were excel¬ 
 lent soldiers, however, agile and daring, and especially 
 noted for the rapidity with which they stretched and 
 fired their iron cross-bows. 
 
 Behind them came the cavalry, the pink of the 
 French nobility, with gilded helmets and collars, and 
 silk and velvet doublets; with swords, each of which 
 had a name of its own, coronets, each of which repre¬ 
 sented a broad domain, and colors, each of which 
 represented an affair of the heart. In addition to these 
 talismans, each horseman carried in his hand, like the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 85 
 
 Italian gendarmes, a lance with a grooved, solid point, 
 and at his saddle-bow a war-club cut in ridges, or 
 studded with nails. Their horses were large and strong; 
 but their tails and ears were cut after the French fash¬ 
 ion. Unlike the horses of the Italian gendarmes, they 
 wore no waxed leather housings, and were consequently 
 more exposed. Each horseman was followed by three 
 horses, the first ridden by a page armed like his mas¬ 
 ter, and the others by two squires, who were called 
 lateral auxiliaries, because in battle they fought on 
 the right and left of their leader. This troop was not 
 only the most magnificently equipped, but the most 
 numerous in the whole army, for as there were twenty- 
 five hundred knights, the three retainers who attended 
 each of them carried the total strength of the troop to 
 ten thousand. 
 
 Five thousand light horse came next, carrying great 
 wooden bows, from which they shot long arrows from a 
 distance, like the English archers. They were of great 
 assistance in a battle, for they were capable of very 
 swift motion, and could dash in an instant from one 
 wing to the other, and from rear-guard to van, wherever 
 help was needed, and when their quivers were empty, 
 gallop away again at such speed that neither infantry 
 nor heavy cavalry could follow them. Their defensive 
 armor consisted of a helmet and a half-shield ; some of 
 them also carried a short lance, designed to nail a foe to 
 the ground when he was overthrown. They all wore 
 long cloaks, adorned with shoulder-knots and silver 
 stars, amid which shone the armorial bearings of their 
 chiefs. 
 
 Last of all came the young King’s escort; four hun¬ 
 dred archers, including a hundred Scots, formed the 
 hedge on either side, while two hundred of the most 
 
86 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 illustrious knights marched on foot beside the prince 
 carrying heavy war-clubs over their shoulders. In the 
 centre of this superb body of men came Charles VIII., 
 cased in magnificent armor as was his steed ; at his right 
 and left rode Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, brother of the 
 Duke of Milan, and Cardinal Giulio della Rovere, whom 
 we have mentioned so often; he was afterwards Pope 
 Julius II. Cardinals Colonna and Savelli were directly 
 behind them, and next came Fabricio and Prosper Col¬ 
 onna, together with all the Italian princes and generals, 
 who had joined the triumphal march of the conqueror, 
 and were freely intermingled with the great nobles of 
 France. 
 
 The people assembled in vast crowds to watch the 
 march of these unfamiliar, strangely attired soldiers 
 from beyond the Alps, and were listening anxiously 
 to a noise like the rumbling of thunder, which drew 
 nearer and nearer. Soon the very earth seemed to 
 tremble, the glass rattled in the windows, and then the 
 cause of it all was explained by the sight of thirty-six 
 bronze cannon, each drawn by six stout horses, which 
 came rumbling along on their carriages behind the 
 King’s escort. The length of these cannon was eight 
 feet, and as the opening was large enough for a man 
 to put his head in, it was estimated that each of these 
 awe-inspiring machines, which were quite unknown 
 among the Italians, weighed nearly six thousand 
 pounds. 
 
 Behind the cannon came culverins sixteen feet long, 
 and falconnets, of which the smallest carried a ball as 
 large as a grenade. This formidable artillery formed 
 the rear-guard of the French army, and ended the pro¬ 
 cession. Six hours had elapsed since the first Swiss 
 passed through the gate, when the great guns entered 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 87 
 
 the city; as the night had then fallen, and as only one 
 out of every six artillerymen carried a torch, the effect 
 was rather more depressing than when surrounding ob¬ 
 jects were lighted up by the sun. 
 
 The young King took up his quarters in the Palazzo 
 di Venetia, all the artillery being bivouacked upon the 
 square and in the neighboring streets. The rest of the 
 army scattered here and there throughout the city. 
 
 During the evening the keys of Rome and of the gate 
 of the Belvedere Garden were brought to the King, 
 rather to do him honor, than to set his mind at ease con¬ 
 cerning his personal safety. The same thing, by the way, 
 was done for the Duke of Calabria. 
 
 The pope, as we have said, was at the Castle of San 
 Angelo with no retinue but six cardinals; so that, on 
 the very first day after his entrance into the city, the 
 King had about him a much more strikingly brilliant 
 court than that of the head of the Church. 
 
 Thereupon the subject of the propriety of convoking 
 a council to try Alexander for simony, and strive for 
 his deposition, was again discussed. But the King’s 
 principal advisers who were retained by the other side, 
 as we have seen, called attention to the fact that it was 
 a most inopportune moment to stir up a new schism in 
 the Church when they were contemplating an expedition 
 against the infidels. As the King was at heart of the 
 same opinion, it was not very difficult to convince him, 
 and it was decided to enter into negotiations with his 
 Holiness. 
 
 The negotiations, however, were within an ace of 
 being broken off before they were fairly begun; for the 
 first thing Charles demanded was that the Castle of San 
 Angelo should be turned over to him, whereas it was the 
 last thing the pope was willing to accede to because the 
 
88 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 castle seemed to him to be his only absolutely safe re¬ 
 treat. Twice did Charles, in his youthful impetuosity 
 determine to lay hold by force of what was not given up 
 to him voluntarily, and twice did he turn his guns upon 
 the Holy Father’s abiding place; but he was unmoved 
 by these demonstrations, and this time the King, obsti¬ 
 nate as he was, was the one to recede. That point was 
 laid aside, and the following terms were agreed upon: 
 
 The relations between his Majesty, the King of 
 France, and the Holy Father, were thenceforth to be 
 such as should exist between sincere friends and staunch 
 allies. 
 
 Pending the final conquest of the Kingdom of Naples 
 the King of France was to occupy the fortresses of 
 Civita Vecchia, Terracina, and Spoleto, for the comfort 
 and convenience of his army. 
 
 Lastly, Cardinal Valentino (such was the name as¬ 
 sumed by Caesar Borgia, from his archbishopric of Val- 
 entia) was to accompany King Charles as apostolic 
 legate, more accurately, as hostage. 
 
 When these terms were definitely settled, the cere¬ 
 monial to be observed at the interview was decided 
 upon. King Charles left the Palazzo di Venetia, and 
 took up his abode at the Vatican. At an hour previously 
 fixed, he entered the garden by one door opening into it 
 from the palace, while the pope, who had not left the 
 Castle of San Angelo, passed through the corridor which 
 connected that fortress with the Vatican, and went down 
 into the garden by another door. Almost immediately 
 the King espied the pope and knelt where he stood; but 
 the pope pretended not to see him, whereupon the King 
 rose and walked several steps nearer to him, and knelt a 
 second time ; as there was a clump of trees between them 
 at that moment, his Holiness had a new excuse for still 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 89 
 
 feigning ignorance of his presence, and the King was 
 compelled to go through with the whole performance; 
 he rose again, took several steps more, and knelt a third 
 time directly in front of the Holy Father, who finally 
 perceived him and hurried up to him as if to prevent 
 his kneeling. He took off his baretta, raised the King 
 from the ground, embraced him and kissed him affec¬ 
 tionately on the forehead and declined to cover his head 
 again until the King had put on his cap, which he 
 assisted him with his own hands to do. After they had 
 stood together for a short time and had exchanged a 
 few words of courteous and friendly salutation, the King 
 straightway begged his Holiness to add to the Sacred 
 College the name of Giullaume Brigonnet, Bishop of 
 Saint-Malo. As this was all agreed upon beforehand 
 between the pope and the bishop, although the King 
 knew nothing of it, Alexander seized the opportunity 
 of granting what was asked him without hesitation, and 
 instantly despatched a servant to his son, Cardinal 
 Valentino, in quest of a cloak and hat. He then took 
 the King of France by the hand and escorted him to the 
 so-called Hall of the Parrot, where the ceremony of 
 installing the new cardinal was to take place. The 
 solemn ceremony of the oath of allegiance to his Holiness, 
 as the supreme head of the Christian Church, which was 
 to be taken by Charles, was postponed for two days. 
 
 When the appointed day arrived, the pontiff had 
 assembled about him every Roman of note in the nobil¬ 
 ity, the clergy, or the army. Charles, too, came to the 
 solemn function with a gorgeous retinue of princes, 
 prelates, and captains. At the door of the palace he 
 was met by four cardinals, two of whom took their 
 places at his sides, and the other two behind him, and 
 with his whole suite following on, they walked through 
 
90 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 * 
 
 a long succession of apartments full of guards and 
 retainers, to the audience hall, where the pope was 
 seated on his throne with his son, Csesar Borgia, standing 
 behind him. 
 
 As soon as he stepped within the door, the King of 
 France began to go through with the customary cere¬ 
 monial and, having duly bent his knee and kissed the 
 feet, hands, and forehead of his Holiness, he stood erect 
 while the first president of the Parliament of Paris, 
 stepping forward, said in a loud voice: 
 
 “ Most Holy Father: 
 
 “ Behold my King, ready to take the oath of allegiance 
 which he owes to you ; but it is usual in France that he 
 who offers his services to his lord should receive in 
 exchange such favors as he seeks. Consequently, his 
 Majesty, while undertaking for his part to deal with 
 your Holiness much more munificently than he asks your 
 Holiness to deal with him, ventures to entreat your 
 Holiness to grant him three favors. In the first place, 
 the confirmation of the privileges heretofore accorded to 
 the King himself, the Queen, and their son, the Dauphin; 
 secondly, the investiture of the Kingdom of Naples for 
 himself and his successors; and lastly, the delivery to 
 him of the person of Sultan Djein, brother of the 
 Emperor of the Turks.” 
 
 The pope was struck dumb for a moment by this 
 speech, for he did not anticipate these three demands, 
 which Charles put forward thus publicly for no other 
 reason than to make it impossible for him to refuse them. 
 But he recovered his self-possession very soon, and 
 replied that he would gladly confirm all the privileges 
 accorded to the House of France by his predecessors, so 
 that the King might look upon his first request as 
 granted; that the matter of the investiture was one to 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 91 
 
 be discussed in the Council of Cardinals, but that he 
 would do his utmost to bring about a result in accord¬ 
 ance with his wishes; lastly, as to the Sultan’s brother, 
 that he would postpone the subject to be discussed in 
 the Sacred College at a more convenient season, but he 
 declared that it should not be his fault if the King were 
 not satisfied upon that point as well, since it was clearly 
 for the good of all Christendom that Djein should be 
 turned over to him, the purpose being to render the 
 success of a crusade more certain. 
 
 After listening to this response Charles bowed his 
 head, signifying that he was content; he remained 
 standing with uncovered head, in front of the pope, 
 while the first president began again, as follows: 
 
 “ Most Holy Father: 
 
 “ It is an ancient custom of Christian kings, particu¬ 
 larly of the most Christian kings of France, to declare 
 through their ambassadors their deep respect for the 
 Holy See, and for the pontiffs whom Divine Providence 
 raises to that eminence. But his present Most Christian 
 Majesty, desiring to visit the tomb of the Holy Apostles, 
 determined to perform this obligation, which he regards 
 as a most sacred one, not by the mouth of an ambassador, 
 or by any other delegated authority, but in his own 
 person; and so, Most Holy Father, his Majesty, the 
 King of France, recognizes in you the one true vicar of 
 Christ on earth, the legitimate successor of the apostles, 
 Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and promises and swears to 
 maintain the filial faith and respect which the kings, 
 his predecessors, have been wont to promise and swear 
 to you; and he does hereby devote himself and all his 
 power to your Holiness’ service and the interests of the 
 Holy See.” 
 
 The pope rose to his feet with a great joy at his heart, 
 
92 
 
 THE BOKGIAS. 
 
 for the taking of the oath of allegiance with such pub¬ 
 licity banished all fears of a council. Thenceforth he 
 was disposed to grant whatever the King of France 
 chose to ask ; he took him by the left hand and made a 
 short but exceedingly friendly response, calling him the 
 eldest son of the Church. The ceremony at an end, they 
 left the audience hall together, the pope still holding 
 the King’s hand, and walked thus to the apartment 
 where the consecrated vestments were laid aside. The 
 pope made a pretence of proposing to escort the King 
 to his own apartments, but the King would not hear of 
 it, so they saluted once more and separated. 
 
 The King remained a week longer at the Vatican, 
 then returned to the Palazzo di Venetia. During that 
 week everything that Charles had asked was discussed 
 and finally arranged to his satisfaction. The Bishop of 
 Mans was made cardinal; the investiture of the King¬ 
 dom of Naples was promised to Charles, and it was 
 agreed that when he left Rome the pope, in exchange 
 for a hundred and twenty thousand lire, should place in 
 his hands the brother of the Emperor of Constantinople. 
 Alexander wished to be hospitable to the last, and 
 invited Djein to dinner on the same day on which he 
 and his new patron were to say farewell to Rome. 
 
 When the time fixed for his departure arrived, the 
 King mounted his horse, clad in full armor, and rode to 
 the Vatican, attended by a large and brilliant suite. 
 He alighted in front of the great door, and entered the 
 palace with some three or four noblemen only, leaving 
 his escort on the Square of St. Peter’s. He found his 
 Holiness awaiting him with Cardinal Valentino at his 
 right and, at his left, Djein, who, as we said, had 
 dined at his table. Thirteen cardinals were standing 
 around the pope. The King, with his knee on the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 93 
 
 ground, asked the Holy Father for his blessing, and bent 
 over to kiss his feet, but Alexander would not permit 
 it; he took him in his arms and kissed him with a show 
 of paternal affection, but with hatred at his heart. The 
 pope then presented to the King the son of Mahomet II., 
 a handsome young man of noble bearing, clad in a 
 superb oriental costume, the ample folds of which were 
 in striking contrast with the scant and severely simple 
 garments worn by the Christians. 
 
 Djein stepped forward to meet the King, without 
 humility, and equally without arrogance, as an emperor’s 
 son should greet a King, and kissed first his hand, 
 then his shoulder. Then he turned to the pope, and 
 said to him in Italian, which he spoke extremely well, 
 that he begged him to commend him to the great king, 
 who deigned to take him under his protection; he assured 
 the pope that he would never have occasion to repent 
 having restored his freedom, and said to Charles that he 
 hoped he would have reason to be content with him, if, 
 after taking Naples, he crossed over into Greece accord¬ 
 ing to his present purpose. 
 
 His words were uttered with such a dignified air, and 
 at the same time, with such simplicity that the King of 
 France extended his hand to the young man with a 
 frank, impulsive movement, as to a worthy comrade- 
 in-arms. 
 
 The transfer having thus been accomplished, Charles 
 took leave of the pope for the last time and went down 
 into the square, where he waited for Cardinal Valentino, 
 who, as we have said, was to accompany him as a 
 hostage, and had remained behind to exchange a few 
 words with his father. An instant later Csesar Borgia 
 appeared, mounted upon a superbly caparisoned mule, 
 and followed by servants leading six magnificent horses, 
 
94 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 presented to the King of France by the Holy Father. 
 Charles immediately mounted one of them to express 
 his appreciation of the pope’s gift, and left Rome at the 
 head of his army for Marino, where he arrived the same 
 evening. 
 
 There he learned tl at Alphonso, belying his reputa¬ 
 tion as an adroit politician and great general, had 
 embarked with all his treasure upon a squadron of four 
 galleys, leaving the direction of the war and the govern¬ 
 ment of the kingdom to his son Ferdinand. Thus 
 everything contributed to facilitate Charles’ triumphal 
 march ; city gates flew open at his approach; his enemies 
 fled without awaiting his coming, and he had acquired 
 the name of “ The Conqueror,” before he had fought a 
 single battle. 
 
 The next morning at daybreak the army resumed its 
 march, and halted at Yelletri in the evening, after a 
 long day’s journey. The King, who had been in the 
 saddle since morning, left Cardinal Valentino at the 
 quarters prepared for him, and went on to his own, 
 accompanied by Djein. 
 
 Csesar Borgia had twenty heavily laden vans among 
 the impedimenta of the army; he caused one of them to 
 be opened, and a magnificent service of plate to be taken 
 therefrom, and ordered supper to be prepared, as he had 
 done the evening before. Meanwhile night had fallen ; 
 he shut himself up in an out-of-the-way room, and 
 exchanged his cardinal’s garb for the dress of a groom. 
 In that disguise he left the house set apart for his accom¬ 
 modation, without being recognized, and made his way 
 into the open country. About half a league outside the 
 town, a servant was awaiting him with two fleet horses. 
 Csesar, who was an accomplished horseman, leaped into 
 the saddle, and he and his companion set off at full 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 95 
 
 speed for Rome, which they reached at daybreak. 
 Caesar alighted at the abode of Signor Flores, Auditor 
 of the Rote, where a fresh horse and suitable clothes 
 were brought him; he then betook himself at once to 
 his mother’s house. She cried aloud for joy when she 
 saw him, for the cardinal had maintained a mysterious 
 silence to her, as to everybody else, concerning his plan 
 of returning at once. 
 
 This demonstration of delight on the part of the 
 Vanozza was prompted less by maternal love than by 
 her thirst for vengeance. One evening while Charles 
 VIII. and Alexander VI. were swearing an eternal 
 friendship which neither really felt in his heart, and 
 exchanging pledges which were broken in advance, a 
 messenger arrived from the Vanozza, with a letter for 
 Csesar, wherein she begged him to come without delay 
 to her house on Via della Longara. Caesar questioned 
 the messenger, but could get no other reply than that 
 he would learn all that he wished to know from his 
 mother’s own lips. As soon as he was at liberty, he 
 donned a layman’s coat and, wrapping himself in an 
 ample cloak, left the Vatican and made the best of his 
 way to the Church of Regina-Coeli, which, as our 
 readers will remember, was in close proximity to the 
 residence of the pope’s mistress. 
 
 As he approached the spot, Caesar began to notice 
 extraordinary indications of havoc and devastation. 
 The street was strewn with debris of furniture and rags 
 of priceless stuffs. When he reached the foot of the 
 short flight of steps leading to the front door, he saw 
 that the windows were shattered and the curtains in 
 tatters waving about in the wind. At a loss to under¬ 
 stand what it all meant, he rushed inside and hurried 
 through several deserted and demoralized apartments. 
 
96 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 i 
 
 At last he spied a light in one room, and found his 
 mother there, sitting on the shattered remains of an 
 ebony chest incrusted with silver and ivory. When 
 Csesar appeared she rose to her feet with pale cheeks 
 and disheveled hair and, waving her hand over the 
 scene of desolation, she cried: 
 
 “ Behold the handiwork of your new friends, Csesar! ” 
 
 “ What is the matter, mother ? what is the meaning 
 of this disorder?” the cardinal asked. 
 
 “ The matter is,” Vanozza replied, grinding her teeth 
 with rage, “ that the serpent you warmed has turned and 
 bitten me, fearing, doubtless, to break his teeth upon 
 you.” 
 
 “ Who did it ? ” cried Csesar; “ tell me, mother, and 
 by the heaven above, I swear that I will do as much to 
 him and more ! ” 
 
 “ Who did it ? ” retorted Vanozza, “ who but King 
 Charles VIII., by the hands of his faithful allies, the 
 Swiss ? They knew that Melchiori was from home, and 
 that I was living here alone with a few wretched menials, 
 and so they came, breaking in the doors as if they had 
 taken Rome by assault, and while Cardinal Valentino 
 was entertaining their master, they were pillaging his 
 mother’s house, loading her with such insults and abuse 
 as the Turks or Saracens themselves could not surpass.” 
 
 “ Enough, enough, mother,” said Csesar; “ never fear, 
 blood shall wash out the stain. Consider that what we 
 have lost is as nothing compared to what we might lose, 
 and my father and I will give back to you more than 
 has been taken from you.” 
 
 “It is not promises that I demand,” cried Vanozza, 
 “ but vengeance.” 
 
 “ And vengeance you shall have, mother, or I will 
 cease to call myself your son.” 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 97 
 
 Having comforted his mother with this assurance, he 
 took her to Lucrezia’s palace, whose marriage to the 
 Lord of Pesaro left her no less free than before, and re¬ 
 turned to the Vatican, giving orders that his mother’s 
 house should be refitted on a more magnificent scale 
 than before. These orders were punctually carried out, 
 and Caesar now found his mother once more amid luxuri¬ 
 ous surroundings, but with bitter hatred at her heart. 
 
 Hence the joyful cry with which she welcomed his 
 appearance. 
 
 The mother and son exchanged but a few words; Cae¬ 
 sar then remounted his horse and rode to the Vatican, 
 which he had left as a hostage but two days before. 
 Alexander, who knew beforehand of his contemplated 
 flight, and who not only approved it, but, in his capacity 
 of sovereign pontiff, absolved his son in advance for the 
 perjury he was about to commit, welcomed him joyfully, 
 but advised him to go into hiding, as Charles VIII., in 
 all human probability, would not be slow to reclaim his 
 hostage. 
 
 The absence of Cardinal Valentino at the King’s bed¬ 
 side reception the morning after their arrival at Velletri 
 was remarked, and as Charles felt somewhat disturbed at 
 his failure to appear, he sent to learn why it was. When 
 the messenger reached the lodgings which Caesar left the 
 night before, he was told that he went out about nine 
 o’clock in the evening, and had not since been seen. He 
 returned with this intelligence to the King, who at once 
 suspected that he had taken flight, and in the first out¬ 
 burst of his indignation communicated his perfidy to the 
 whole army. The soldiers thereupon remembered the 
 twenty vans which were so heavily laden, from one of 
 which the cardinal had taken the magnificent service of 
 plate, and, having no doubt that the others contained as 
 Vol. II.—7. 
 
98 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 precious freight, they fell upon them, and broke them in 
 pieces; but they found nothing within but stones and 
 sand. This satisfied the King that the flight was ar¬ 
 ranged long before, and redoubled his wrath against the 
 pope. Without loss of time he despatched to Rome 
 Philippe de Bresse, afterwards Duke of Savoy, with 
 orders to express to the Holy Father his displeasure at 
 being dealt with so perfidiously. 
 
 But the pope replied that he knew absolutely nothing 
 about his son’s flight, and expressed his very deep regret 
 thereat to his Majesty, saying that he had no idea where 
 he could be, but that he certainly was not at Rome. It 
 happened that the pope spoke the truth then, for Csesar 
 had withdrawn with Cardinal Orsino to one of his estates, 
 and was in hiding there for the moment. The reply was 
 conveyed to Charles by two messengers from the pope, 
 the Bishops of Nepi and Sutri. The people too sent an 
 ambassador to the King in the person of Monsignore 
 Porcari, Dean of the Rote, who was instructed to express 
 the keen displeasure of the Romans when they learned 
 of the cardinal’s breach of parole. Little as Charles was 
 inclined to be content with empty words he was obliged 
 to turn his attention to more important matters, and he 
 continued his march to Naples without further delay, 
 entering the city on the twenty-second of February, 
 1495. 
 
 Four days later the hapless Djein, who had fallen 
 sick at Capua, died at Castel Nuovo. At the farewell 
 dinner which he gave him, Alexander VI. experimented 
 upon him with the poison of which he was to make such 
 frequent use upon the cardinals in the future, and of 
 which he was destined finally, in just retribution, to 
 experience the effects himself. Thus we see how cleverly 
 the pope had arranged to kill two birds with one stone : 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 99 
 
 in his twofold speculation on the unfortunate youth he 
 sold his life to Charles VIII. for a hundred and twenty 
 thousand lire, and his death to Bajazet II. for three 
 hundred thousand ducats. 
 
 As it happened, however, there was some difficulty 
 about this second payment; for the Emperor of the 
 Turks, as the reader will remember, was not to pay the 
 price of his brother’s blood until the body was delivered 
 to him, and the body, by order of Charles, was interred 
 at Gaeta. 
 
 When Caesar Borgia learned what had happened, he 
 judged, reasonably enough, that the King had too many 
 things to think about, in connection with his installation 
 in his new capital, to worry about him; so he reappeared 
 at Rome, and as his mother did not cease to urge him to 
 keep his word to her, he signalized his return by an act 
 of vengeance. 
 
 He had in his pay a Spaniard whom he had raised to 
 the proud eminence of chief of his bravoes. He was a 
 man of some thirty-five to forty years, whose whole life 
 had been one long rebellion against all the laws of 
 society, and he hesitated at nothing, provided that he 
 was paid fair value for his services. This Don Michel 
 Correglia, who acquired sanguinary celebrity under the 
 name of Michelotto, was just the man for Caesar’s present 
 purpose; for his devotion to Csesar was no less absolute 
 than Caesar’s confidence in him. The cardinal entrusted 
 one portion of his vengeance to him, and reserved the 
 other portion for himself. 
 
 Don Michel received orders to scour the Roman Cam- 
 pagna, and murder every Frenchman he fell in with. 
 He at once set to work, and in the course of very few 
 days achieved most satisfactory results. More than a 
 hundred persons were robbed and murdered, among 
 
100 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 them the son of the Bishop of Saint Malo, who was re¬ 
 turning to France, and upon whom Michelotto found the 
 sum of three thousand crowns. 
 
 Caesar marked out the Swiss for his own prey, for they 
 it was who had laid waste Vanozza’s dwelling. The pope 
 had in his service about a hundred and fifty soldiers of 
 that nation, who had brought their families to Rome, 
 and were growing rich upon their pay, eked out by some 
 other employment. The cardinal dismissed them all, 
 with orders to leave Rome within twenty-four hours, and 
 Roman territory within three days. The poor devils 
 were all assembled upon the Square of St. Peter’s with 
 their wives and children, and their baggage, for the pur¬ 
 pose of obeying the order, when suddenly they were 
 surrounded on all sides by two thousand Spaniards who 
 began to fire upon them with arquebuses, and to cut 
 them down with their swords, while Caesar and his mother 
 watched the carnage from a window. Some fifty or 
 sixty were slain in this way, but the others stood their 
 ground against the cut-throats, and retreated in good 
 order to a house which they barricaded ; and there they 
 defended themselves so gallantly that the pope, who did 
 not know the author of the butchery, had time to send 
 the captain of his guards with a strong detachment, who 
 succeeded in getting them out of the city to the number 
 of some forty or more ; the rest were massacred on the 
 square, or killed in the house. 
 
 But this exploit was but a small part of the real ven¬ 
 geance for which Csesar and his mother thirsted, for it did 
 not reach Charles VIII., who was the real, and the only 
 author of all the tribulation which the pope and his 
 family had been subjected to for a year past. And so 
 Csesar soon abandoned such paltry methods to turn his 
 attention to matters of greater moment, and devoted all 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 101 
 
 his wits to renewing the league of the Italian princes, 
 which was disrupted by the defection of Sforza, the exile 
 of Pietro, and the overthrow of Alphonso. 
 
 This undertaking was accomplished with greater ease 
 than the pope anticipated. The Venetians were by no 
 means free from concern at the neighborhood of the 
 French King, and they trembled with apprehension 
 that, when he had once made himself master of Naples, 
 it might occur to him to conquer the rest of Italy. 
 Ludovico Sforza, too, was beginning to fear, in view of 
 the celerity with which Charles had overthrown the 
 House of Aragon, that he would soon make no distinc¬ 
 tion between his allies and his enemies. Outside of 
 Italy, Maximilian was only waiting for a pretext to put 
 an end to the temporary peace, to which he had con¬ 
 sented on account of the concessions made to him. 
 Lastly, Ferdinand and Isabella were allies of the de¬ 
 throned family. 
 
 Thus they were all equally apprehensive, though from 
 diverse motives, and it took them but a short time to 
 agree upon the necessity of driving Charles VIII. out 
 of Italy altogether, and not merely out of Naples; and 
 they bound themselves to use all means in their power, 
 whether by way of negotiation, surprise, or actual force, 
 to bring about his expulsion. The Florentines alone re¬ 
 fused to take part in this waving of shields, and remained 
 faithful to their plighted word. 
 
 According to the terms agreed upon by the confeder¬ 
 ates, the league was to last twenty-five years, and its 
 ostensible purpose was to protect the supremacy of the 
 pope, and the interests of Christianity; indeed, the pre¬ 
 liminaries might easily have been mistaken for those of 
 a crusade against the Turks, had not Bajazet’s ambassa¬ 
 dor been present at almost all of the deliberations, 
 
102 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 although a sense of shame prevented the Christian 
 princes from making the Emperor of Constantinople in 
 name a party to the league. 
 
 The confederates agreed to put on the field an army 
 of thirty-four thousand horse and twenty thousand foot, 
 and each one was required to furnish his contingent— 
 the pope, four thousand horse; Maximilian, six thou¬ 
 sand ; the King of Spain, the Duke of Milan and the 
 Republic of Venice, each eight thousand. In addition 
 to these, each confederate was to raise and equip within 
 six weeks of the execution of the treaty four thousand 
 foot soldiers. Ships were to be provided by the mari¬ 
 time powers, but the expense of their equipment and 
 maintenance was to fall equally upon all. 
 
 This league was made public on Palm Sunday, April 
 12,1495, throughout Italy, and was received with intense 
 satisfaction, particularly at Rome. Almost immediately 
 after the promulgation of the articles intended for the 
 public eye, the confederates began to carry out the secret 
 articles. These secret articles bound Ferdinand and 
 Isabella to send to Ischia, whither Alphonso’s son had 
 fled, a fleet of sixty galleys, with six hundred cavalry 
 and five thousand infantry to assist in putting him back 
 upon the throne. These troops were to be commanded 
 by Gonzalvo of Cordova, who had acquired, by the tak¬ 
 ing of Grenada, the reputation of being the greatest 
 general in Europe. On their side, the Venetians, with 
 a fleet of forty galleys under Antonio Grimani, were to 
 attack all the posts held by the French on the coasts of 
 Calabria and Naples. The Duke of Milan’s part was to 
 consist in blocking all reinforcements from France and 
 driving the Due d’Orleans out of Asti. Maximilian 
 undertook to harry the frontiers of France, and Bajazet 
 to assist with money, ships, and troops, either the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 103 
 
 Venetians or the Spaniards, according as he was appealed 
 to by Barberigo or by Ferdinand the Catholic. 
 
 This league was the greater source of anxiety to 
 Charles VIII. because the enthusiasm which greeted his 
 advent had so suddenly died away. That had happened 
 in his case which ordinarily happens to men who have 
 more good luck than genius; instead of building up for 
 himself among the great Neapolitan and Calabrian 
 feudatories a party whose roots would be firmly imbedded 
 in the soil, by confirming their privileges and increasing 
 their influence, he wounded them by bestowing all the 
 titles, all the offices and all the fiefs upon those who 
 came with him from France; so that all the lucrative 
 and dignified posts in the kingdom were filled by 
 foreigners. 
 
 The result was that at the very moment the league 
 was made public, Tropea and Amantea, which Charles 
 had given to the Seigneur de Precy, rose in revolt, and 
 hoisted the banner of Aragon; that the Spanish fleet 
 had but to show itself before Reggio, in Calabria, when 
 that town, which was more discontented under the new 
 regime than the old, opened its gates to him instanter; 
 and that Don Frederic, Alphonso’s brother and Ferdi¬ 
 nand’s uncle, who had never left Brindisi, had but to 
 appear at the gates of Tarento to be greeted as a 
 liberator. 
 
 Charles VIII. heard of all these things at Naples, at 
 a time when he had already grown weary of the work 
 of organization necessitated by his latest conquest—a 
 work for which he was entirely unfitted—and was turn¬ 
 ing his eyes longingly toward France, where the tri¬ 
 umphal reception of a conquering hero awaited him. 
 He yielded at once, therefore, to the first adviser who 
 suggested the advisability of retracing his steps to his 
 
104 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 own realm, which was threatened, as we have seen, by 
 the Germans in the north, and by the Spaniards in the 
 south. 
 
 He appointed Gilbert de Montpensier of the House 
 of Bourbon, viceroy ; D’Aubigny of the Scottish House 
 of Stuart, his lieutenant in Calabria; Etienne de V&se, 
 commandant of Gaeta; and Don Julien, Gabriel de 
 Montfaucon, Giullaume de Villeneuve, Georges de Silly, 
 the Bailly de Vitry, and Graziano Guerra, governors of 
 San-Angelo, Maufredonia, Trani, Catanzaro, Aquila, 
 and Sulmone respectively. He left with his representa¬ 
 tive half of the Swiss, part of the Gascons, eight 
 hundred French lances, and about five hundred Italian 
 men-at-arms, the latter under the command of the Prefect 
 of Rome, Prosper and Fabricio Colonna, and Antonio 
 Savelli; and on the twentieth of May, at two o’clock 
 in the afternoon, he marched out of Naples for his 
 northward journey through the whole Italian peninsula, 
 with the rest of his army, which consisted of eight 
 hundred French lances, two hundred gentlemen of his 
 guard, one hundred Italian men-at-arms, and three 
 thousand Swiss, one thousand French and one thousand 
 Gascon infantry. He counted upon being joined in 
 Tuscany by Camillo Vitelli and his brothers with two 
 hundred and fifty men-at-arms. 
 
 A week prior to his departure from Naples, Charles 
 had sent Monseigneur de Saint-Paul, brother of the 
 Cardinal of Luxumbourg, to Rome and, at the moment 
 of setting out, he despatched the Archbishop of Lyons. 
 Each of them was instructed to assure Alexander that 
 the King most sincerely wished and was firmly deter¬ 
 mined to remain his friend. It was the fact that Charles 
 desired nothing so much as to detach the pope from the 
 league, with a view of securing in him a spiritual and 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 105 
 
 temporal champion. But a restless, ambitious, daring 
 young king was not the sort of neighbor that suited 
 Alexander; so he refused to listen to either of the 
 envoys, and as the troops he had asked the doge and 
 Ludovico Sforza to send him were not arrived in suffi¬ 
 cient numbers to defend Home, he contented himself 
 with provisioning the Castle of San-Angelo for a siege, 
 threw a strong garrison into it and withdrew with Csesar 
 to Orvieto, leaving the Cardinal of Saint Anastasius to 
 receive the King. 
 
 Charles remained but three days at Rome, so great 
 was his chagrin because Alexander, notwithstanding his 
 prayers, had refused to await his coming. During those 
 three days, instead of hearkening to the advice of Giulio 
 della Rovere, who urged him anew to assemble a council 
 and depose the pope, he turned over to the Romagnese 
 officers, hoping thereby to win back the pope’s good-will, 
 the citadels of Terracena and Civita-Vecchia, retaining 
 only that of Ostia, which he had promised to restore to 
 Giulio. 
 
 At the end of the three days he left Rome and led 
 his forces in three divisions toward Tuscany, across the 
 States of the Church and, on the thirteenth, reached 
 Sienna, where he was met by Philippe de Commines, 
 whom he had previously sent on a mission to the Republic 
 of Venice. He informed him that his enemies had 
 forty thousand men under arms and were ready to fight 
 him. This news had no other effect than to raise the 
 King’s spirits and those of the gentlemen of his army 
 beyond all measure, for their easy conquest had inspired 
 them with such disdain for their foes that they did not 
 believe that any army, however numerous it might be, 
 would dare to dispute their passage. 
 
 Charles was forced, however, to be convinced to the 
 
106 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 contrary, when he learned at San-Teranzo, that his ad¬ 
 vance-guard, consisting of six hundred lances and fifteen 
 hundred Swiss, under Marechal de Gie, upon reaching 
 Fornovo, were confronted by the troops of the allies, 
 intrenched at Guiarola. The marshal at once halted 
 upon a slight eminence, and so disposed his forces as to 
 make the most of his position. He then sent a trumpet 
 to the enemy’s camp, to make demand upon Francesco 
 di Gonzaga, generalissimo of the confederate troops, for 
 free passage for the army of his King, and supplies at a 
 reasonable price; and he also despatched a courier to 
 Charles VIII. urging him to move forward quickly with 
 his main body, as well as the rear-guard and artillery. 
 
 The confederates returned an evasive answer, for they 
 were hesitating whether they ought to avoid the possi¬ 
 bility of compromising all the forces at their disposal in 
 a single battle, or to risk everything to gain everything, 
 and try to annihilate the King of France and his army, 
 thus burying the conqueror in the ruins of his conquest. 
 
 Charles VIII. was found overseeing the passage of the 
 last of the cannon over the summit of Pontremoli Moun¬ 
 tain ; it was by no means an easy operation for, there 
 being no marked path, they were obliged to haul them 
 up and down by hand, which required as many as two 
 hundred men for a single gun. When all the artillery 
 was safely on the other side of the Apennines, Charles 
 set off in hot haste for Fornovo, and arrived there the 
 following morning. 
 
 From the top of the mountain, on the lower slopes of 
 which Marechal de Gie was encamped, the King espied 
 his camp as well as that of the enemy. Both lay on the 
 right bank of the Taro, at either end of the half circle 
 formed by a chain of hills in the shape of an amphi¬ 
 theatre. The interval between the two camps, a vast 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 107 
 
 basin covered in times of freshet by the torrent which 
 bounded it, was now nothing but a gravelly plain, upon 
 which it was equally difficult for cavalry and infantry to 
 manoeuvre. There was also a thin line of woods, which 
 followed the western slope of the hills, from one camp to 
 the other, and was occupied by the Stradiotes, who, from 
 its cover, had done some skirmishing with the French 
 troops during the two days they had lain in camp wait¬ 
 ing for the King. 
 
 The situation was not reassuring. The view from the 
 top of the mountain overlooking Fornovo embraced both 
 camps, as we have said, and it was easy to estimate the 
 difference in numbers of the opposing forces. The 
 French army was so reduced by the numerous garrisons 
 they were obliged to leave in towns and fortresses he 
 had kept possession of in Italy, that it numbered barely 
 eight thousand combatants, while the Milanese-Venetian 
 army amounted to more than thirty-five thousand. 
 
 Charles resolved therefore to make another trial of 
 conciliatory measures, and sent Commines, who, as our 
 readers will remember, joined him in Tuscany, to the Ven¬ 
 etian officers, whose acquaintance he had made during his 
 mission to the republic, and over whom he had acquired 
 great influence, because of their justly high regard for 
 his worth. He was instructed to say to the commanding 
 officers of the enemy’s forces, that his master desired 
 nothing more than to continue his march without giving 
 or receiving any offence ; that he asked to be allowed to 
 pass unhindered across the fair plains of Lombardy, 
 which lay spread out before him farther than the eye 
 could reach, with the snow-clad Alps towering above. 
 
 Commines found the army of the confederates divided 
 in their councils ; the Milanese and Venetians were anx¬ 
 ious to let the King pass without attacking him, only too 
 
108 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 well pleased, as they said, to have him leave Italy with¬ 
 out doing any more harm than he had done; but the 
 ambassadors of Spain and Germany were of a different 
 opinion. As their masters had no troops in the army, 
 and whatever expense they were to defray was already 
 incurred, a battle could not fail to be advantageous to 
 them ; for if it were won they would reap all the fruits 
 of victory, and, if lost, they would suffer none of the 
 disastrous results of defeat. This divergence of opinion 
 caused them to postpone their reply to Commines until 
 the following day; and they agreed to send a pleni¬ 
 potentiary then to confer with him at a point midway 
 between the two armies. 
 
 The King passed the night in great anxiety; the 
 skies had threatened rain throughout the day, and the 
 Taro overflowed its banks on such slight provocation, 
 that though it was fordable then, it might become an 
 impassable obstacle on the morrow; and perhaps the 
 delay was intended for no other purpose than to make 
 the position of the French army worse than it was. As 
 it turned out, it was hardly dark when a terrible storm 
 broke over their heads, and the thunder roared among 
 the Apennines, and the heavens were ablaze with light¬ 
 ning all night long. At daybreak it seemed to abate a 
 little ; but the Taro, which was nothing but a brook the 
 night before, had become a roaring torrent and was rap¬ 
 idly rising to the top of its banks. 
 
 At six in the morning, the King, fully armed and 
 mounted, summoned Commines, and ordered him to re¬ 
 pair to the rendezvous appointed by the Venetian offi¬ 
 cers. But the words were barely out of his mouth when 
 a great uproar arose at the extreme right of the French 
 army. The Stradiotes, creeping along under cover of 
 the woods, had surprised one of the outposts, and after 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 109 
 
 putting every man to the sword were riding off, each 
 man with a head at his saddle-bow, as their custom was. 
 A detachment of cavalry started in pursuit, but, like 
 wild beasts, they disappeared in the woods which were 
 their lurking-place. 
 
 This unexpected attack, which was concocted, doubt¬ 
 less, by the German and Spanish ambassadors, produced 
 upon the whole line the effect of a spark upon a train 
 of powder. Commines on the one hand, and the Vene¬ 
 tians officers on the other, tried in vain to stem the tide; 
 light-armed troops, hot for the conflict, and listening to 
 nothing but the reckless incitement of personal bravery, 
 a characteristic failing of the time, had come to close 
 quarters, and were rushing down into the plain as if it 
 were a gladiatorial arena, each one burning to distin¬ 
 guish himself by doughty deeds. For a single instant 
 the young King, carried away by their example, was on 
 the point of forgetting his responsibility as commander- 
 in-chief to act the part of a common soldier; but the 
 Marechal de Gi6, Messire Claude de La Chatre, and 
 MM. de Guise and de Tremouille, succeeded in check¬ 
 ing his first impulse, and in inducing him to adopt the 
 wiser course, which was to cross the Taro, without seek¬ 
 ing a battle, but without avoiding it, either, if the enemy 
 tried to prevent our crossing. Thereupon, the King, 
 having listened to the opinions of his wisest and most 
 gallant captains, disposed his forces thus: 
 
 The first line comprised the vanguard of three hun¬ 
 dred and fifty of the flower of the whole army, com¬ 
 manded by the Marechal de Gi6 and Jacques Trivulce; 
 and a body of three thousand Swiss under Engelbert de 
 Cleves, and De Lornay, the Queen’s first equerry, whose 
 mission it was to support the van. Then came three 
 hundred archers of the guard, whom the King had 
 
110 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 ordered to march on foot that they might support the 
 cavalry by fighting in the spaces between their horses. 
 
 The second line, led by the King in person, formed 
 the main body of the army, and comprised the artillery 
 under Jean de Lagrange, one hundred gentlemen of the 
 guard, whose banner was borne by Gilles Carronel, pen¬ 
 sioners of the King’s household, commanded by Ay mar 
 de Prie, the Scots, two hundred mounted cross-bow-men, 
 and the rest of the French archers, led by M. de Crussol. 
 
 The third line, or rear-guard, preceded by the impedi¬ 
 menta upon six thousand beasts of burden, numbered 
 but three hundred men-at-arms, commanded by MM. de 
 Guise and de Tremouille; it was the weakest part of the 
 army. 
 
 When all was in readiness Charles ordered the van¬ 
 guard to cross the river, which it proceeded to do at 
 once, opposite the little town of Fornovo, the horsemen 
 being in water to their calves, and the foot soldiers hold¬ 
 ing to the horses’ tails. When the last man of the first 
 division had reached the other bank, he put his own 
 division in motion to cross by the same ford, giving 
 orders to MM. de Guise and de Tremouille, to time their 
 crossing by that of the main body, as he had timed his 
 by that of the vanguard. 
 
 His orders were punctually followed, and about ten in 
 the morning the whole French army stood on the left 
 bank of the Taro; as the tactics pursued by the enemy 
 at this time made an immediate engagement imminent, 
 the baggage-train, under the escort of Captain Odet de 
 Riberac, drew away from the rear-guard, and took up a 
 position on the extreme left. 
 
 Francesco di Gonzaga, commander-in-chief of the 
 allied troops, had made his dispositions to correspond 
 with those of the King of France; by his orders, the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Count of Cajazzo, with four hundred men-at-arms and 
 two thousand infantry, crossed the Taro opposite the 
 camp of the Venetians to confront the French van¬ 
 guard, while he himself ascended the right bank to 
 Fornovo and crossed the river by the same ford which 
 the French army had taken, in order to fall upon its 
 rear. Lastly, he stationed the Stradiotes half way 
 between the two fords, with orders to cross in their turn 
 and attack the French in flank, as soon as they saw 
 that their van and rear were engaged. In addition to 
 these offensive measures, Gonzaga had taken care to 
 make provision for covering a possible retreat by leaving 
 three reserve corps on the other bank, one commanded 
 by the Venetian proveditori to guard the camp, and two 
 others under Antonio di Montefeltro and Annibal 
 Bentivoglio, drawn up in such manner as to support 
 each other. 
 
 Charles VIII. took careful note of all these disposi¬ 
 tions, and recognized in them the traces of that skill in 
 the art of strategic warfare which made the Italian 
 generals the greatest tacticians in the whole world. As 
 there was no way of avoiding the danger, however, he 
 determined to meet it with a bold face, and gave orders 
 that the march of the army should not be interrupted. 
 They soon found themselves hemmed in between the 
 Count of Cajazzo, who blocked their path with his four 
 hundred men-at-arms and two thousand infantry, and 
 Gonzaga, who was close upon the heels of the rear¬ 
 guard with six hundred men-at-arms, the flower of his 
 army, a squad of Stradiotes, and more than five thousand 
 infantry; his division alone was more numerous than 
 the whole French army. 
 
 When MM. de Guise and de Tremouille found them¬ 
 selves so closely beset, they ordered their two hundred 
 
112 
 
 i 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 men-at-arms to face about, while MM. de Gie and 
 Trivulce at the other end, that is to say the head of 
 the army, ordered a halt, and gave the word to put 
 lances in rest. Meanwhile, in accordance with custom, 
 the King, stationed in the centre of his host, knighted 
 those gentlemen who, by reason of their personal 
 gallantry, or of his regard for them, were deemed worthy 
 of the honor. 
 
 Suddenly there was a terrible crash behind him; it 
 was the French rear coming to close quarters with the 
 Marquis of Mantua. In that onset every man selected 
 his opponent as in a tourney, and a great many lances 
 were broken, especially in the hands of the Italian 
 knights, for their lances were hollow in order to save 
 weight, and were consequently much more easily broken. 
 Those who were disarmed at once drew their swords, 
 and as they were vastly more numerous than our troops, 
 they soon overwhelmed our right wing before the King’s 
 eyes and seemed in a fair way to envelop us altogether. 
 At the same time there was a tremendous outcry 
 directly abreast of our centre, caused by the Stradiotes 
 crossing the river to execute the part allotted to them 
 in the program. 
 
 The King at once divided his main body into two 
 detachments and placing one under the command of the 
 Bastard of Bourbon to repel the assault of the Stradiotes, 
 he himself hurried with the other to the relief of the 
 rear-guard. He rushed into the thickest of the melee, 
 striking with the bearing of a king, but fighting like 
 the most impetuous and daring of his captains. With 
 the relief thus afforded them the rear-guard stood their 
 ground, although the enemy were five to one and the 
 battle, at that point, was maintained with extraordinary 
 fury. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 113 
 
 Following out his orders, the Bastard of Bourbon set 
 out at the double-quick to intercept the Stradiotes; 
 but his horse ran with him and carried him so far into 
 their ranks that he was lost to sight there. The loss of 
 their leader, in conjunction with the strange costume of 
 their new antagonists and their peculiar method of 
 fighting, produced some impression upon those who were 
 sent to oppose them, so that for a moment there were 
 signs of disorder about their centre, and the horsemen 
 scattered, instead of pressing close together and fighting 
 in a solid mass. This momentary confusion might well 
 have proved fatal to them, had not the Stradiotes, or 
 the greater part of them, seeing the baggage-train stand¬ 
 ing alone and undefended, made a rush for that, in the 
 hope of rich booty, instead of following up their advan¬ 
 tage. However, a portion of them remained to be 
 reckoned with, and pressed the French cavalry hard, 
 cutting their lances through with their terrible scimiters. 
 
 Fortunately the King, having repulsed the attack of 
 the Marquis of Mantua, could give his attention to what 
 was going on behind him ; galloping back at full speed 
 to the relief of his centre, he fell upon the Stradiotes 
 with the gentlemen of his household, no longer armed 
 with his lance, for it was broken, but with his long 
 sword, which gleamed around him, now on this side, 
 now on that, like flashes of lightning. Whether he was 
 carried away by his horse, or allowed his excitement to 
 get the better of him, he found himself suddenly where 
 the Stradiotes were thickest, accompanied only by eight 
 of the gentlemen whom he had just knighted, one of 
 his squires named Antoine des Ambus, and his standard 
 bearer. He shouted “ France ! France! ” at the top of 
 his voice, to summon to his side all the scattered horse¬ 
 men, who, seeing that the danger was not so great as 
 
I 
 
 114 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 they thought, were beginning to take their revenge, and 
 to repay the Stradiotes with interest the blows they 
 received. 
 
 Affairs were progressing still more favorably with the 
 vanguard, which was attacked by the Count of Cajazzo. 
 Although he commanded a division much superior in 
 number to the French, and seemed at first to be seriously 
 bent upon mischief, he stopped short in the act of charg¬ 
 ing when within ten or twelve paces of our line of 
 battle, and executed a volte-face without breaking a 
 lance. The French were eager to pursue him, but the 
 Marechal de Gie, fearing that the retreat was nothing 
 more than a trap to draw the van away from the centre, 
 ordered every man to keep his place. The German 
 Swiss, however, not understanding the order, or not 
 taking it to be meant for them, darted in pursuit and, 
 although they were on foot, overtook the fugitives and 
 cut down a hundred or more ; this was enough to throw 
 the rest of them into such confusion that some of them 
 scattered about over the plain, and others threw them¬ 
 selves into the river to swim across to their camp. 
 
 Thereupon De Gie detailed a hundred men-at-arms to 
 go back to the assistance of the King, who was still 
 fighting on with incredible daring, and incurring most 
 tremendous risks, separated as he constantly was from his 
 gentlemen, who found it impossible to follow him; for 
 he rushed headlong wherever there was danger, crying 
 “ France ! ” and caring but little whether anybody fol¬ 
 lowed him or not. He was no longer fighting with his 
 sword, which was long since broken like his lance, but 
 with a heavy battle-axe, every blow of which was fatal, 
 whether he cut with the edge or thrust with the point. 
 The Stradiotes, already hard pressed by the King’s 
 household and pensioners, passed soon from offensive to 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 115 
 
 defensive operations, and from the latter to flight. 
 This was the moment when the king was in the 
 greatest danger; for, having yielded to his impulse to 
 pursue the fugitives, he soon found himself quite alone, 
 and entirely surrounded by these men, who, had they 
 been less panic-stricken, would have needed only to 
 close in on him to crush him and his horse to death. 
 But, as Commines said, “ He is well guarded whom God 
 guards,”—and God guarded the King of France that day. 
 
 The rear-guard was in serious trouble at this time, 
 and although MM. de Guise and de Tremouille stood 
 their ground as staunchly as it was possible to do, it is 
 probable that they would have been forced at last to 
 yield to superior numbers if succor had not arrived from 
 two different quarters. In the first place, the indefati¬ 
 gable Charles, having no farther business with the 
 fugitives, threw himself once more into the thick of the 
 battle; and secondly, the servants in charge of the 
 baggage, being delivered from the Stradiotes, came run¬ 
 ning up, armed with the axes which they used to cut 
 wood for camping purposes, and rushed into the mel6e, 
 hamstringing the horses, and demolishing the visors of 
 dismounted horsemen. 
 
 The Italians could not withstand this twofold onset; 
 the “ French madness ” rendered all possible strategic 
 combinations of no avail, and for nearly a century they 
 had been unlearning what they knew of these fierce, 
 bloody conflicts, and accustoming themselves to the sort 
 of tournament which they called war; so that, despite 
 the utmost efforts of Francesco de Gonzaga, the assail¬ 
 ants of the rear-guard also turned their backs and took 
 to flight, recrossing in great haste and with much diffi¬ 
 culty the torrent, swollen more and more by the rain 
 which fell steadily throughout the battle. 
 
116 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Some were in favor of pursuing the enemy, for their 
 army was in such utter confusion that they could be 
 seen from the battlefield, where the French had won 
 such a glorious victory, flying in all directions and 
 thronging the roads to Parma and Bercetto. But Mare- 
 chal de Gie and MM. de Guise and de Tremouille, who 
 had borne themselves too gallantly to be suspected of 
 shrinking from an imaginary danger, restrained this 
 impulse, reminding the too eager ones that men and 
 horses were so fatigued that they would run great risk 
 of losing what advantage they had gained if they 
 attempted to carry it any farther. Their opinion pre¬ 
 vailed in spite of the arguments of Trivulce, Camillo 
 Vitelli, and Francesco Secci, who were in favor of fol¬ 
 lowing up the victory. 
 
 The King retired to a small village on the left bank 
 of the Taro, and took up his quarters in a poor house, 
 where he laid aside his armor; of all the army, officers 
 and soldiers, he had done the best and hardest fighting. 
 
 During the night the river became so swollen that the 
 Italian army would have been unable to follow up their 
 foes, even had they recovered from their panic. The 
 King, after such a victory, did not wish even to have 
 the appearance of retreating, and remained all day 
 drawn up in order of battle; at sunset he went into 
 quarters at Medesena, a small village about a mile farther 
 down stream than the hamlet in which he passed the 
 first night after the battle. But before morning he 
 came to the conclusion that he had done enough to 
 ensure the honor of his arms, in whipping an army four 
 times as large as his, killing three thousand men, and 
 waiting a day and a half to give them time to take their 
 revenge; and so, about two hours before dawn, he 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 117 
 
 ordered the fires to be replenished, so that the enemy- 
 might think him still in camp, and the whole army, now 
 almost entirely out of danger, moved noiselessly away 
 in the direction of Bergo-San Donnino. 
 
 Meanwhile the pope had returned to Rome, where he 
 was soon made happy by the receipt of intelligence 
 which was in perfect accord with the policy he was 
 pursuing. He learned that Ferdinand of Naples had 
 crossed over from Sicily to Calabria with six thousand 
 volunteers and a considerable force of horse and foot, 
 sent to him by Ferdinand and Isabella, under the com¬ 
 mand of the noted Gonzalvo of Cordova, who arrived 
 in Italy with the reputation of being one of the greatest 
 of generals—a reputation which was destined to be 
 somewhat diminished by the defeat of Seminara. Almost 
 at the same time the French fleet was beaten by the 
 Aragonese fleet, and even the battle of the Taro, though 
 it was lost by the allies, was really a victory for the 
 pope, since it resulted in leaving the path clear for the 
 man whom he looked upon as his most dangerous foe to 
 return to France. 
 
 Strong in the conviction that he had nothing more to 
 fear from Charles, the pope sent to him at Turin, where 
 he had halted for a brief space to relieve Novara, a 
 letter wherein he ordered him, by virtue of his authority 
 as supreme pontiff, to leave Italy with his army and to 
 recall the troops he had left in the Kingdom of Naples, 
 and to do both within ten days, under pain of excom¬ 
 munication and of being summoned to appear before 
 him in person. 
 
 Charles replied: 
 
 1st. That he failed to understand how it could be that 
 the pope, who was at the head of the league, should 
 order him out of Italy, while the troops of the league 
 
118 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 not only refused to allow him to pass, but had even at¬ 
 tempted (although in vain, as perhaps his Holiness 
 might have heard) to make it impossible for him to re¬ 
 turn to France. 
 
 2d. That, with regard to recalling his troops from 
 Naples, he could not be so blind to his religious obliga¬ 
 tions as to do that, inasmuch as they entered that king¬ 
 dom with the consent and blessing of his Holiness. 
 
 3d. That, with regard to his being summoned to ap¬ 
 pear in person in the capital of the Christian world, he 
 was astonished beyond measure that the pope should 
 require it at that time, in view of the fact that, only six 
 weeks before, on his return from Naples, when he was most 
 desirous to have an interview with his Holiness in order 
 to pay his respects to him and demonstrate his true alle¬ 
 giance, his Holiness, instead of granting the favor he 
 requested, had quitted Rome at his approach, with such 
 precipitation, that, do what he would, he was unable to 
 overtake him. However, he would give his Holiness 
 his word, if he would agree to await his coming, 
 to return to Rome as soon as the business which re¬ 
 quired his return to France should be satisfactorily con¬ 
 cluded. 
 
 Notwithstanding the tone of haughty raillery which 
 characterized this response, Charles was soon compelled 
 by force of circumstances to comply in part with the 
 pope’s missive. Although he received a reinforcement 
 of Swiss, his presence in France was so urgently de¬ 
 manded that he had no choice but to conclude a treaty 
 with Ludovico Sforza, whereby he ceded Novara to him. 
 Gilbert de Montpensier, too, and D’Aubigny, after stub¬ 
 bornly contesting every foot of Calabria, Basilicata and 
 Naples, were finally reduced to the necessity of signing 
 the capitulation of Atella, after a siege of thirty-two 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 119 
 
 days, on July 20, 1496. The terms provided that all 
 the fortresses and towns in his kingdom then held by 
 the French should be restored to Ferdinand II., King 
 of Naples. But he lived only three months to enjoy 
 them; on the seventh of September following, he died 
 of physical collapse at the Castle of Somma by the foot 
 of Vesuvius, the assiduous, loving care lavished upon 
 him by his young wife, failing to repair the ravages 
 caused by her claims. 
 
 He was succeeded by his uncle Frederic. Thus, dur¬ 
 ing the three years since his elevation to the pontificate, 
 and w T hile he was establishing himself more and more 
 firmly in his seat, Alexander had seen five kings upon 
 the throne of Naples:—Ferdinand I., Alphonso II., 
 Charles VIII., Ferdinand II., and Frederic. 
 
 Each of these convulsions, and the rapid succession 
 of sovereigns was of the greatest possible advantage to 
 Alexander VI., for every new king was not really 
 king, until he in his turn was invested with kingly 
 power by the pope. The result was that he was the 
 only one who gained in power and influence by all these 
 changes, for not only had he been recognized as the 
 supreme head of the Church, for all his simony, by the 
 Duke of Milan, and the Republics of Florence and 
 Venice, which had made treaties with him, but five 
 kings who had succeeded each other upon the throne 
 of Naples, had severally done homage to him. 
 
 He believed, therefore, that the time had come to 
 establish the power of his family upon a firm founda¬ 
 tion, by clothing the Duke of Gandia with all the chief 
 temporal dignities, while all the great spiritual functions 
 should be entrusted to Csesar Borgia. He ensured the 
 success of his new schemes by appointing four Spanish 
 cardinals, who increased the number of his compatriots 
 
120 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 in the Sacred College to twenty-two, and thus gave him 
 a constant and sure majority. 
 
 The first essential step toward carrying out his policy 
 was to free the neighborhood of Rome from the swarm 
 of petty dignitaries who were called the vicars of the 
 Church, but whom Alexander named the “ manacles of 
 the papacy.” We have already seen that he had set 
 about that work by instigating the Orsini against the 
 Colonnas, when the enterprise of Charles VIII. com¬ 
 pelled him to employ all the force of his intellect and 
 all his material resources to protect and ensure his own 
 safety. 
 
 But the Orsini, the pope’s former friends, were rash 
 enough to accept the pay of the French, and with them 
 entered Neapolitan territory, where Virginio, one of the 
 most prominent of the leading men of that powerful 
 family, was taken prisoner during the war, and was now 
 in the hands of Ferdinand II. Here was an oppor¬ 
 tunity which Alexander was too shrewd to let slip; he 
 first enjoined upon the King of Naples not to release his 
 prisoner, whom he had declared an outlaw on the first 
 of June preceding; and on the twenty-sixth of October, 
 in the early days of the reign of Frederic (whom he 
 knew to be entirely submissive to him, because his power 
 was incomplete until he received the papal investiture), 
 he pronounced in secret consistory sentence of confisca¬ 
 tion against Virginio Orsino and all his family. There¬ 
 upon, as if it were not enough to declare their property 
 confiscated, but they must be actually ousted, he made 
 overtures to the Colonnas, and said to them, that, as a 
 proof of the return of his esteem, he entrusted to them, 
 under the supervision of his son Francesco, Duke of 
 Gandia, the execution of the sentence against their old 
 enemies; in this way he weakened his troublesome 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 121 
 
 neighbors by setting them at each others’ throats, until 
 such time as he could safely attack and annihilate both 
 victors and vanquished. 
 
 The Colonnas accepted the proposition, and the Duke 
 of Gandia was appointed vicar-general of the Church, 
 being presented with the insignia of the office in the 
 cathedral of St. Peter’s at Rome, by his father in full 
 pontifical robes. 
 
 Matters progressed at first as Alexander desired, and 
 before the end of the year the papal army was in pos¬ 
 session of a large number of castles and fortresses 
 belonging to the Orsini. They had come to look upon 
 themselves as doomed to extinction, when Charles VIII., 
 to whom they had appealed, with but little hope that he 
 could give them much assistance, being so engrossed with 
 his own affairs, sent to them, instead of troops and muni¬ 
 tions, Charles Orsino, son of Virginio, who was his pris¬ 
 oner, and Vitellozo Vitelli, brother of Camillo Vitelli, 
 one of the three gallant Italian condottieri, who entered 
 his service, and fought on his side at the fords of the 
 Taro. These two officers, of approved and well-known 
 courage and ability, brought with them a considerable 
 sum of money, generously provided by Charles; and no 
 sooner had they arrived at Citta di Castello, the centre 
 of their little dominion, and made known their purpose 
 of raising a body of troops, than men flocked from all 
 directions to enlist under their banner. They soon col¬ 
 lected a small-sized army, and in organizing it and 
 equipping it, put to profit what they had learned, during 
 their stay in France, by a careful study of those matters 
 in which the French methods of military organization 
 excelled the Italian. It consisted principally in certain 
 changes in the artillery trains, which tended to facilitate 
 their manoeuvres, and in the substitution of pikes shaped 
 
122 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 like those of the Swiss, hut two feet longer, for their or¬ 
 dinary weapons. Vitellozo Yitelli drilled his men in the 
 use of their new weapons for three or four months ; when 
 he considered them qualified to make good use of them 
 he marched on Bracciano, his force being augmented by 
 some few troops from the towns of Perouse, Todi, and 
 Narni, which feared that their turn might come after 
 the Orsini were wiped out. 
 
 The Duke of Urbino, who had been loaned to the 
 pope by Venice, under the terms of the treaty to which 
 we have referred, was besieging Bracciano; when he 
 heard of Vitelli’s approach he thought he would save 
 him part of the journey and marched out to meet him. 
 The armies met on the road to Soriano, and engaged in¬ 
 stantly. The papal army comprised a force of eight 
 hundred Germans, upon whom the Dukes of Urbino 
 and Gandia particularly relied, and with good reason, 
 for they were the best troops in the world; but Vitelli 
 set his infantry upon this picked body, and they ran 
 them through with their long pikes without giving them 
 a chance, their weapons being four feet shorter, to return 
 the blows they received. At the same time his light ar¬ 
 tillery hovered about the flanks of the army, following 
 its most rapid movements, and silencing its guns by the 
 justness and accuracy of their fire. Thus it was that, 
 after a somewhat longer resistance than might have 
 been expected from a force attacked by such superior 
 tactics, the papal troops turned and fled, carrying with 
 them to Roncilione the Duke of Gandia with a severe 
 pike wound in the face, Fabricio Colonna, and the pope’s 
 legate ; the Duke of Urbino, who was fighting with the 
 rear-guard to protect the retreat, was taken with all the 
 artillery and baggage. 
 
 But this success, great as it was, did not turn Vitelli’s 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 123 
 
 head so far as to blind him to the dangers of his posi¬ 
 tion ; he realized that he and the Orsini were too weak 
 to carry on such a war, that the paltry store to which he 
 owed his army would soon be exhausted, and that his 
 army would disappear with it. He made haste to 
 apologize for his victory by suggesting terms, which he 
 would not perhaps have been willing to accept had he 
 been beaten. They were at once communicated to the 
 pope who, in the interim, had been advised that Trivulce 
 had recrossed the Alps with three thousand Swiss, and 
 who feared that Vitelli’s force might be the advance- 
 guard of the French army. It was agreed, therefore, 
 that the Orsini should pay seventy thousand florins to 
 defray the cost of the war, and that all prisoners on 
 both sides should be exchanged without ransom, except 
 the Duke of Urbino. To secure the payment of the 
 seventy thousand florins the Orsini placed the fortresses 
 of Anguillara and Cervetri in the hands of Cardinals 
 Sforza and San Severino by way of pledge; and as they 
 had not the necessary funds at hand on the day fixed 
 for the payment, they fixed the ransom of the Duke of 
 Urbino at forty thousand ducats, and passed that sum 
 to the credit of Alexander VI., thus nearly balancing 
 the account. The pope kept very strictly to his agree¬ 
 ment on this occasion, and made his own general, cap¬ 
 tured in his service, pay the ransom demanded by his 
 enemies. 
 
 The pope, on his side, restored to Charles Orsino and 
 Vitelli, the dead body of Virginio, in default of his liv¬ 
 ing body. By a strange fatality, the prisoner died, a 
 week before the treaty was signed, of the same disease, 
 if we may judge by analogy, which carried off Bajazet’s 
 brother. 
 
 Just after the signatures were appended to this treaty, 
 
124 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Prosper Colonna and Gonzalvo of Cordova, whom the 
 pope had asked Frederic to send him, arrived at Rome 
 with a force of Spanish and Neapolitan troops. Alex¬ 
 ander could not then use them against the Orsini, and 
 was unwilling to have to reproach himself for having 
 sent for them for nothing, so he employed them in retak¬ 
 ing Ostia. Gonzalvo was rewarded for this feat of arms 
 by receiving from the pope’s own hands, the Golden 
 Rose, the greatest distinction which his Holiness could 
 bestow. He shared the honor with the Emperor Maxi¬ 
 milian, the King of France, the Doge of Venice and 
 the Duke of Mantua. 
 
 Meanwhile the festival of the Assumption arrived, 
 and Gonzalvo was invited to take part in the celebra¬ 
 tion. He rode from his palace in regal state to meet 
 the papal cavalcade, and took his place at the left of the 
 Duke of Gandia, whose great personal beauty drew all 
 eyes upon him, enhanced and set off as it was by the 
 magnificent costume he had chosen to assume for this 
 solemn function. 
 
 He had a retinue of pages and valets, dressed in liv¬ 
 eries of such splendor that nothing comparable to them 
 had ever before been seen even in Rome, the city of 
 gorgeous religious fetes. They were all mounted upon 
 beautiful horses, covered with velvet trappings, fringed 
 with silver, on which, at equal intervals, were little sil¬ 
 ver bells. He was arrayed himself in a robe of gold 
 brocade; around his neck was a string of the largest 
 and finest Oriental pearls which ever belonged to a 
 Christian prince, and around his cap a golden chain, 
 hung with diamonds, of which the smallest was worth 
 more than twenty thousand ducats. 
 
 His magnificence was the more striking because of the 
 contrast presented by the simple costume of Csesar 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 125 
 
 Borgia, whose purple robe could boast no ornament. 
 The result was that Caesar, already madly jealous of his 
 brother, hated him more intensely than ever as he lis¬ 
 tened to the words of admiration for his noble bearing 
 and superb appearance which fell upon his ears all 
 along the route of the procession. From that moment 
 the worthy Cardinal Valentino sealed in his own mind 
 the fate of this man whom he was forever finding in the 
 path of his pride, his love and his ambition. 
 
 “ The Duke of Gandia,” thus says Tommaso, the 
 historian, “ surely had good reason, the ill-fated youth ! 
 to wish to leave in the public mind a distinct and pleas¬ 
 ant remembrance of his amiability and magnificence on 
 this festal occasion, for it was the last great function 
 which preceded his funeral rites.” 
 
 Lucrezia, too, had come to Rome, on the pretext of 
 taking part in this ceremony, but in reality, as we shall 
 soon see, with the view of becoming once more the in¬ 
 strument of her father’s ambition. 
 
 As the pope was not content that his son should enjoy 
 nothing greater than this vain triumph of ostentation 
 and pride, and as his war with the Orsini did not result 
 as he hoped it might, he determined to augment the for¬ 
 tune of his first-born by doing just what he had re¬ 
 proached Pope Calixtus for doing, in the famous 
 harangue we have quoted; that is to say by cutting 
 off from the dominions of the Church the cities of 
 Benevento, Terracina, and Pontecorvo, and with them 
 forming a duchy to be bestowed upon him as an appan¬ 
 age. This proposition was made by him in consistory, 
 and as the Sacred College was entirely subservient to 
 him, it met with no opposition. 
 
 This addition to the honors and emoluments already 
 heaped upon his brother, exasperated Caesar still more, 
 
126 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 although he came in for his share of the paternal favors, 
 being appointed legate a latere to Frederic of Naples, 
 in which capacity he was to place the crown upon the 
 King’s head in the name of the pope. 
 
 Meanwhile Lucrezia, after passing a few days holiday¬ 
 making with her father and brothers, had gone into 
 strict retirement at the convent of St. Sixtus. No one 
 knew the real reason for this step, nor could Csesar, 
 whose passion for her was as strange as it was unnatural, 
 prevail upon her to delay it, at least until the day 
 following his departure for Naples. Her obstinacy 
 wounded him deeply, for ever since the day when the 
 Duke of Gandia made his appearance in the procession 
 in his gorgeous attire, he fancied that he had noticed 
 that his incestuous mistress had grown cool toward him, 
 and his hatred for his brother reached such a height that 
 he resolved to rid himself of him at any price. He 
 therefore sent word to the leader of his bravoes to come 
 to him that same evening. 
 
 Michelotto was accustomed to these mysterious mes¬ 
 sages, which almost always meant that there was some 
 passion to be indulged or some plan of vengeance to be 
 carried out. As in either case he was sure to be hand¬ 
 somely paid, he took good care to be punctual and, at 
 the appointed time, he was ushered into his patron’s 
 presence. 
 
 Csesar was awaiting him leaning against the corner 
 of a vast fireplace, no longer clad in his cardinal’s robe 
 and hat, but in a slashed doublet of black velvet, 
 through which could be seen a satin vest of the same 
 color. One of his hands was playing mechanically with 
 his gloves, while the other rested on the hilt of a poisoned 
 dagger, which was always at his side. It was the cos¬ 
 tume which he regularly assumed for his nocturnal 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 127 
 
 expeditions and Michelotto was not surprised therefore 
 to find him wearing it. But his eyes flashed with a 
 more ominous fire than usual, and his cheeks, ordinarily 
 pale, were fairly leaden-hued. Michelotto had but to 
 cast one glance upon his master’s face to see that some¬ 
 thing of dire import was to take place between them. 
 
 Caesar motioned to him to close the door, which he 
 did at once; then, after a moment’s silence, during 
 which Borgia’s eyes seemed to seek to read to the utter¬ 
 most depths of the soul of the reckless ruffian who stood 
 with uncovered head before him. 
 
 “ Michelotto,” he said, in a tone in which the only 
 indication of emotion of any sort was the slightly jocose 
 inflection, “ how do you think my costume becomes 
 me?” 
 
 Well used as the rascal was to the circumlocutions 
 which his master ordinarily made use of before disclos¬ 
 ing his real purpose, he was so far from expecting the 
 question that he was speechless for a moment. 
 
 “ Admirably, Monsignore,” he said at last; “ it gives 
 your Excellency the appearance of a soldier, to match 
 your heart.” 
 
 “ I am well pleased that you think so,” said Caesar. 
 “Tell me now, do you know whose fault it is that 
 instead of this garb, which I can wear only at night, 
 I am compelled to disguise myself by day in a cardinal’s 
 hat and cloak and to pass my time ambling from church 
 to church and from consistory to consistory, when I 
 ought to be leading a noble army upon the battlefield— 
 an army in which you should be a captain, instead of 
 being, as you are, the chief of a band of wretched des¬ 
 peradoes ? ” 
 
 “Yes, Monsignore,” Michelotto replied,—he had 
 guessed Caesar’s meaning at once—“ the cause of all this 
 
128 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 is Monsignore Francesco, Duke of Gandia and Bene- 
 vento, your elder brother.” 
 
 “ And do you know,” continued Caesar, without any 
 other sign of approval of the bravo’s reply than a nod 
 of the head, accompanied by a bitter smile; “ do you 
 know who it is who has wealth without genius, a helmet 
 without brains, a sword without strength to wield it ? ” 
 
 “ The Duke of Gandia again.” 
 
 “ Do you know who it is who is always an obstacle in 
 the path of my ambition, my fortune and my love?” 
 
 “ Still the Duke of Gandia.” 
 
 “ What is your conclusion ? ” Caesar asked. 
 
 “I conclude that he must die,” coolly replied the 
 ruffian. 
 
 “ It is my conclusion, too,” said Caesar, stepping to¬ 
 ward him and seizing his hand, “ and my only regret is 
 that I did not come to that conclusion long ago. If I 
 had had a sword by my side instead of a crucifix in my 
 hand when the King of France passed through Italy 
 last year, I should have been ruler of some princely 
 domain to-day. The pope desires to exalt his family, 
 that is evident enough, but he is mistaken as to the 
 proper means. I ought to be the duke and my brother 
 the cardinal. If he had made me a duke it is very cer¬ 
 tain that I would have added to the authority conferred 
 upon me by him, the intrepid courage which would have 
 made that authority effective. He who wishes to attain 
 power and wealth must crush beneath his feet whatever 
 obstacles he encounters upon his path, and press boldly 
 against the sharpest thorns without heed to the agoniz¬ 
 ing shrieks of his flesh; he must strike with closed eyes, 
 with sword or dagger, to open his road to fortune; he 
 must not fear to dip his hands in his own blood; he 
 must, in short, follow the precedents set by all the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 129 
 
 founders of empires from Romulus to Bajazet, both of 
 whom made their power secure by fratricide. Well, 
 Michelotto, as you have well said, I am in the same 
 plight, and I am resolved not to hesitate. Now you 
 know why I sent for you ; was I wrong to rely upon you ? ” 
 
 As was to be expected, Michelotto, who saw vast pos¬ 
 sibilities of future advantage to himself in the crime, 
 replied that he was entirely at Caesar’s orders, and that 
 he had but to specify the time, place and manner of 
 their execution. To this Caesar made answer that the 
 time must necessarily be very soon, as he was on the 
 point of starting for Naples, and that the place and 
 manner of putting his brother to death must depend on 
 chance; that they must be on the watch and seize the 
 first favorable opportunity. 
 
 On the day following that on which this scheme was 
 concocted Caesar learned that his departure was fixed 
 for Thursday, June 15; at the same time he received an 
 invitation from his mother to sup with her on the four¬ 
 teenth. The banquet was to be given in his honor on 
 the occasion of his leaving Rome. Michelotto was 
 instructed to be in readiness at eleven o’clock on the 
 evening in question. 
 
 The table was spread in the open air at a beautiful 
 villa owned by Yanozza, near St. Peter-in-Vinculis. 
 The guests were Csesar Borgia, the hero of the hour; 
 the Duke of Gandia, the Prince of Squillace and 
 Donna Sancia, his wife; the Cardinal of Mont-Real, 
 Francesco Borgia, son of Calixtus III.; Don Rodrigo 
 Borgia, governor of the apostolic palace ; Don Godefroy, 
 brother of Cardinal Giovanni Borgia, then legate at 
 Perouse, and Don Alphonso Borgia, the pope’s nephew. 
 The whole family was present, except Lucrezia, who 
 had refused to come, being still at the convent. 
 
 Vol. II.—9. 
 
130 
 
 THE BORGIA8. 
 
 It was a superb feast. Caesar displayed his customary 
 gayety, while the Duke of Gandia seemed even more 
 light-hearted and joyous than ever before. 
 
 While they were still at table a masked man brought 
 Francesco a letter. He broke the seal, fairly beaming 
 with pleasure and, after running his eye over the con¬ 
 tents, replied simply : “ I will be there,” and then quickly 
 thrust the precious paper into the pocket of his doublet. 
 But, make what haste he might to conceal it, Csesar had 
 time to catch a glimpse of it, and fancied that he recog¬ 
 nized Lucrezia’s handwriting. 
 
 Meanwhile the messenger had withdrawn unnoticed 
 by all save Csesar; for it was customary in those days 
 to send love messages by men whose faces were covered 
 by masks or by women closely veiled. 
 
 At ten o’clock they rose from the table and, as the air 
 was extremely mild and clear, they strolled about for 
 some time under the magnificent pines which afforded 
 bountiful shade to the Vanozza’s mansion, but Csesar 
 did not once lose sight of his brother. At eleven, the 
 Duke of Gandia bade his mother good-night, and Csesar 
 followed his example on the pretext that he had still to 
 go to the Vatican to take leave of the pope, a filial 
 duty which he could not postpone till the morrow as he 
 was to leave Rome at daybreak. This excuse was the 
 more readily accepted because the pope never retired 
 until two or three o’clock in the morning. 
 
 The two brothers went out together, mounted the 
 horses which awaited them at the door and rode side by 
 side as far as the Borgia palace, then occupied by Cardinal 
 Ascanio Sforza, to whom Alexander presented it on the 
 eve of his election to the papacy. There the Duke of 
 Gandia and his brother parted, the former saying with 
 a smile that he did not expect to return home as he had 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 131 
 
 a visit to pay to a certain fair one, who was awaiting 
 his coming. Caesar replied that he could employ his 
 time as he thought fit, and wished him good-night. 
 
 Francesco turned to the right and Caesar to the left, 
 and Caesar noticed that the street which his brother took 
 led to the monastery of Saint-Sixtus, where Lucrezia 
 was then living. With his suspicions confirmed by this 
 fact, he made the best of his way to the Vatican, where 
 he took leave of the pope and received his blessing. 
 
 From that moment nothing certain is known of the 
 terrible deed which we are about to describe; it is 
 shrouded in mystery as impenetrable as the darkness in 
 which it was perpetrated. 
 
 The following is what is generally believed to have 
 happened: 
 
 When he parted from Csesar, the duke sent away his 
 people, keeping with him a single confidential servant, 
 in whose company he rode on to the Square of Guidecca. 
 There he found the same masked man who brought him 
 the letter; he bade his servant attend him no farther, 
 but to await his return on the square, where he would 
 take him up in two hours or thereabouts. At the ap¬ 
 pointed time he did return, dismissed the masked man 
 and started to ride back to his palace; but he had no 
 sooner turned the corner of the Jews’ Ghetto than four 
 men on foot, led by a fifth, who was mounted, rushed 
 upon him. Believing that he had to do with robbers, or 
 was the victim of a mistake, he gave them his name, 
 but, instead of staying their daggers, the name made 
 them redouble their blows and the duke soon fell dead 
 by the side of his dying valet. 
 
 Thereupon the mounted man, who had looked on in 
 cold impassibility while the foul deed was done, forced 
 his horse to back toward the body, which the four 
 
132 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 murderers laid across his saddle behind him ; then they 
 walked beside the horse to hold it in place, and the 
 whole party plunged into the lane which leads to the 
 Church of Santa-Maria in Monticelli. 
 
 The unfortunate valet was left for dead upon the 
 pavement; but a moment after they had gone he recov¬ 
 ered his strength sufficiently to groan, and his groans 
 were heard by the occupants of a house near by, who 
 carried him in and laid him on a bed, where he expired 
 almost immediately without giving any information as 
 to the murder or its perpetrators. 
 
 The Duke of Gandia’s household awaited his return 
 all night and all the following morning; then their 
 expectations changed to dread, and their dread soon 
 became downright alarm. They went to the pope and 
 told him that his son had not returned to his palace 
 since he left his mother’s house, but Alexander tried to 
 deceive himself all the rest of the day with the vain 
 hope that daylight had surprised him in some love 
 adventure and that he was waiting for darkness to cover 
 his return. 
 
 But the night passed without any news of him; and 
 on the following day the pope, a prey to the gloomiest 
 forebodings, and driven mad by the loudly expressed 
 popular belief that a great calamity had befallen him, 
 abandoned himself to utter despair, and could find 
 nothing to say amid his sighs and sobs but these words, 
 which he repeated a thousand times : 
 
 “ Search for him, search for him, and find out how 
 the poor boy met his death ! ” 
 
 Everyone thereupon joined in the search, for the duke 
 was a general favorite ; but, search as they might, from 
 one end of the city to the other, they could find nothing 
 but the body of the duke’s valet; of the master there 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 133 
 
 was no trace. It was believed, therefore, and with 
 good reason, that he had probably been thrown into the 
 Tiber, and they began to follow down its banks from Via 
 della Ripetta, questioning all the boatmen and fisher¬ 
 men, who were in a position to see, from their houses or 
 their boats, what took place on the shores of the river 
 during the two preceding nights. 
 
 At first all their questioning was barren of results, 
 but when they reached a point about opposite Via della 
 Fantanone, they finally found a man who said that he 
 saw something during the night of the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth which might possibly have some bearing upon 
 what they desired to know. He was a Slavonian named 
 Giorgio, who was taking a load of wood up river to 
 Ripetta. These are his own words : 
 
 “ Signori,” he said, “ after I unloaded my wood on the 
 bank Wednesday evening, I remained in my boat, en¬ 
 joying the cool night air, and watching to see that no¬ 
 body made off with what I had unloaded; it was 
 about two in the morning when I saw two men on foot 
 come out of the lane to the left of the Church of St. 
 Jerome. They walked out into the middle of the street, 
 and by the care with which they looked about in every 
 direction, they proved that they came out only to see if 
 anyone was passing. When they were certain that the 
 locality was deserted, they went back into the lane, and 
 soon after two others came out, using the same precau¬ 
 tions to make sure that there was nothing in sight. 
 Finding everything as they wished to find it, they 
 signed to their comrades to join them. Thereupon, a 
 man on a dapple gray horse rode out, with the body of 
 a dead man lying across his saddle behind him, the head 
 and arms hanging down on one side, and the feet on the 
 other, the hands and feet being held by the two men 
 
134 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 who first came out to reconnoitre. The three drew near 
 the river while the others watched the street; they 
 went to the spot where the city drain discharges into the 
 Tiber, the horseman turned his horse so that his tail was 
 toward the stream, and the men at his sides took the 
 body by the hands and feet, and swung it back and 
 forth thrice. At the third swing they threw it with all 
 their strength into the river. 
 
 “ When he heard the splash of the heavy body falling 
 into the water, the horseman asked : ‘ Is it done ? ’ and 
 the others replied: ‘Yes, my Lord.’ Thereupon he 
 wheeled his horse around, and seeing the dead man’s 
 cloak floating on the surface, he asked what that black 
 thing was. 
 
 “ ‘ It’s his cloak, my Lord,’ said one of the men, and 
 another ran to the part of the bank nearest to it and 
 threw stones at it until it sank. As soon as it disap¬ 
 peared, they moved away and, after going along the 
 street a few steps, turned into the lane which leads to 
 St. James. That is all I saw, Signori, and I can make 
 no further answer to your questions.” 
 
 These words removed the last hope of those who still 
 cherished any hope; but one of the pope’s retainers 
 asked the Slav how it was that after witnessing such a 
 transaction he did not report it to the governor. He re¬ 
 plied that since he had been plying his trade upon the 
 river he had seen a hundred dead bodies thrown in 
 in much the same way, but had never heard that any¬ 
 body was at all disturbed over it; so he supposed that 
 it would be the same with this one as with all the 
 others, and he did not deem it his duty to speak of it. 
 
 Acting upon this information his Holiness’ people 
 immediately assembled all the boatmen and fishermen 
 on the river, and promised so handsome a reward to the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 135 
 
 one who should find the duke’s body that they soon had 
 more than a hundred engaged in the search. Before 
 nightfall of the same day, which was the Friday, two 
 bodies were taken from the water, one of which was 
 identified as that of the ill-starred Francesco. 
 
 A single glance at the body left no doubt as to the 
 cause of death. It was pierced with nine wounds; the 
 most serious one was in the throat and the jugular 
 artery was severed. His clothes were not disturbed; he 
 was wearing his doublet, his gloves were in his belt, and 
 his money in his purse; therefore the motive for the 
 deed was revenge, not robbery. 
 
 The boat which bore the body ascended the Tiber to 
 the Castle of San-Angelo, where it was taken ashore. 
 The gorgeous suit which was worn by the duke the day 
 of the procession was brought from his palace, and they 
 clothed him in it, and laid by his side the insignia of the 
 vicar-generalship of the Church. His body lay exposed 
 to view all day, but his distracted father had not the 
 courage to go and look upon him. At last, when night 
 fell, his most faithful and most trusted retainers carried 
 him to the Church of the Madonna del Popolo, with all 
 the pomp which court and church, acting in concert, 
 could bring to the obsequies of the pope’s son. 
 
 Meanwhile Caesar Borgia was placing the crown upon 
 the head of Frederic of Aragon, with his blood-stained 
 hands. 
 
 This blow wounded Alexander to the heart’s core. As 
 he had no idea at first upon whom suspicion ought to 
 rest, he gave the strictest orders that the murderers 
 should be brought to justice ; but ere long the lament¬ 
 able truth forced itself upon him. He saw that the 
 blow dealt his family came from the very bosom of the 
 family itself, and his despair changed to frenzy. He 
 
136 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 ran like a madman through the apartments and corri¬ 
 dors of the Vatican, and bursting into the consistory, 
 with his garments torn and his hair covered with ashes, 
 he confessed all the irregularities of his past life, and 
 admitted that God inflicted merited punishment upon 
 him by thus inciting his own flesh and blood to rend 
 itself. Then he withdrew to one of the most secluded 
 and darkest corners of the palace and shut himself up 
 there, saying that he proposed to starve himself to 
 death. As a matter of fact he took no food by day, and 
 no rest by night for more than sixty hours, replying to 
 those who knocked at the door and begged him to live, 
 with groans as weak as a woman’s, or the roar of a lion. 
 At last Guilia Farnese, his latest mistress, who was 
 called Guilia Bella, finding that she could not move 
 him, was forced to send for Lucrezia, the daughter 
 whom he loved with a two-fold love, to overcome his 
 mortal obstinacy. 
 
 Lucrezia emerged from her solitude where she was be¬ 
 wailing the death of her brother, to try and comfort her 
 father. At the sound of her voice, the door opened, 
 and not till then could the Cardinal of Segovia, who 
 had been kneeling on the threshold the better part of a 
 day, entreating his Holiness to take heart, not till then, 
 we say, was he able to enter the room with servants 
 bearing food and wine. 
 
 Three days and three nights the pope remained alone 
 with Lucrezia; then he reappeared in public, calm, if 
 not comforted. Guicciardini says that his daughter 
 made him see that it would be dangerous for him to 
 make too public a display before the assassin, who 
 would soon return, of his boundless affection for the 
 victim. 
 
 Meanwhile Caesar Borgia was staying on at Naples, 
 
THE BORGIAS 
 
 The body of Francesco Borgia , Duke of 
 Gandia , murdered by order of Ccesar Borgia , 
 thrown into the Tiber. 
 

THE BORGIAS. 
 
 137 
 
 in order to give his father’s grief time to grow calmer, 
 as well as to carry through a new mission with which he 
 was entrusted, and which was nothing less than the ne¬ 
 gotiation of a marriage between Lucrezia and Don 
 Alphonso of Aragon, Duke of Bicelli and Prince of 
 Salerno, the natural son of Alphonso II. and brother of 
 Donna Sancia. To be sure Lucrezia was already 
 married to the Lord of Pesaro ; but she was the daugh¬ 
 ter of a father who had received from heaven the 
 right to bind and to unbind, so that there was no occa¬ 
 sion to worry about trifles. When everything was ready 
 for the new betrothal, the divorce would be forthcom¬ 
 ing ; Alexander was too clever a politician to leave his 
 daughter married to a son-in-law who had become use¬ 
 less to him. 
 
 Toward the end of August they learned that the 
 legate, having accomplished his mission to the new 
 king to his perfect satisfaction, was about to return to 
 Rome. He arrived on the fifth of September, less than 
 three months after the death of the Duke of Gandia, 
 and on the sixth he went from the Church of Santa- 
 Maria-Novella, at the door of which the cardinals, and 
 the ambassadors of Spain and Venice were awaiting 
 him on horseback, according to custom, to the Vatican, 
 where his Holiness was then presiding over the consis¬ 
 tory. He entered the apartments where that body was 
 in session, and was received by the pope, who bestowed 
 his blessing upon him, and embraced him, in accordance 
 with the ceremonial. Then, still accompanied by the 
 cardinals and ambassadors as before, he was escorted to 
 his apartments, and went thence, as soon as he was left 
 alone, to those of the pope. They did not speak together 
 at the consistory, and the father and son had a thousand 
 things to say to each other, but not, as one might think, 
 
138 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 of the Duke of Gandia; his name was not mentioned 
 between them on that day nor afterwards, any more 
 than if he had never existed. 
 
 It should be said that Caesar was the bearer of good 
 news. King Frederic gave his consent to the proposed 
 union, and the marriage between Sforza and Lucrezia 
 was annulled on the ground of impotence. He also 
 authorized the exhumation of Djein’s body, which, as 
 the reader will remember, was worth three hundred 
 thousand ducats to the pope. 
 
 Thereafter, as Caesar had hoped and expected, he 
 succeeded to the power and influence in the pope’s 
 counsels which the Duke of Gandia had exerted, and 
 the Romans were not slow to feel the effects of the 
 change in the rapid strides which Rome made toward 
 utter demoralization. It was a constant succession of 
 fetes, balls and masquerades; of hunting parties on a 
 vast scale of magnificence, at which, Caesar, who was 
 beginning to lay aside his cardinal’s robe from time to 
 time, perhaps because the color fatigued him, appeared 
 in a coat cut after the French fashion, attended, in 
 regal state, by cardinals, ambassadors, and guards. 
 Thus it came about that the papal city, wholly en¬ 
 grossed like any courtesan, in her lewd orgies and 
 debauchery, had never been (says the Cardinal of 
 Viterbo), even in the days of Nero or Heliogabalus, 
 more aflame with sedition, more deeply sunken in riot¬ 
 ous living, or more stained with blood. Never had the 
 hand of God borne so heavily upon her, never had she 
 been so dishonored by informers, never had her streets 
 been so infested by bands of hired ruffians. Robbers 
 were so numerous, and so bold that to go beyond the 
 city gates was to court death, and even within the walls 
 one was no longer safe. Neither house nor fortress 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 139 
 
 afforded sure asylum. There was no law nor justice. 
 Gold, brute strength, and license were kings in Rome. 
 
 Meanwhile gold was melting away in these fetes as in 
 a fiery furnace, and by a just dispensation of heaven 
 Alexander and Caesar began to look with covetous eyes 
 upon the fortunes of the very men whose simony had 
 effected their elevation to the point they had reached. 
 The first trial that they made of this new method of 
 coining money was upon the Cardinal of Cosenza. The 
 pretext was as follows: 
 
 A papal dispensation had been granted some time be¬ 
 fore to a professed nun, the last heiress of the crown of 
 Portugal, to lay aside the veil and marry a natural son 
 of the last king. This marriage was prejudicial to the 
 last degree to the interests of Ferdinand and Isabella 
 of Spain, and they sent ambassadors to Alexander to 
 complain of such a proceeding just at the time that a 
 marriage was about to be contracted between the House 
 of Aragon and the Holy See. 
 
 Alexander realized the force of their complaints, and 
 determined to set himself right with them. He conse¬ 
 quently denied all knowledge of the dispensatory letter, 
 for signing which he had received sixty thousand 
 ducats, and accused the Archbishop of Cosenza, secre¬ 
 tary of the department having cognizance of such mat¬ 
 ters, of sending a forged dispensation. Upon that 
 charge the archbishop was taken to the Castle of San 
 Angelo, and a prosecution was instituted. 
 
 As it was by no means a simple matter to prove such 
 a charge, especially if the archbishop should persist in 
 asserting that the pope actually signed the dispensation, 
 they resolved to practice upon him a trick which could 
 hardly fail of success. 
 
 One evening the Cardinal of Cosenza received a visit 
 
140 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 in his cell from Cardinal Valentino. With the unaf¬ 
 fected affable air, which he knew so well how to assume 
 when it would be useful to him, he pointed out to the 
 prisoner the embarrassment of the pope, and that no 
 one but himself, whom his Holiness looked upon as his 
 best friend, could extricate him from it. 
 
 The archbishop replied that he was entirely at his 
 Holiness’ service. 
 
 Thereupon Caesar seated himself at the other side of 
 the table upon which the prisoner was leaning with his 
 head in his hand, when he entered, and dilated at length 
 upon the dilemma of the Holy See. Beyond question 
 it was a perplexing one. At the very moment of ratify¬ 
 ing so important an alliance with the House of Aragon, 
 as that of Alphonso and Lucrezia, they could not con¬ 
 fess to Ferdinand and Isabella that for a few paltry 
 ducats his Holiness had signed a dispensation which 
 brought together in the hands of the husband and wife 
 all the legitimate claims to a crown upon which Ferdi¬ 
 nand and Isabella had no other claims than those of 
 conquest. This confession w’ould inevitably break off 
 all negotiations and the pope’s family would bring about 
 its own fall by making impossible an alliance which 
 ought to be the basis of a vast augmentation of its 
 greatness. 
 
 The Archbishop of Cosenza therefore would readily 
 see what the pope hoped for as the fruit of his devotion 
 and good-will; it was nothing more nor less than a sim¬ 
 ple admission on his part that he had supposed that he 
 might take it upon himself to grant the dispensation. 
 
 As the penalty to be paid for an offence of that 
 nature was entirely within the discretion of Alexander, 
 the culprit would readily see that the sentence would be 
 as mild as any father could inflict. Furthermore the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 141 
 
 reward was in the same hands as the sentence, and if 
 the sentence were such as might be expected from a 
 father, the reward would surely not be unworthy of a 
 king. It would be nothing less than to be present as 
 legate, and with the title of cardinal, at the wedding of 
 Lucrezia and Alphonso, an honor which would be no 
 more than his due, because the marriage would not take 
 place except for his self-sacrificing devotion. 
 
 The Archbishop of Cosenza knew the men with whom 
 he had to do; he knew that they would hesitate at 
 nothing to gain their ends; he knew that they had a 
 powder with the taste and odor of sugar, the presence 
 of which in food could not be detected, and which killed 
 slowly or quickly, as they chose, without leaving a 
 trace; he knew the secret of a poisoned key which was 
 always on the pope’s mantel, so that, when his Holiness 
 wished to be rid of one of his intimates, he would order 
 him to go and open a certain drawer—the handle of the 
 key was supplied with a small, sharp point and, as the 
 lock of the drawer was hard to turn, it was necessary to 
 grasp the key firmly and use force, when the lock would 
 yield and the victim noticed nothing save a slight 
 scratch; but that scratch was fatal. He knew, too, that 
 Caesar wore a ring formed of two lions’ heads, and when 
 he shook hands with one of his friends, he would turn 
 the stone inward, the teeth of the lion would thereupon 
 become the teeth of a serpent, and the friend died, curs¬ 
 ing the whole race of Borgias. 
 
 He yielded, therefore, partly through fear, and partly 
 because he was dazzled by the promised reward; and 
 Caesar returned to the Vatican, armed with the precious 
 paper wherein the Archbishop of Cosenza avowed that 
 he, and he alone, was responsible for the dispensation 
 granted to the nun of royal blood. 
 
142 
 
 i 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Two days later, by virtue of the evidence furnished 
 by the archbishop himself, the pope, in the presence of 
 the Governor of Rome, the auditor of the apostolic 
 chamber, and the principal law officers, pronounced 
 sentence upon him. He was condemned to be deprived 
 of all his benefices and all his offices in the hierarchy, 
 to be dismissed in disgrace from all the orders of which 
 he was a member, and to suffer confiscation of all his 
 property ; his person was to be turned over to the civil 
 magistrate. 
 
 Two days later that functionary visited the prison to 
 perform his duty, according to the instructions given 
 him by the pope. He entered the archbishop’s cell, 
 followed by a clerk, two servants and four guards. The 
 clerk unfolded a parchment which he held in his hand 
 and read the sentence; the two servants stripped the 
 prisoner of his episcopal garb, and took from a parcel a 
 frock of coarse, white cloth, drawers of the same ma¬ 
 terial, and a pair of heavy shoes, in which they dressed 
 him. Then the guards took charge of him and carried 
 him off to one of the deepest and darkest dungeons in 
 the Castle of San Angelo, where he had no furniture 
 except a wooden crucifix, a table, a chair, and a bed; 
 nothing to entertain him except a lamp, a bible, and a 
 breviary; and nothing to sustain his inner man save 
 two pounds of bread and a keg of water, which were 
 supplied him every three days, as was a bottle of oil for 
 his lamp. 
 
 Before a year had passed the poor archbishop died of 
 despair, after he had actually gnawed his flesh in his agony. 
 
 On the same day that he paid his visit to the dungeon, 
 Caesar Borgia, for his clever management of the affair, 
 was endowed by the pope with all the property of the 
 condemned man. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 143 
 
 (But the hunting parties and the balls and masquer¬ 
 ades were not the only forms of entertainment indulged 
 in by the pope and his family. From time to time 
 extraordinary scenes were enacted for their behoof. We 
 will cite but two such, one of which was the public 
 execution of a sentence, the other an incident of the 
 stud, pure and simple. As both are rich in details, for 
 which we would not have the reader think that we have 
 drawn on our imagination, we beg leave to say that they 
 are translated word for word from the Latin journal of 
 Burchard. 
 
 “About the same time (the early part of 1499) a 
 courtesan named La Corsetta was imprisoned for having 
 had commerce with a Spanish Moor, who visited her in 
 woman’s clothes. To atone for their scandalous conduct, 
 both were taken through the streets, she without shift 
 or petticoat and with nothing to cover her except the 
 Moor’s frock, no button of which was buttoned, so that 
 it was entirely open in front; and he in his female garb, 
 with his arms tied behind his back and the skirts turned 
 up above his waist, so that the part which had sinned 
 was exposed to every eye. When they had made the 
 circuit of the city thus, La Corsetta was sent back to 
 prison with the Moor. But on the seventh of April 
 following the latter was dragged out again and taken 
 with two robbers to the Field of Flowers. They were 
 preceded by an archer riding backwards upon an ass 
 and holding in his hand a long pole, to the end of which 
 were fastened the bleeding organs of a Jew, who had 
 been deprived of them because he was detected having 
 commerce with a Christian woman. When they reached 
 the place of execution the two robbers were hanged 
 and the unfortunate Moor was made fast to a stake sur¬ 
 rounded with wood, where he was to be burned alive; 
 
144 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 but a pouring rain came on and the fire would not burn 
 despite the efforts of the executioner to make it.” 
 
 This unforeseen accident, which the people took for a 
 miracle, deprived Lucrezia of the most interesting part 
 of the execution; but her father determined to make it 
 up to her later by a spectacle of a widely different 
 nature. We beg to inform the reader once more that 
 the few lines which we purpose to place before his eyes 
 are also translated from the journal of the worthy 
 German, Burchard, who saw in the most harrowing 
 occurrences, as well as the most salacious, nothing but 
 commonplace items, which he jotted down with a scri¬ 
 vener’s indifference, without comment and without 
 following them up with any moral reflections. 
 
 “ On the eleventh of November a certain peasant 
 having come into Rome with two mares loaded with 
 wood, the pope’s servants cut the girths just as he was 
 passing through the Square of St. Peter’s, so that the 
 wood fell to the ground with the pack saddles. Then 
 they led the mares into a courtyard between the palace 
 and the gate, and opened the stable doors. Four stall¬ 
 ions, without bit or bridle, rushed out in pursuit of the 
 mares and, with a mighty neighing and stamping and 
 biting, succeeded in covering them after grievously 
 wounding them. The pope and Madame Lucrezia, who 
 were at the window directly over the palace door, took 
 great pleasure in the struggle, and in the sequel.” 
 
 (We will follow Burchard’s example and abstain from 
 comment.) 
 
 The stratagem to which Caesar had recourse in the 
 matter of his Grace of Cosenza had the desired effect. 
 Ferdinand and Isabella could no longer hold Alexander 
 responsible for signing the dispensation of which they 
 complained, so that no further obstacle arose to the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 145 
 
 marriage of Lucrezia and Alphonso. The pope’s joy 
 knew no bounds when he became certain of this, for the 
 marriage was of the more importance in his eyes, because 
 he was already dreaming of a second between Caesar and 
 Donna Carlotta, Frederic’s daughter. 
 
 Caesar’s every act since his brother’s death had demon¬ 
 strated his unfitness and distaste for the life of a prelate, 
 so that no one was surprised one morning when he entered 
 the consistory, and addressed the pope to this effect. He 
 saw that from his earliest years he had been irresistibly 
 drawn, both by his inclination and his temperament, to 
 secular pursuits, and that it was for no other reason than 
 his wish to obey the absolute commands of his Holiness 
 that he had given his life to the Church, accepted the 
 purple and such other dignities as had been bestowed 
 upon him, and had entered the consecrated ranks of the 
 deaconry; that he realized that at his age and in his 
 situation, it was as unbecoming for him to yield to his 
 desires as it was impossible for him to resist them, and 
 therefore he humbly besought his Holiness to deign to 
 humor his unconquerable inclinations, and permit him 
 to lay aside the ecclesiastical garb and dignities, so that 
 he might become a part of the world once more, and 
 contract a lawful marriage. At the same time he begged 
 their Eminences, the cardinals, to intercede for him with 
 his Holiness, to whom he would voluntarily resign all his 
 churches, abbeys, and livings, as well as all the other 
 dignities and honors connected with the Church which 
 he had received. The cardinals complied with Caesar’s 
 request by unanimously referring the decision of the 
 matter to the pope, and, as may readily be imagined, 
 the pope, like the indulgent father he was, unwilling to 
 force his son’s inclination, accepted his renunciation, 
 and granted his petition. Caesar at once doffed the 
 Vol. II.—10. 
 
146 
 
 4 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 purple, which had nothing in common with him, so says 
 Tommaso Tommasi, his historian, save that it is of the 
 color of blood. 
 
 Indeed, this renunciation was urgently needed and 
 there was no time to be lost. Charles VIII. on return¬ 
 ing from hunting one day, thoroughly exhausted, washed 
 his head with cold water, and then ate a hearty supper. 
 He had an apoplectic stroke immediately after, and 
 died, leaving the throne to the well-meaning Louis XII., 
 who had two great weaknesses, which were equally dis¬ 
 astrous in the sequel: one was a thirst for conquest, and 
 the other a longing to have children of his own. 
 
 Now Alexander who was always on the watch for 
 every political change, saw at a glance all that he might 
 gain by the accession of Louis XII., and stood in readi¬ 
 ness to take advantage of the new king’s need of his 
 assistance in fulfilling his twofold ambition. He needed 
 his assistance as a secular potentate in his expedition 
 against the Duchy of Milan, upon which he had a 
 claim, as we have seen, in right of Valentine Visconti, 
 his grandmother. He needed his assistance as the 
 supreme head of the church to annul his marriage with 
 Jeanne, Louis XI.’s daughter, who was barren, and 
 terribly deformed, and whom he took to wife only be¬ 
 cause he was mortally afraid of her father. Alexander 
 was ready to accommodate him in both respects, and fur¬ 
 thermore to place a cardinal’s hat upon the head of the 
 king’s friend, Georges d’Amboise, if the king would use 
 his influence to induce the young Donna Carlotta, who 
 was at his court, to marry his (Alexander’s) son. 
 
 This negotiation was far advanced when Caesar laid 
 aside the purple, and assumed the garb of a layman, 
 which had been so long the constant object of his ambi¬ 
 tion ; and on that very day Monsieur de Villeneuve, 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 147 
 
 Louis’ ambassador, who was to take Caesar back to 
 France with him, arrived in Rome, and paid his re¬ 
 spects to the ex-cardinal, who did the honors of the 
 Eternal City for a whole month, with his accustomed 
 lavish extravagance, surrounding him with all the 
 allurements which he knew so well how to employ 
 for the entertainment of those of whose services he 
 stood in need. 
 
 They then set on their journey, preceded by a cour¬ 
 ier from the pope, whose mission was to order the au¬ 
 thorities of all the towns through which they passed to 
 receive them with every mark of honor and respect. 
 
 Similar orders had been given throughout France, 
 where the illustrious travelers were honored with so 
 numerous a guard, and where people rushed in such 
 vast crowds to see them pass, that some of Caesar’s suite 
 wrote to Rome from Paris that they had seen neither 
 trees nor houses nor walls in France; nothing but men, 
 women and sunshine. 
 
 The king, on the pretext of going out to hunt, rode 
 two leagues out of the city to receive his guest, and as 
 he knew that Caesar was much attached to the name of 
 Valentino, which he bore as cardinal, and which he 
 still continued to bear with the title of count, although 
 he had resigned the archbishopric whence he originally 
 took the name, created him Duke of Valentinois in 
 Dauphine, and gave him a pension of twenty thousand 
 francs. After he had bestowed this princely gift upon 
 him, and talked with him for nearly two hours, he left 
 him in order that he might be free to make the impres¬ 
 sive entry he had arranged to make. 
 
 It was on Wednesday, December 18, 1498, that Caesar 
 Borgia made his formal entry into the town of Chinon 
 with a display of pomp and magnificence worthy of a 
 
148 
 
 | 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 pope’s son on his way to espouse the daughter of a 
 king. 
 
 The procession was led by twenty-four mules covered 
 with red trappings, which were adorned with shields 
 bearing the duke’s arms; they were loaded with carved 
 chests and caskets incrusted with ivory and silver; next 
 came other twenty-four mules, also covered with trap¬ 
 pings, but in this instance of the colors of the King of 
 France, which were yellow and red. After these came 
 ten mules, covered with yellow satin with red stripes 
 across, and lastly, ten more covered with striped cloth 
 of gold, on which smooth and rough stripes alternated. 
 
 Behind the sixty-eight mules which led the way, six¬ 
 teen noble war horses came prancing along, led by as 
 many grooms, walking beside them ; they were followed 
 by eighteen hunters, ridden by pages of fourteen or 
 fifteen years, sixteen of them being dressed in crimson 
 velvet and two in cloth of gold. (The costume of these 
 last was so rich and costly that it gave rise, if we may 
 believe Brantome, to grave suspicions in every mind as 
 to the reason for the manifest favoritism shown the two 
 children, who were far handsomer than any of the 
 others.) Behind these eighteen horses came six beauti¬ 
 ful mules with harnesses of red velvet, driven by six 
 footmen dressed in velvet like that of which the harness 
 was made. 
 
 The third division was headed by two mules covered 
 with cloth of gold, each bearing two chests which were 
 said to contain the duke’s treasure and the precious 
 gems he was bringing to the bride he hoped to win, as 
 well as the sacred relics and the bulls which his father 
 had placed in his hands to be delivered to his good friend, 
 Louis XII. They were followed by twenty gentlemen, 
 arrayed in cloth of gold and silver, among whom were 
 
THE BORGIAS. 149 
 
 Paolo Giordano Orsino, and other knights and nobles 
 of the States of the Church. 
 
 Next came two tabors, a rebec, and four soldiers play¬ 
 ing upon silver bugles ; and following them, surrounded 
 by twenty-four servants clad in a parti-colored livery of 
 crimson velvet and yellow silk, were Messire Georges 
 d’Amboise and Monseigneur le Due de Valentinois; 
 the latter arrayed in red satin and cloth of gold thickly 
 studded with pearls and brilliants; on his cap was a 
 double row of rubies as large as beans, which emitted 
 as brilliant and rich a light as the carbuncles of which 
 we read in the Thousand and One Nights; he wore 
 around his neck a necklace worth two hundred thousand 
 francs, and there was not one portion of his attire, even 
 to his boots, which was not trimmed or laced with gold 
 thread and studded with pearls. He bestrode a superb 
 steed of great size, magnificently caparisoned and with 
 a breastplate of golden leaves of superb workmanship, 
 from among which bouquets of pearls and clusters of 
 rubies sprung forth like flowers. 
 
 The rear of this gorgeous cortege was closed by 
 twenty-four mules in red trappings, adorned with the 
 duke’s arms and laden with silver plate, tents and 
 baggage. 
 
 But the one circumstance which more than any other 
 imparted to the whole spectacle an air of reckless and 
 unheard of extravagance, was that all the mules and 
 horses were shod with golden shoes, so insecurely fast¬ 
 ened that three-fourths of them remained on the road. 
 Caesar was much censured for his insolence in thus 
 debasing the metal of which kings’ crowns are made by 
 placing it upon his horses’ feet. 
 
 However, all this pomp and magnificence utterly 
 failed of its effect upon her for whose benefit it was 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 150 ’ 
 
 displayed. When Donna Carlotta was informed that it 
 was the hope of becoming her husband that had brought 
 Caesar Borgia to France, she replied simply that she 
 would never take to husband a man who was not only a 
 priest himself, but the son of a priest; not only an 
 assassin, but a fratricide, and infamous not only by the 
 very circumstances of his birth, but by his morals and 
 his foul deeds. 
 
 But, in default of the haughty Aragonese princess, 
 Caesar soon found another of noble blood, who consented 
 to become his wife. She was Mademoiselle d’Albret, 
 daughter of the King of Navarre. The marriage, the 
 conditions whereof were that the pope should give two 
 hundred thousand ducats to the bride by way of dowry 
 and should make her brother a cardinal, was celebrated 
 on May 10th. On the day of Pentecost following, the 
 Due de Yalentinois received the collar of the Order of 
 Saint-Michel, which was founded by Louis XI., and 
 was, at that time, the most highly considered of all 
 those in the gift of the King of France. 
 
 The news of this marriage, which ensured the alliance 
 of Louis XII., was received by the pope with great 
 satisfaction, and he at once ordered a general illumina¬ 
 tion and display of fireworks throughout the city. 
 
 Louis XII., in addition to his gratitude to the pope 
 for annulling his marriage with Madame Jeanne de 
 France and assenting to his union with Anne de Bre¬ 
 tagne, was influenced in his course by the fact that it 
 was absolutely essential to the success of his designs 
 upon Italy to have the pope for his ally. He therefore 
 promised Caesar that, as soon as he should be in posses¬ 
 sion of Milan, he would place at his disposal three 
 hundred lances, to be employed as he saw fit and against 
 such persons as he chose, excepting always the allies of 
 
\ 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 151 
 
 France. The conquest of Milan was to be taken in 
 hand as soon as Louis was assured of the support or 
 even of the neutrality of the Venetians, to whom he 
 had sent ambassadors with power to promise in his name 
 the surrender of Cremona, and of Ghiera d’Adda, as 
 soon as he had conquered Lombardy. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that everything on the outside 
 was working favorably for the pushing policy of Alex¬ 
 ander VI., when he was suddenly called upon to turn 
 his eyes away from France, and bring them back to the 
 centre of Italy. In the heart of Florence there was a 
 man with no duchy, no crown, not even a sword, whose 
 only power was the power of his intellect, whose only 
 armor his purity of soul, and whose only offensive 
 weapon his voice ; and that man was beginning to be a 
 more formidable enemy to the pope than all the kings, 
 dukes or princes on earth were likely to be. It was the 
 poor Dominican monk, Girolamo Savonarola, the same 
 who refused absolution to Lorenze dei Medici because 
 he refused to restore the independence of his native 
 country. 
 
 Girolamo Savonarola predicted that the nations be¬ 
 yond the Alps would come over into Italy, and Charles 
 VIII. came and conquered Naples; he predicted that 
 Charles VIII. was threatened by a great calamity, be¬ 
 cause he failed to fulfill the mission of deliverer which 
 he received from God, and Charles VIII. was dead; and 
 last of all, like him who for eight days walked about the 
 holy city, crying : “ Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! ” and 
 on the ninth day cried: “Woe unto myself,” so did 
 Savonarola predict his own destruction. But it was not 
 in his nature to flinch from danger, and his resolution to 
 attack the colossus of abomination seated in the chair 
 of St. Peter, did not abate one whit. To each new 
 
152 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 scandal, to each new crime, whether it was shamelessly 
 proclaimed in the light of day, or tried to hide its head 
 in the darkness of the night, he never failed to call the 
 attention of the people, and to discharge his anathema 
 at the offspring of bestial passion, or of the pontiff’s 
 ambition. 
 
 Thus he branded with his scathing censure the latest 
 amour of Alexander with Giulia Farnese, who added a 
 son to his numerous family in the month of April; and 
 called down the curse of heaven upon the murder of the 
 Duke of Gandia, that wicked fratricide caused by the 
 jealousy of an incestuous lover. He pointed out to his 
 compatriots, who were not admitted to the league then 
 in process of formation, what fate they might expect, 
 when the Borgias, having made themselves masters of 
 all the little principalities, should turn their attention to 
 the duchies and republics. Thus Alexander found that 
 he had in him a secular no less than a spiritual foe, and 
 one whose persistent and threatening voice must be 
 hushed at any price. 
 
 Vast as the pope’s power was, it was by no means a 
 trifling task to accomplish. Savonarola, who preached 
 the doctrine of liberty in its strictest form, had formed 
 a considerable party known by the name of Piangioni 
 or Penitents , in the very heart of wealthy and dissolute 
 Florence. It was made up of citizens who desired re¬ 
 form in both Church and State, who accused the Medici 
 of having enslaved their country, and the Borgias of 
 having shaken the very foundations of the faith; and 
 who demanded that the republic should be reorganized 
 upon the principle of popular sovereignty, and that the 
 religion should be restored to its pristine simplicity. As 
 to the first of these points great progress had already 
 been made, for, in spite of the other two factions, the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 153 
 
 Arrabiati or Madmen, which was made up of the richest 
 and noblest young patricians of Florence, who desired 
 an oligarchy, and the Bigi or Grays, who hoped for the 
 return of the Medici, and who were so called because 
 they conspired in the dark, in spite of them all, we say, 
 the Piangioni had successively obtained an amnesty for 
 all crimes and offences committed under former govern¬ 
 ments, the abolition of the balie, which was a privilege 
 of the aristocracy, the establishment of a supreme coun¬ 
 cil composed of eighteen hundred citizens, and the sub¬ 
 stitution of popular election for the practice of drawing 
 lots, or irresponsible selection by a few powerful men. 
 
 The first measure resorted to by Alexander against 
 the ever-growing power of Savonarola was to pronounce 
 him a heretic, and, as such, to forbid him to preach; but 
 Savonarola avoided the effect of this prohibition by set¬ 
 ting up his disciple and friend Domenico Bonvicini of 
 Pescia to preach in his stead. The result was simply 
 that the master’s precepts issued from other lips—noth¬ 
 ing more—and the seed, although sown by a different 
 hand, fell none the less in soil that was of amazing fer¬ 
 tility and quick to give it fruition. • 
 
 Furthermore Savonarola, establishing the precedent 
 which Luther followed so successfully twenty-two years 
 later, when he burned at Wittemberg the bull of ex- 
 communication promulgated by Leo X., soon wearied of 
 keeping silent, and on the authority of Pope Pelagius 
 declared that an unjust excommunication was utterly 
 inefficacious, and that he against whom it was directed 
 need not even take the pains to be relieved from it. He 
 therefore announced, on Christmas Day, 1497, that the 
 Lord had commanded him to throw aside his allegiance, 
 in view of the corruption of the master, and began again 
 to preach at the Cathedral, with greater success than 
 
154 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 ever for the very reason that his sermons had been inter¬ 
 rupted, and with effects which were the more formidable 
 for being founded upon the sympathy which is always 
 inspired in the masses by unjust persecution. 
 
 Thereupon, in order to enforce his prohibition, Alex¬ 
 ander applied to Leonardo dei Medici, vicar of the 
 Archbishop of Florence, who, in obedience to orders 
 from Rome, issued a mandate forbidding the faithful to 
 attend Savonarola’s preaching. According to the terms 
 of this mandate, those who listened to the words of the 
 excommunicate would not be admitted to confession or 
 communion, and when they died, inasmuch as they 
 would be tainted with heresy because of their spiritual 
 intercourse with a heretic, their bodies would be drawn 
 upon hurdles, and denied Christian burial. 
 
 Savonarola appealed from his spiritual superior to the 
 people and to the seignorial body, and those two powers, 
 acting in unison, ordered the archbishop’s vicar to leave 
 Florence within two hours. This occurred in the early 
 part of 1498. 
 
 The expulsion of Leonardo dei Medici was a signal 
 triumph for Savonarola. Determined, as ever, to em¬ 
 ploy his increasing influence in the direction of greater 
 purity of morals, he resolved to change the last day of 
 the carnival, a day always theretofore given over to 
 worldly pleasure, into a day of prayer and contrition. 
 The result was that on Mardi Gras a great number of 
 young children assembled in front of the Cathedral, and 
 there separated into small groups, who went from house 
 to house throughout the city, seeking out profane books, 
 lewd pictures, lutes and harps, playing cards and dice, 
 cosmetics and perfumery, and all the thousand and one 
 products of a corrupt society and civilization, with the 
 aid of which Satan sometimes wages war so successfully 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 155 
 
 upon God. And tlie good people of Florence, hearken¬ 
 ing to the childish voices, brought to the Palazzo di 
 Duomo all these works of perdition, of which there was 
 soon an enormous pile. To this the youthful reformers 
 set fire, singing psalms and hymns the while. There 
 were burned a great number of copies of Boccaccio, 
 and the Morgante Maggiore, and quantities of paintings 
 by Fra Bartolomeo, who, from that day, renounced 
 worldly subjects to devote his brush entirely to the 
 delineation of religious scenes. 
 
 Such symptoms of reform were alarming in the ex¬ 
 treme to Alexander and he resolved to fight Savonarola 
 with his own principal weapon, eloquence. He selected 
 to take the field against him a preacher of acknowledged 
 talent, named Francesco di Puglia, and despatched him 
 to Florence, where he began to declaim against Savon¬ 
 arola in the Church of Santa Croce, charging him with 
 heresy and impiety. At the same time the pope sent to 
 the seignorial body a letter in which he declared that if 
 they did not interdict the heresiarch from preaching, all 
 the property of Florentine merchants in the papal 
 dominions would be confiscated and the republic itself 
 laid under interdict, and declared to be the spiritual 
 and temporal enemy of the Church. 
 
 The seignorial body, abandoned by France, and 
 alarmed beyond measure by the rapid growth of the 
 secular power of Rome, was forced to yield, and inti¬ 
 mated to Savonarola that he must cease to preach. He 
 obeyed, and took leave of his hearers in a discourse re¬ 
 markable for lofty eloquence and firm adhesion to the 
 principles he had struggled so hard to make prevail. 
 
 Savonarola’s retirement, however, instead of allaying 
 the agitation, served only to augment it; people talked 
 of the fulfillment of his prophecies, and sectaries more 
 
156 
 
 i 
 
 THE BORGIA& 
 
 fervent than their master, magnifying his inspiration 
 into the power to perform miracles, proclaimed that 
 Savonarola had offered to go down into the crypt of the 
 cathedral with his antagonist and to prove that his was 
 the true doctrine by raising the dead, promising at the 
 same time to confess that he was vanquished if the 
 miracle should be performed by his opponent. This 
 assertion came to the ears of Francesco di Puglia and, 
 as he was one of those ardent spirits who make no 
 account of life when the sacrifice of their lives may be 
 beneficial to their cause, he declared, in all humility, 
 that he looked upon himself as too great a sinner to 
 hope that God would confer upon him the power to 
 perform a miracle; but he challenged Savonarola to a 
 test of a different sort, by proposing that they should 
 stand together at the stake. He knew that he should 
 perish in the flames, he said, but he would, at least, 
 avenge the sacred cause of the religion, because he was 
 sure that the tempter who had enticed so many souls 
 away to their eternal damnation would perish with 
 him. 
 
 This proposition was reported to Savonarola, but as 
 he was not responsible for the first challenge he hesitated 
 to accept the second. His disciple, Brother Domenico 
 Bonvicini, however, more confident than himself in his 
 own power, declared that he was ready to accept the 
 trial by fire in his master’s place, being well assured that 
 God would perform a miracle at the intercession of His 
 prophet. On the instant the news that the mortal chal¬ 
 lenge was accepted ran like wildfire all over Florence. 
 Savonarola’s partisans, who were all men of deep con¬ 
 victions, had no doubt of the triumph of their cause. 
 His enemies, on the other hand, were enchanted to have 
 a heretic voluntarily consent to stand at the stake; and 
 
THE BORGIAS. 157 
 
 those who were indifferent foresaw in the approaching 
 trial a spectacle of engrossing and horrific interest. 
 
 But the self-sacrificing devotion of Brother Bonvicini 
 of Pescia did not meet the views of Brother Francesco 
 di Puglia; he was willing to die a horrible death, but 
 only on condition that Savonarola should share it with 
 him. What cared he for the death of so obscure a 
 disciple as Brother Bonvicini ? It was the master whom 
 he desired to reach, the originator and chief exponent 
 of the heretical doctrine, whom it was necessary to 
 involve in his own destruction. He declared, therefore, 
 that his challenge was to Savonarola alone and that he 
 could by no means agree to play this terrible game in 
 person while his adversary played by proxy. 
 
 Thereupon something happened which could hardly 
 have been anticipated; two Francescan monks entered 
 the lists to contend with the disciple in the stead of 
 Brother Francesco di Puglia, who refused to break a 
 lance with any but the master. They were Brother 
 Nicolas Pilly and Brother Andrea Rondinelli. The 
 partisans of Savonarola, when their antagonist was thus 
 reinforced, at once came forward in crowds to offer to 
 submit to the test. The Francescans would not be out¬ 
 done, and every one espoused the one side or the other, 
 all with equal ardor. Florence seemed transformed into 
 a retreat for madmen; everyone was crying aloud for 
 an opportunity to stand in the fire, and soon it was not 
 the men alone who were flinging challenges at each 
 other, but women and mere children were clamoring to 
 make the experiment. 
 
 At last the seignorial body, preserving the rights of 
 the two who had first joined issue, decreed that the 
 strange duel should take place between Domenico 
 Bonvicini and Andrea Rondinelli, the details to be 
 
158 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 arranged by ten citizens. The day fixed for the spec¬ 
 tacle was the seventh of April, 1498, and the place the 
 palace square. 
 
 The judges of the lists made their arrangements like 
 men of experience. A scaffolding five feet high, ten 
 wide, and eighty long was erected at the selected spot. 
 Upon this scaffolding, which was all covered with 
 branches and underbrush, kept in place by low fences 
 made of the driest wood obtainable, they had made two 
 paths, two feet wide at the most, and seventy feet long, 
 the entrance to them being at the end next the Loggia 
 dei Lanzi, and the exit at the other end. The Loggia 
 itself was cut in two by a partition, so that each cham¬ 
 pion could have a sort of room to himself to make his 
 preparations, just as every actor at the theatre has his 
 dressing-room; but in this case the tragedy to be 
 enacted was no fictitious one. 
 
 The Franciscans came upon the square and entered 
 the part set aside for them without any religious demon¬ 
 stration, while Savonarola, on the other hand, led the 
 procession of his followers, clad in the priestly garb in 
 which he was wont to celebrate the sacrament, and hold¬ 
 ing aloft the consecrated host, which every bystander 
 might see as the structure which contained it was of 
 crystal. 
 
 Brother Dominico of Pescea, the hero of the occasion, 
 followed him, crucifix in hand, and all the Dominican 
 monks marched behind him, each with a red cross, sing¬ 
 ing psalms. Behind the monks came the most consider¬ 
 able citizens of their faction with torches in their hands; 
 for they were so sure of the triumph of their cause that 
 they proposed to set fire to the pile themselves. The 
 square itself was so densely thronged that the crowd 
 overflowed into all the adjoining streets. At doors and 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 159 
 
 windows nothing could be seen but a sea of heads; the 
 roofs were black with people, and some eager sight-seers 
 had climbed even to the roof of the Duomo, and the 
 platform of the Campanile. 
 
 When brought face to face with the test the Francis¬ 
 cans raised so many obstacles that it was clear that their 
 champion was beginning to weaken. The first suspicion 
 to which they gave expression was that Brother Bonvi- 
 cini might be a wizard, and have upon him some talis¬ 
 man or charm to protect him against fire. They de¬ 
 manded, therefore, that he should be stripped and re¬ 
 quired to put on other clothes which had been inspected 
 by disinterested witnesses. Brother Bonvicini made no 
 objection whatever, insulting as the suspicion was, but 
 changed his shirt and gown and frock. 
 
 When Savonarola handed the host to his champion, 
 the Franciscans at once protested that it was a profana¬ 
 tion to expose the holy sacrament to the danger of burn¬ 
 ing ; that it was not included in the agreement, and 
 unless Bonvicini would consent to do without that super¬ 
 natural assistance, they would refuse to undertake the 
 test. Savonarola replied that for the champion, whose 
 trust was in God, to carry in his hand the same God to 
 whom he looked for preservation, was surely not unnatu¬ 
 ral. This reply did not satisfy the Franciscans who 
 refused to recede from their claim. Savonarola was 
 equally inflexible in insisting on his right, and after 
 four hours passed in profitless discussion, no progress 
 toward an agreement had been made. 
 
 Meanwhile, the people, who had been since daybreak 
 crowded together in the streets, and on roofs and chim¬ 
 ney tops, suffering from hunger and thirst, began to lose 
 patience, and their impatience manifested itself in mut- 
 terings of discontent which came to the ears of the 
 
160 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 champions; whereupon the partisans of Savonarola, 
 certain that a miracle would happen, so great was their 
 faith in him, besought him to grant whatever was 
 demanded. To this he replied that if he were himself 
 to submit to the test, he might be more compliant, but 
 as it was another’s life which was in danger he could not 
 take too many precautions. 
 
 Two hours more elapsed in vain attempts on the part 
 of his supporters to induce him to reconsider his refusal. 
 At last, as it began to grow dark, and the dissatisfaction 
 of the people became more and more demonstrative, even 
 to the point of threatening, Bonvicini declared that he 
 was prepared to walk through the fire with naught but 
 a crucifix in his hand. This privilege could not in 
 reason be denied him, so Brother Rondinelli was fain to 
 accept the proposition. 
 
 Announcement was thereupon made to the people that 
 the champions had come to an agreement, and that the 
 trial would take place at once. The crowd at once 
 calmed down, hoping to be rewarded at last for their 
 long period of waiting: but at that moment a storm, 
 which had been long gathering, burst over their heads 
 with such violence that the fire which had just been 
 lighted was extinguished in an instant, and it was im¬ 
 possible to light it again. 
 
 The crowd at once concluded that they had been fooled 
 and their enthusiasm changed to contempt. As they 
 knew nothing of the source of the obstacles which de¬ 
 layed the trial, they laid the responsibility at the door 
 of both champions without distinction. 
 
 The seignorial body, anticipating that there would be 
 more or less disorder, ordered the dense crowds to dis¬ 
 perse ; they did nothing of the kind, however, but 
 remained upon the square, notwithstanding the torrents 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 161 
 
 of rain which fell, awaiting the appearance of the cham¬ 
 pions. Rondinelli was escorted from the square, amid a 
 tempest of jeers and a brisk volley of stones. Savona¬ 
 rola, how T ever, thanks to his priestly attire, and the Holy 
 Sacrament which he held in his hand, passed calmly and 
 without molestation through the thickest of the crowd— 
 a miracle as worthy of note as if he had passed unhurt 
 through the blazing pile. 
 
 But it was the majesty of the host, and that alone, 
 which protected the man, who from that moment was 
 looked upon as a false prophet; and the mob, spurred 
 on by the Arrabiati, who, had for a long while stigma¬ 
 tized Savonarola as a liar and hypocrite, were very loth 
 to allow him to return safely to his convent. And so, on 
 the next day, being Palm Sunday, when he ascended the 
 pulpit to explain his conduct, hooting and ironical 
 laughter and insults assailed him on all sides and he 
 could not obtain silence for a single instant. Soon the 
 shouts which were simply mocking at first, became 
 threatening; Savonarola, whose voice was too weak to 
 rise above the uproar, left the pulpit, and withdrew to 
 the sacristy, whence he returned to his convent, and 
 shut himself up in his cell. 
 
 Suddenly a shout arose from the crowd and was re¬ 
 peated by every one within hearing :— 
 
 “To Saint Mark’s! To Saint Mark’s ! ” 
 
 This nucleus of insurrection was reinforced by all 
 the people on its way through the streets, and when it 
 reached the convent surged back and forth against the 
 walls, like the rising tide upon the rocks. Soon the 
 gates, which were closed when the mob appeared, gave 
 way before the mighty strength of the multitude which 
 grinds to dust at the instant of contact whatsoever it 
 touches. The plebeian flood scattered over all parts of 
 
 Vol. II.—11. 
 
162 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 the convent in a second, and Savonarola, and his two 
 disciples, Domenico Bonvicini and Silvestro Maruffi, 
 were seized in their cells, and carried off to prison, amid 
 the jeers and insults of the populace, who, as unreason¬ 
 able in their hatred as in their enthusiasm, would have 
 liked to tear them in pieces, and whose fury was soothed 
 only by the promise that the prisoners should be compelled 
 by force to undergo the trial which they had refused to 
 undergo voluntarily. 
 
 Alexander VI., whose influence we may be sure was 
 largely responsible for this sudden change in the aspect 
 of affairs, although he was not on the spot, had no sooner 
 learned of the disgrace and arrest of Savonarola than he 
 laid claim to him as amenable to ecclesiastical jurisdic¬ 
 tion. But the seignorial body were proof against the 
 offers of indulgences with which the pope’s demand was 
 accompanied, and insisted that the proceedings against 
 the Dominican should be instituted at Florence; but, 
 to avoid the appearance of removing the culprit alto¬ 
 gether from the pontifical jurisdiction, they requested 
 his Holiness to name two judges to sit with the Floren¬ 
 tine tribunal. Alexander saw that he could not hope to 
 obtain anything more from the magnificent republic, so 
 he sent Giacomo Turriano of Venice, General of the 
 Dominicans, and Francesco Ramolini, doctor of laws; 
 they were duly instructed beforehand that the judgment 
 they were to deliver must declare Savonarola and his 
 accomplices guilty of heresy and schism, of persecuting 
 holy church, and leading the people astray. 
 
 The sequel proved that the obstinacy of the Floren¬ 
 tines in asserting their rights was mere bombast to save 
 appearances. The court was made up of eight mem¬ 
 bers, all known to be bitter enemies of Savonarola, and 
 the proceedings began by putting him to the question. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 163 
 
 His constitution was so weak and his temperament so 
 nervous and irritable, that he could not endure the tor¬ 
 ture of the cord, and the agony was so great, when the 
 executioner, after raising him high in the air by the 
 wrists let him fall back to within two feet of the ground, 
 that he confessed that his prophecies were mere conjee -! 
 tures, hoping thereby to obtain a brief respite. To be 
 sure, as soon as he returned to his cell, he protested that 
 his confession was a fabrication extorted from him by 
 his bodily weakness, and his cowardice under torture; 
 and that the real truth of the matter was that the Lord 
 had several times appeared to him during his trances, 
 and revealed to him the things he had predicted. 
 
 This protest led to a further application of the torture, 
 and Savonarola again succumbed to the excruciating 
 pain, and retracted. But the instant the cords were 
 removed, and while he was still lying on the mattress in 
 the torture chamber, he declared that his admissions 
 were the work of his executioners, and would recoil 
 upon their heads; and that he protested once more 
 against the acceptance of anything that he might have 
 said or might thereafter say. A third time the question 
 extorted similar admissions, and in the period of repose 
 which followed he retracted as before. The result of it 
 all was that the judges, after they had sentenced him 
 and his two disciples to be burned at the stake, decided 
 that his confession should not be read aloud, as the cus¬ 
 tom was, when the sentence was carried into effect, for 
 they knew full well that he would give the lie to it again 
 as he had done before; and a contradiction in public 
 from his own lips might have a most disastrous effect, 
 in view of the well-known fickleness of the populace. 
 
 On the twenty-third of May the wood was again piled up 
 on the square of the palace, and the multitude assembled 
 
164 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 once more, certain that they were not again to be 
 defrauded of the spectacle for which they had waited so 
 long. At eleven o’clock in the morning, Jerome Savo¬ 
 narola, Domenico Bonvicini, and Silvestro Maruffi, were 
 brought to the place of execution, and having first been 
 degraded from holy orders by the ecclesiastical judges, 
 were all bound to the same stake in the centre of a huge 
 pile of wood. 
 
 Bishop Pagnanoli then announced to the condemned 
 men that they were divorced from the Church. 
 
 “From the Church militant?” queried Savonarola, 
 who was on the point of entering into the Church trium¬ 
 phant by virtue of his martyrdom. 
 
 No other words were spoken by either of the victims; 
 for at that moment, one of the Arrabiati , a personal 
 enemy of Savonarola, passed through the hedge of 
 guards around the scaffold, snatched the torch from the 
 executioner’s hands, and himself set fire to the four 
 corners of the pile. Savonarola and his disciples, as 
 soon as the smoke began to rise, began to intone a psalm, 
 and even after they were completely enveloped in a veil 
 of fierce flame their voices could still be heard, singing 
 the blessed words, which were to cause heaven’s gates 
 to open for them. 
 
 Thus was Alexander VI. freed from the most redoubt¬ 
 able foe that ever rose up against him; but his thirst 
 for vengeance pursued him beyond the gates of death. 
 The seignorial body, yielding to his instances, ordered 
 the ashes of the prophet and his disciples to be thrown 
 into the Arno; but some half-burned bones were picked 
 up by the soldiers who were stationed about the pile to 
 keep the mob away, and these blessed relics all blackened 
 by flame and smoke are exhibited to this day for the 
 edification of the faithful, who look upon Savonarola as 
 
THE BORGIA.S. 
 
 165 
 
 a martyr to the faith that was in him, even though he is 
 no longer looked upon as a prophet. 
 
 Meanwhile the French army was preparing to cross 
 the Alps a second time under the command of Jacques 
 Trivulce. Louis XII. went as far as Lyons with Caesar 
 Borgia and Giulio della Rovere, whom he had forced to 
 become reconciled to each other, and in the early days 
 of May he sent the vanguard on ahead, soon followed 
 by the main body of the army. 
 
 The French force collected for this second conquest 
 consisted of sixteen hundred lances, five thousand Swiss, 
 four thousand Gascons, and thirty-five hundred infantry, 
 levied in all parts of France. 
 
 On the thirteenth of August, the whole force, amount¬ 
 ing to nearly fifteen thousand men, who were to act in 
 concert with the Venetians, arrived under the walls of 
 Arezzo, and at once laid siege to the town. 
 
 Ludovico Sforza was in a terrible plight, and was pay¬ 
 ing in full the penalty of his imprudence in inviting the 
 French into Italy in the first instance. All the allies 
 upon whom he thought that he could rely for help failed 
 him at the critical moment, either because thev were en- 
 grossed with their own affairs, or because they were 
 alarmed at the approach of the powerful enemy whom 
 the Duke of Milan had made for himself. Maximilian, 
 who had promised to send him four hundred lances, in¬ 
 stead of resuming hostile operations against Louis XII., 
 formed a league with the Circle of Suabia to make war 
 upon the Swiss whom he had declared to be in rebellion 
 against the empire. The Florentines, who had promised 
 him three hundred men-at-arms, and two thousand in¬ 
 fantry, if he would assist them to recapture Pisa, re¬ 
 ceded from their promise under pressure of the threats 
 
166 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 made by Louis XII., and promised that sovereign to 
 observe strict neutrality. Lastly, Frederic broke his 
 word, and sent him neither money nor men, preferring to 
 keep his troops to guard his own dominions, because 
 he reasoned, and justly, that if Milan were conquered he 
 would be obliged to defend Naples against a new invasion. 
 
 Ludovico Sforza, therefore, was thrown back upon his 
 own resources. But as he was an able general, and an 
 adept in political strategy, he did not give up the game 
 at once. He fortified Annona, Novara and Alexandria 
 with the utmost diligence, sent Cajazzo with a small 
 force into those parts of the Milanais which bordered on 
 the Venetian frontier, and massed his remaining troops 
 upon the Po. But his measures were of no avail against 
 the impetuous advance of the French; in a few days 
 Arezzo, Annona, Novara, Voghiera, Castelnuovo, Ponte 
 Corona, Tortona and Alexandria were taken, and 
 Trivulce was marching upon Milan. 
 
 This rapid succession of victories and the near ap¬ 
 proach of the victorious army, drove Sforza, despairing 
 of his ability to hold his capital, to the determination to 
 retire into Germany with his children, his brother Car¬ 
 dinal Ascanio, and his treasure, which had fallen in 
 eight years from fifteen hundred thousand ducats to two 
 hundred thousand. Before his departure he entrusted 
 the defence of the Castle of Milan to Bernardino of 
 Corte. In vain did his friends urge him to distrust the 
 man; in vain did his brother Ascanio offer to shut him¬ 
 self up in the fortress and hold it to the last extremity. 
 Ludovico refused to make any change in his arrange¬ 
 ments, and left Milan on the second of September, 
 leaving in the citadel three thousand foot-soldiers, and 
 sufficient provisions, ammunition and money to enable 
 them to withstand a siege of several months. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 167 
 
 Two days after his departure the French entered 
 Milan. Ten days after that Bernardino surrendered 
 the castle before a single shot was fired. Twenty-one 
 days sufficed for the French to gain possession of all the 
 strongholds of their enemy, including his capital city. 
 
 Louis XII. received the news of the rapid success of 
 his arms at Lyons, and at once set out for Milan, where 
 he was welcomed with every indication of sincere satis¬ 
 faction. All classes of the people went out three miles 
 beyond the gates to meet him, and forty children dressed 
 in silk and cloth of gold walked before him, singing 
 hymns written by the poets of the day, in which he was 
 called the royal liberator, and the messenger of liberty. 
 This exuberant joy on the part of the good people of 
 Milan, was due to the fact that Louis’ adherents had 
 spread the report that he was rich enough to abolish all 
 imposts. On the day after his arrival he made a trifling 
 reduction in them, bestowed marks of distinguished favor 
 upon several Milanese gentlemen, and gave Trivulce the 
 town of Vigavano, as a reward for his glorious campaign. 
 
 Meanwhile, Caesar Borgia, who had followed Louis in 
 order not to miss his share of the Italian quarry, did not 
 fail, as soon as the king had attained his end, to call 
 upon him to fulfil the promise he had made him. With 
 his proverbial loyalty Louis hastened to redeem his 
 pledge, and at once placed at Caesar’s disposal three 
 hundred lances, commanded by Yves d’Alegre, and four 
 thousand Swiss under the Bailly of Dijon, to assist him 
 in bringing to terms the “ vicars of the Church.” 
 
 The reader will pardon us if we offer a word of ex¬ 
 planation as to the new characters whom we are about 
 to bring upon the stage under that designation. 
 
 During the everlasting wars of the Guelphs and 
 Ghibellines, and during the long exile of the popes at 
 
168 
 
 i 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Avignon, the greater of the towns and strongholds of 
 Romagna were conquered or usurped by petty tyrants, 
 who were, as a general rule, invested with the title to their 
 newly acquired dominions by the Empire. But as soon 
 as the German influence was driven back across the 
 mountains, and the popes made Rome once more the 
 centre of Christendom, all these petty princes, deprived 
 of their original support, gave in their adhesion to the 
 Holy See, received fresh investiture from the pope’s 
 hands, and paid him annual tribute, in return for which 
 they received the title of duke, count or lord, as the 
 case might be, and the general name of “ vicars of the 
 Church.” 
 
 It was a very simple matter for Alexander, by sub¬ 
 jecting every act of these gentry during the seven years 
 of his pontificate to the most rigid scrutiny, to find in 
 every case some trifling infraction of the treaty between 
 them as vassals, and their suzerain. He, therefore, pre¬ 
 sented his grounds of complaint to a court organized for 
 that purpose, and obtained a decree from the judges, to 
 the effect that these vicars of the Church, having failed 
 to abide by the conditions of their investiture, were de¬ 
 prived of their territories which reverted to the Holy 
 See. 
 
 But the pope had to deal with men against whom it 
 was much easier to pronounce such a sentence than to 
 execute it; so he appointed the recently created Due de 
 Yalentinois his captain-general, and told him to obtain 
 possession of these territories for himself. 
 
 The potentates in question were the Malatesti of Ri¬ 
 mini, the Sforza of Pesaro, the Manfredi of Faenza, the 
 Eiarii of Immola and Forli, the Varani of Camerino, 
 the Montefeltri of Urbino, and the Caetani of Sermon- 
 etta. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 169 
 
 The Due de Valentinois, in order not to let cool the 
 warm friendship which his relative and ally Louis XII. 
 had conceived for him, remained with him at Milan dur¬ 
 ing his sojourn in that city. But after a month of per¬ 
 sonal occupation the King of France turned his face 
 homeward once more, and the Due de Valentinois at 
 once ordered his men-at-arms and his Swiss to meet him 
 between Parma and Modena, and set out in hot haste 
 for Rome, to lay his plans before his father, and receive 
 his final instructions. 
 
 When he reached Rome he found that his sister 
 Lucrezia’s power and importance had increased greatly 
 during his absence ; not through her husband Alphonzo, 
 whose future had become extremely uncertain since the 
 rapid success of Louis XII., and whose relations with 
 Alexander were somewhat strained in consequence ; but 
 through her father, over whom her influence at this time 
 was greater and more inexplicable than ever. He had 
 named her governor for life of Spoleto and its duchy, 
 with all the privileges, emoluments and income pertain¬ 
 ing thereto; and this appointment had so magnified her 
 power and her position that she never appeared in pub¬ 
 lic except with an escort of two hundred of the most 
 illustrious and noble knights and ladies of Rome. Fur¬ 
 thermore, as the twofold character of the pope’s affec¬ 
 tion for her was no secret to anybody, the leading 
 prelates of the Church, the habitues of the Vatican, and 
 the familiar friends of his Holiness were her most hum¬ 
 ble servants; so that cardinals assisted her to alight 
 from her litter or her horse, and archbishops quarreled 
 for the honor of saying mass in her apartments. 
 
 It was necessary for Lucrezia to leave Rome to take 
 possession of her new domain; but her father could not 
 endure a long separation from his beloved daughter, and 
 
170 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 so he determined to put himself in possession of the 
 town of Nepi, which he long before gave to Ascanio 
 Sforza, as the reader will doubtless remember, as the 
 price of his vote in the Conclave. Ascanio had natu¬ 
 rally forfeited the place by adhering to the fortunes of 
 his brother, the Duke of Milan, and the pope invited 
 Lucrezia to join him there, and take part in the fi§tes 
 incident to his resuming possession. 
 
 The alacrity with which Lucrezia complied with her 
 father’s wish in this regard was responsible for the fur¬ 
 ther gift to her of the city and territory of Sermonetta, 
 which belonged to the Caetani. The gift was kept se¬ 
 cret, it is true, because it was necessary in the first place 
 to get rid of the two proprietors of the territory in ques¬ 
 tion, Monsignore Giacomo Caetano, apostolic prothono- 
 tary, and Prospero Caetano, a young nobleman of great 
 promise. But as they both lived at Pome, and were en¬ 
 tirely unsuspecting, believing themselves to be in high 
 favor with his Holiness, the one by virtue of his office, 
 and the other because of his sanguine and courageous 
 nature, the problem seemed not to be difficult of solu¬ 
 tion. Immediately after Alexander’s return to Rome 
 Giacomo Caetano was arrested upon some trivial pretext 
 or other, and confined in the Castle of San Angelo, where 
 he soon died from the effects of poison, and Prospero was 
 strangled in his own house. By reason of these two 
 deaths, which occurred with such suddenness that 
 neither of the victims had time to make a will, the pope 
 declared that Sermonetta and all the other property of 
 the Caetani had lapsed to the apostolic chamber, and the 
 chamber sold them to Lucrezia in consideration of the 
 sum of eighty thousand crowns. On the day after the 
 payment her father handed the money back to her. 
 Thus Csesar found when he reached Rome that his father 
 
THE BORGIAS. 171 
 
 had got the start of him in his conquests, although he 
 had made all the possible haste. 
 
 There was another individual whose fortunes had 
 reached a prodigious height during Caesar’s stay in 
 France, and that was Giovanni Borgia, the pope’s ne¬ 
 phew, who had been one of the Duke of Gandia’s most 
 faithful friends until his death. It was common gossip 
 at Rome that the young cardinal owed the favors which 
 were heaped upon him less to the brother’s memory than 
 to the sister’s protection. Here was a twofold reason 
 why Giovanni Borgia should become particularly obnox¬ 
 ious to Caesar, and he swore a mighty oath in his heart 
 that he should not long enjoy the high office, when he 
 learned that his cousin had been appointed cardinal a 
 latere, and had set out from Rome to make the tour of 
 the pontifical States with a retinue of archbishops, bish¬ 
 ops, prelates and knights, which would have done honor 
 to the pope himself. 
 
 Caesar had come to Rome only to learn what was 
 going on; so he remained there but three days, and then 
 joined his army on the banks of the Enza with such 
 troops as the pope had at his disposal. He marched at 
 once upon Immola, which place was compelled to make 
 terms, as its masters had withdrawn to Forli. Imme¬ 
 diately after the surrender of Immola he marched upon 
 Forli. 
 
 There he encountered serious resistance, but it was all 
 inspired by a woman. Catherine Sforza, the widow of 
 Girolamo and mother of Ottaviano Riario had sought 
 shelter in the town, and aroused the courage of the gar¬ 
 rison by putting herself under its protection. Caesar 
 saw that the place was not to be carried by any coup 
 de main, but that he must have recourse to a regular 
 siege. He at once began to dispose his forces to that 
 
172 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 end, placed a battery of artillery opposite the spot where 
 the walls seemed to him to be least strong, and ordered 
 a continuous fire to be kept up until a practicable breach 
 was opened. 
 
 As he was returning to his tent after giving this order 
 he found Cardinal Giovanni Borgia in the camp; he was 
 on his way from Ferrara to Rome, and was unwilling to 
 pass so near him without paying him a visit. Csesar re¬ 
 ceived him with effusive expressions of delight, and 
 kept him with him three days ; on the fourth day he as¬ 
 sembled all his officers and courtiers at a grand farewell 
 banquet, and having entrusted his cousin with dis¬ 
 patches for the pope, he took leave of him with the 
 same demonstrations of affectionate esteem with which 
 he welcomed his arrival. 
 
 Giovanni set out by post immediately after leaving the 
 table, but when he reached Urbino he suddenly began 
 to feel an indescribable pain and sickness, which com¬ 
 pelled him to stop there for a few moments. At the end 
 of that time he felt somewhat better, and resumed his 
 journey, but just as he was driving into Rocca Contrada 
 he was taken ill again, and so seriously that he deter¬ 
 mined to go no farther. He remained there two days, 
 and then, feeling slightly better, and having learned 
 that Forli was taken and Catherine Sforza made pris¬ 
 oner, he determined to go back to Csesar and congratu¬ 
 late himmn his victory. ' But at Fossombrune, although 
 he substituted a litter for his carriage, he was compelled 
 to stop a third time, and it proved to be the last. That 
 same day he took to his bed never to rise again, and 
 three days later he was dead. 
 
 His body was taken to Rome and interred without 
 display in the Church of Santa Maria-del-Popolo, where 
 the body of his friend the Duke of Gandia awaited 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 173 
 
 him. Notwithstanding the power and influence the 
 young cardinal had enjoyed, he was no more heard of 
 thereafter than if he had never existed : for thus darkly 
 and without commotion did all those pass out of sight 
 who were whirled away by the headlong torrent of the 
 ambition of that terrible triumvirate whose names were 
 Alexander, Caesar and Lucrezia. 
 
 At about the same time Rome was startled by another 
 murder. Don Giovanni Cerviglione, captain of his 
 Holiness’ men-at-arms, a gentleman of noble birth and 
 a gallant soldier, was returning home one night after 
 supping with one Pignatelli, a knight of St. John, when 
 he was set upon by a band of ruffians. One of them 
 asked him his name, and when he gave it, finding that 
 he had not mistaken his man, plunged his dagger into 
 his breast, while another with his sword cut off his head, 
 which fell at the body’s feet before the body itself fell. 
 
 The governor of Rome complained to the pope of this 
 murder, but he saw by the way in which his Holiness 
 received the information that it would be quite as well 
 for him to say nothing more. So he put a stop to the 
 investigation he had set on foot, and none of the mur¬ 
 derers were arrested. But it was currently reported 
 that during his brief stay in Rome Caesar made an ap¬ 
 pointment to meet Cerviglione’s wife, who was a Borgia, 
 and that her husband having learned of this infraction 
 of her duty to him, went so far as to threaten her and 
 her lover too. His threats were reported to Caesar, who 
 by substituting Michelotto’s arm for his own, from Forli 
 struck down Cerviglione in the heart of Rome. 
 
 Another sudden death followed so quickly upon Don 
 Giovanni Cerviglione’s, that common rumor did not 
 fail to ascribe it to the same source at least, if not to 
 the same motive. Monsignore Agnelli, of Mantua, 
 
174 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Archbishop of Cosenza, clerk of the chamber, and Vice 
 Legate of Viterbo, having fallen out of favor with his 
 Holiness for some unknown reason, was poisoned at his 
 own table, where he had passed part of the night in 
 social intercourse with three or four guests, while death 
 was already stealing through his veins. He went to bed 
 apparently in perfect health, and the next morning was 
 found dead in his bed. His possessions were inconti¬ 
 nently divided into three portions: lands and houses 
 were given to the Due de Valentinois ; Francesco Borgia, 
 son of Pope Calixtus III., secured the bishopric; and 
 the office of clerk of the chamber was sold for five thou¬ 
 sand ducats to Ventura Bennassai, a merchant of Sienna, 
 who handed the money over to Alexander and took up 
 his abode at the Vatican the same day. 
 
 This last mentioned death served to settle a point of 
 law which was uncertain prior to that time. As Mon¬ 
 signore Agnelli’s heirs made some objection to being thus 
 summarily dispossessed, Alexander issued a decree which 
 declared all cardinals and priests incapacitated from 
 making a will, and that all property, the title to which 
 was in abeyance, would thereafter be vested in him. 
 
 Meanwhile Csesar Borgia was brought to a standstill 
 in his victorious career. With the two hundred thou¬ 
 sand ducats remaining in his treasury Ludovico Sforza 
 raised a force of five hundred Burgundian men-at-arms, 
 and eight thousand Swiss infantry, with which he re¬ 
 turned to Lombardy. Trivulce, in order to hold his 
 ground, was compelled to recall Yves d’Alegre, and the 
 troops Louis XII. loaned to Csesar, whereupon Csesar 
 left part of the papal troops in garrison at Forli, and 
 returned to Rome with the others. 
 
 Alexander determined that his entry should be a 
 triumphal one, and when he learned that the advance 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 175 
 
 guard was within a few leagues of the city he sent 
 couriers to request the foreign ambassadors, cardinals, 
 prelates, Roman nobility, and all the members of all the 
 orders, to go out to meet his son with all their retinues, 
 and take part in fitly celebrating the return of the con¬ 
 queror. It is a well-known fact that the servility of 
 flatterers and time-servers is always even more pro¬ 
 nounced than the arrogance of those whom they flatter, 
 and so the pope’s wishes were not only complied with, 
 but exceeded. 
 
 Caesar’s triumphal entry took place on February 26, 
 1500. Although it was in the midst of the Jubilee, the 
 fetes of the carnival began none the less, and were more 
 uproarious and indecent than usual. On the following 
 day, under cover of a masquerade, the conquering hero 
 arranged a new method of gratifying his pride. As if 
 he proposed to claim for himself the genius, the fortune 
 and the renown of the great man whose name he bore, 
 he determined to represent the triumph of Caesar on the 
 Piazza di Navonne, where the fetes of the carnival 
 ordinarily took place. He made that square his starting- 
 point, and rode thence through all the streets of Rome, 
 at the head of a procession of antique costumes, and 
 Roman chariots, in one of which he stood, clad in a robe 
 like those worn by the Caesars, with a golden wreath 
 upon his head, and surrounded by lictors, soldiers and 
 standard-bearers ; the latter carrying banners on which 
 was the legend : 
 
 “Aut Caesar, aut nihil A 
 
 On the fourth Sunday in Lent, the pope conferred on 
 Caesar the high and dignified office he had so long 
 coveted, of vicar-general and gonfalonier of the Church 
 universal. 
 
 Meanwhile Sforza had recrossed the Alps to the Lake 
 
176 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 of Como, amid frantic outbursts of joy on the part of 
 his former subjects, who speedily lost all the enthusiasm 
 which the presence of the French army and the promises 
 of Louis XII. at first aroused in their hearts. The 
 demonstrations were so pronounced in Milan that Tri- 
 vulce judged it to be unsafe for the French garrison to re- 
 main there, and withdrew to Novara. The sequel proved 
 that he was not mistaken, for as soon as the Milanese 
 saw that he was making preparations for departure, there 
 was intense excitement throughout the city, and the 
 streets filled with armed men as if by magic. The 
 French had to force their way through a howling mob, 
 sword in hand and lance in rest, and they were not fairly 
 outside the gates before the people spread out through 
 the surrounding country, following the army with shouts 
 and hooting to the banks of the Ticino. 
 
 Trivulce left at Novara four hundred lances and the 
 three thousand Swiss whom Yves d’Alegre brought 
 from Romagna, and with the rest of his army marched 
 to Mortara, where he stopped to await the reinforcements 
 for which he had sent to the king. Ascanio and 
 Ludovico Sforza entered Milan in his wake and were 
 welcomed with tumultuous delight by the whole city. 
 
 They lost no time in inaction, wishing to make the 
 most of the popular enthusiasm; Ascanio undertook to 
 reduce the Castle of Milan, while Ludovico crossed the 
 Ticino, and attacked Novara. 
 
 Besieged and besiegers were sons of the same nation, 
 for Yves d’Alegre had with him only three hundred 
 French, and Ludovico not more than four hundred 
 Italians, the bulk of each army being made up of Swiss 
 infantry. As a matter of fact the Swiss had been sub¬ 
 stantially the only foot-soldiers in Europe for six years 
 past, and all the powers indiscriminately drew upon the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 177 
 
 vast reservoirs of their mountains, with gold in their 
 hands. The result had been that these hardy sons of 
 William Tell, being thus put up at auction by these 
 cantons, and being taken away by their various en¬ 
 gagements from their wild poverty stricken mountains, 
 to be brought in close contact with the wealthiest and 
 most dissolute of nations, although they retained their 
 courage, had lost sight of that rigid adherence to prin¬ 
 ciple which had long caused them to be held up as 
 models of honor and good faith : they had become a sort 
 of merchandise always ready to be sold to the highest 
 bidder. The French were the first to feel the effects of 
 their venality, which was destined later to be so fatal to 
 Ludovico Sforza. 
 
 The Swiss contingent of the garrison of Novara es¬ 
 tablished communications with their countrymen in the 
 vanguard of the ducal army, and ascertained that the 
 latter, who were ignorant of the fact that Ludovico’s 
 funds were nearly exhausted, were better fed and better 
 paid than themselves; they thereupon agreed to sur¬ 
 render the town, and take service under the Milanese 
 banner, if they could be assured the same pay. Ludo¬ 
 vico grasped at the offer, as the reader will readily un¬ 
 derstand. Novara was turned over to him, except the 
 citadel, which was held by the French lances, and the 
 Milanese army was reinforced by three thousand men. 
 
 Ludovico made the serious mistake of delaying to lay 
 siege to the citadel, instead of marching at once with his 
 augmented force upon Novara. The result was that 
 while he was neglecting his opportunities, Louis XII., 
 who had received advices from Trivulce and realized the 
 imminence of his danger, hastened the departure of the 
 French gendarmerie who were already mustered in for 
 service in Italy, sent the Bailly of Dijon to hire more 
 
 Vol. 11—12.. 
 
178 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Swiss, and ordered Cardinal d’Amboise, his prime min¬ 
 ister, to cross the Alps and take up his quarters at Asti 
 to hurry on the assembling of the army. The cardinal 
 found a nucleus of three thousand men there, La Tr6mo- 
 ville brought him fifteen hundred lances and six thou¬ 
 sand French infantry, and lastly the Bailly of Dijon 
 arrived with ten thousand fresh Swiss; so that, including 
 the troops with Trivulce at Mortara, Louis had beyond 
 the mountains the finest army that a king of France 
 had ever brought into the field. 
 
 By clever manoeuvring this army took up a position 
 between Novara and Milan, thus cutting off the duke’s 
 communications with his capital before he was informed 
 that such an army was on foot. He was compelled, 
 therefore, in spite of his inferior numbers, to decide to 
 try the chances of a battle. 
 
 But it came to pass as the preparations for a decisive 
 struggle were being actively pushed on both sides, that 
 the Swiss Diet, which had been advised that sons of the 
 same cantons were on the point of flying at each other’s 
 throats, sent peremptory orders to all Swiss serving in 
 either army to break their engagements and return to 
 their homes. But during the two months which elapsed 
 between the surrender of Novara and the arrival of the 
 French army before that town, matters had taken on a 
 very different appearance owing to the exhaustion of 
 Sforza’s treasury. There was more parleying between 
 the outposts of the two armies, and this time, thanks to 
 the supply of funds sent into Italy by Louis XII., the 
 Swiss in the French service were found to be better fed 
 and better paid than their countrymen. The worthy 
 Helvetians, who were no longer fighting for their inde¬ 
 pendence, were too well aware of the value of their 
 blood to shed one single drop of it unless it w T as paid for 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 179 
 
 by its weight in gold: and so they resolved to betray 
 Ludovico as they betrayed Yves d’Alegre, and while 
 the troops levied by the Bailly of Dijon remained true 
 to the French flag, despite the orders of the Diet, Ludo¬ 
 vico’s mercenaries declared that in fighting against their 
 brothers they should be guilty of rebellion against the 
 authority of the Diet, and render themselves liable to 
 capital punishment—a risk which nothing but the imme¬ 
 diate liquidation of their arrears of pay could induce 
 them to undertake. 
 
 The duke, whose last ducat was gone, and who was 
 hopelessly separated from his capital unless he could re¬ 
 open the road thereto by a victory, promised them not 
 only their back pay, but their back pay twice over if 
 they would stand by him in one last effort. Unfortu¬ 
 nately his ability to fulfill his promise depended on the 
 uncertain chances of a battle, so that the Swiss declared 
 that they had too great a respect for the constituted 
 authorities of their fatherland to disobey their com¬ 
 mands, that they loved their brothers too dearly to shed 
 their blood for nothing, and that consequently Sforza 
 need no longer rely upon them, as they had decided to 
 start for their respective cantons on the very next day. 
 
 Thereupon the duke, seeing that it was all up with 
 him, made a final appeal to their honor, and adjured 
 them at least to include him in the capitulation they 
 proposed to make. But they replied that an attempt 
 on their part to do so, if it did not make the capitulation 
 impossible, would make it less advantageous for them 
 than they had the right to expect, especially in respect 
 to their being indemnified for the loss of their arrears of 
 pay. 
 
 At last, however, seeming to be moved by the en¬ 
 treaties of him whose orders they had so long obeyed, 
 
180 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 they offered to give him a uniform and hide him in their 
 ranks. This was an absurd proposition, for Sforza was 
 well advanced in years, and very short, so that his pres¬ 
 ence could not fail of detection among men of whom the 
 oldest was under thirty and the shortest taller than five 
 feet six. However, it was his last resource, and so 
 without discarding it altogether, he sought some means 
 of so modifying it as to make it efficacious. He finally 
 decided to disguise himself as a Cordelier monk, and to 
 pass himself off as their chaplain, mounted on a sorry 
 nag. As Galeasso, of San Severino, his second in com¬ 
 mand, and his two brothers were all men of average 
 stature, they might hope to pass unnoticed in the Swiss 
 ranks by donning their uniform. 
 
 This plan was hardly arranged when the duke was 
 advised that the capitulation between Trivulce and the 
 Swiss was already signed. The mercenaries, who had 
 made no stipulations in favor of the duke and his gen¬ 
 erals, were to march off on the following morning with 
 their arms and baggage, through the ranks of the French 
 troops: therefore the last hope of the ill-starred Ludo¬ 
 vico and his generals was to trust to their disguise, and 
 that they did. San Severino and his brothers took their 
 places in the ranks, while Sforza, enveloped in his monk’s 
 cloak, and with the hood pulled down over his eyes, rode 
 with the baggage train. 
 
 The march past began. But the Swiss after selling 
 their blood thought it not beneath them to sell their 
 honor. The French were forewarned of the disguise of 
 Sforza and his generals. All four were recognized 
 and Sforza was made prisoner by La Tremoville him¬ 
 self. 
 
 It was said that the price of this treachery was the 
 town of Bellinzona, which belonged to the French; 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 181 
 
 certain it is that the Swiss took possession of it on their 
 way back to their mountains, and that Louis XII. made 
 no attempt to retake it from them. 
 
 When Ascanio Sforza, who, as we have seen, had re¬ 
 mained at Milan, learned of this cowardly desertion, he 
 considered that the game was lost, and that the best course 
 for him to pursue was to make his escape before one of the 
 sudden changes of temper, so common among the common 
 people should lead to his being made prisoner by his broth¬ 
 er’s former subjects, to whom it might occur to purchase 
 their pardon at the price of his freedom. He consequently 
 stole away by night with the principal leaders of the Ghi- 
 belline nobility, and went toward Plaisance, on his way to 
 the kingdom of Naples. But when he reached Rivolta 
 he remembered that an old friend of his boyhood lived 
 there—one Conrad Lando, whom he had loaded with 
 favors in his days of prosperity. As he and his com¬ 
 panions were fatigued beyond measure, he resolved to 
 seek hospitality at his hands for one night. 
 
 Conrad received them with a show of unbounded de¬ 
 light, and placed his house and his household at their 
 service. But they had no sooner retired, than he sent a 
 messenger to inform Carlo Orsino, commandant of the 
 Venetian garrison at Plaisance, that he was prepared to 
 deliver up Cardinal Ascanio and the principal officers 
 of the Milanese army. Orsino did not choose to entrust 
 an expedition of such importance to anybody but him¬ 
 self, so he at once took horse with twenty-five men, and, 
 having surrounded Conrad’s house, entered the apart¬ 
 ment occupied by Ascanio and his companions, sword in 
 hand. They were surprised in their sleep and made no 
 resistance. They were at first taken to Venice, but 
 Louis XII. claimed them, and they were given up to 
 him. 
 
182 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Thus the King of France had in his power both 
 Ludovico and Ascanio Sforza, as well as Hermes, a 
 legitimate nephew of Francesco Sforza the Great, two 
 bastards named Alexander and Contino, and Francesco, 
 son of the ill-fated Giovanni Galeasso, who was poisoned 
 by his uncle. 
 
 To make an end of the whole family at a stroke, 
 Louis XII. compelled Francesco to enter a convent, cast 
 Alexander, Hermes and Contino into prison, and im¬ 
 mured Ascanio in the tower of Bourges, while the un¬ 
 fortunate Ludovico, after being transferred from the 
 fortress of Pierre-Encise to Lys Saint-Georges, was fin¬ 
 ally relegated to the castle of Loches, where, after ten 
 years of captivity, in utter solitude and destitution, he 
 died, cursing the hour when it first occurred to him to 
 invite the French into Italy. 
 
 The news of the downfall of Ludovico and his family 
 gave unalloyed satisfaction at Rome ; for, by consolidat¬ 
 ing the power of the ultramontanes in the Milanais, it 
 solidified that of the Holy See in Romagna, as there 
 was no longer any opposition to be apprehended to Cae¬ 
 sar’s conquests. Handsome presents were made to the 
 couriers who brought the good tidings, which were pro¬ 
 claimed throughout the city to the sound of trumpet and 
 drum. 
 
 Shouts of “ France ! France ! ” and “ Orso ! Orso ! ” 
 the rallying cries of Louis XII. and the Orsini respec¬ 
 tively, filled the air in every direction, and the streets 
 were all illuminated in the evening, as if Constantinople 
 or Jerusalem were taken. The pope provided fetes and 
 displays of fireworks for the people, calmly oblivious of 
 the fact that it was Holy Week, and that the Jubilee 
 had drawn to Rome more than two hundred thousand 
 people, so much more important did the worldly interests 
 
THE BORGIAS. 183 
 
 of his own family seem to him than the spiritual inter¬ 
 ests of his subjects. 
 
 One thing only was lacking to ensure the success of 
 the vast schemes which the pope and his son were build¬ 
 ing upon the friendship and alliance of Louis XII., and 
 that one thing was money. But Alexander was not the 
 man to be embarrassed by such a bagatelle. To be sure 
 the sale of benefices had been worked until it would 
 yield no more, the ordinary and extraordinary taxes 
 were collected for the whole year, and but a paltry sum 
 could be anticipated by way of inheritance from cardi¬ 
 nals and prelates as the richest of them were already 
 poisoned; but Alexander had other resources which 
 were none the less efficacious because they were less fre¬ 
 quently put in practice. 
 
 His first device was to spread the report that the 
 Turks were threatening to invade Christendom, and that 
 he was positively sure that the summer would not pass 
 before Bajazet landed two large armies, one in Romagna, 
 and one in Calabria. He therefore issued two bulls, one 
 which provided for the payment to the Holy See of one 
 tithe of the ecclesiastical revenues of every description, 
 throughout Europe, and another calling upon the Jews 
 to contribute the same proportion of their incomes; both 
 bulls threatened those who refused to comply, or who 
 undertook to resist, with excommunication in its harsh¬ 
 est form. 
 
 The second expedient was the sale of indulgences, a 
 thing which had never before been resorted to. The 
 necessity for such indulgences was extreme in the cases 
 of those whom ill health or poverty prevented from com¬ 
 ing to Rome during the Jubilee. This happy thought 
 made it unnecessary to take the journey, and for a third 
 of the sum it would have cost their sins were remitted 
 
184 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 as completely, as if they had complied with all the con¬ 
 ditions of their pilgrimage. A veritable army of col¬ 
 lectors was detailed to gather in the income arising from 
 this source, and a certain Ludovico della Torre was 
 placed at the head of it. The sums which poured into the 
 papal treasury are quite incalculable ; a vague idea of 
 their amount may be formed if we say that the territory 
 of Venice alone paid on this account seven hundred and 
 ninety-nine thousand pounds’ weight of gold! 
 
 Meanwhile the Turks did make some demonstration 
 in the direction of Hungary and the Venetians feared 
 that they might eventually fall upon them, so they ap¬ 
 plied to the pope for aid. He ordered that, in all his 
 dominions, an Ave Maria should be said at mid-day, to 
 implore God to avert the danger which threatened the 
 most serene republic. That was the extent of the assist¬ 
 ance the Venetians obtained from his Holiness in return 
 for the seven hundred and ninety thousand pounds’ 
 weight of gold he received from them. 
 
 But as if God wished to impress upon His incongruous 
 representative, that He was sore displeased by such mock¬ 
 ery of sacred things, an enormous piece of iron fell at 
 his feet from the roof of the Campanile, as he was passing 
 by on his way to the Gallery of Benedictions on St. 
 Peter’s eve. And again, as if a single warning was not 
 deemed to be sufficient, on St. Peter’s day itself, as the 
 pope was setting in one of the rooms of his suite with 
 Cardinal Capuano, and Monsignore Poto, his private 
 chamberlain, he saw through the open window such a 
 huge mass of black clouds piling up in the heavens, that 
 he anticipated a violent storm and ordered his compan¬ 
 ions to close the windows. He was not mistaken; for 
 just as they were obeying his orders, there came such a 
 furious blast of wind that the tallest chimney of the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 185 
 
 Vatican was blown over like a tree torn up by the roots, 
 and fell upon the roof; it crashed through that and the 
 upper floor, and fell into the very room where they were. 
 At the shock which made the whole edifice tremble, and 
 at the crash which they heard behind them, Cardinal 
 Capuano and Monsignore Poto turned about, and, seeing 
 nothing but a cloud of dust and debris, leaped upon the 
 parapet outside the window, crying to the guards at the 
 door: 
 
 “ The pope is dead ! the pope is dead! ” 
 
 Servants and retainers hastened to the spot, and found 
 three persons lying among the ruins, one dead and two 
 dying. The dead man was a gentleman of Sienna 
 named Lorenzo Chigi, and the two who were dying, two 
 inmates of the Vatican ; they were in a room on the 
 upper floor and fell through the hole made by the 
 falling chimney. 
 
 Alexander was not to be found, and as he did not 
 answer their repeated calls, the belief that he was dead 
 became certainty, and the news spread rapidly through 
 the city. But after a short time they heard him groaning, 
 and discovered him just recovering his senses, and 
 wounded in several parts of the body, although not 
 seriously. His life was saved as by a miracle; the ends 
 of the rafter which was broken across the middle re¬ 
 mained in the side walls, and one of them formed a sort 
 of roof over the chair, in which the pope was sitting at 
 the time, and protected him so that he suffered nothing 
 more than a few contusions. 
 
 The two contradictory reports of the pope’s sudden 
 death and his miraculous preservation soon spread 
 throughout the city, and the Due de Valentinois, terri¬ 
 fied at the thought of the great change in his fortunes 
 which the least accident to the Holy Father might bring 
 
186 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 about, hurried to the Vatican, to make sure of the truth 
 with his own eyes. 
 
 Alexander himself thought proper to give thanks 
 publicly to heaven for the protection accorded him, and 
 on the same day went in state, borne aloft in his pontifi¬ 
 cal chair by two valets, two squires and two grooms, and 
 escorted by a numerous retinue of prelates and men-at- 
 arms, to the Church of Santa-Maria-del-Popolo, where 
 the Duke of Gandia and Giovanni Borgia were buried. 
 Was it that there was some shadow of religious feeling 
 still remaining in his heart, or was he drawn thither by 
 the memory of his guilty passion for his former mistress, 
 Vanozza, who was exposed to the veneration of the 
 faithful in a chapel at the left of the great altar, in the 
 guise of a Madonna ! Before that altar the priest made 
 a gift to the church of a magnificent chalice containing 
 three hundred golden crowns, which the Cardinal of 
 Sienna poured into a silver paten, to the great satisfac¬ 
 tion of the papal vanity. 
 
 Before leaving Rome to undertake the conquest of 
 Romagna, Csesar reflected how worse than useless to 
 himself and his father, Lucrezia’s marriage to Alphonzo, 
 which they once were so desirous to arrange, had become. 
 Furthermore it was evident that the halt which Louis 
 XII. was making in Lombardy was merely to take 
 breath, and that Milan was simply a relay station on the 
 road to Naples. Now it was very possible that Louis 
 might be annoyed by this marriage which made his 
 enemy’s nephew the son-in-law of his ally; whereas, if 
 Alphonzo were dead and out of the way, Lucrezia would 
 be in a position to marry some powerful lord of the 
 Marches of Ferrara or Bresse, who could assist her 
 brother in the conquest of Romagna. Alphonzo, there¬ 
 fore, was useless as well as dangerous; and with the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 187 
 
 Borgias to be useless was the worst recommendation a 
 man could have. And so Alphonzo’s death was resolved 
 upon. 
 
 Meanwhile Lucrezia’s husband, who had long been 
 awake to the danger which he incurred by living near 
 his terrible father-in-law, had returned to Naples. Dis¬ 
 simulation, however, by constant use had become so in¬ 
 grained in the character of both Alexander and Caesar, 
 that there was no perceptible change in their relations 
 with him, and he was beginning to forget his fears, when 
 he received an invitation from the pope and his son to 
 come to Rome and take part in a bull-fight after the 
 Spanish fashion, with which they proposed to celebrate 
 the duke’s departure. In the precarious situation of the 
 royal house of Naples it would have been impolitic for 
 Alphonzo to afford Alexander the slightest pretext for a 
 rupture; he was reluctant, therefore, to refuse without 
 sufficient reason, and so betook himself to Rome. It was 
 thought to be useless to consult Lucrezia in the matter, 
 for on two or three occasions she had shown signs of an 
 absurd attachment for her husband, and she was left un¬ 
 disturbed in her petty government of Spoleto. 
 
 Alphonzo was welcomed by the pope and the Due de 
 Valentinois with every indication of sincere friendship, 
 and they gave him the suite of rooms he formerly occu¬ 
 pied with Lucrezia in that wing of the Vatican called 
 Torre-Nova. 
 
 Spacious lists were prepared on the Square of St. 
 Peter’s, and the streets leading into the square were bar¬ 
 ricaded. The neighboring houses afforded private boxes 
 already made at their windows. The pope and his court 
 were on the balcony of the Vatican. 
 
 The performance was begun by hired toreadors ; when 
 they had given a satisfactory exhibition of their strength 
 
188 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 and dexterity, Alphonzo of Aragon and Caesar Borgia 
 descended into the arena, and to demonstrate the har¬ 
 monious relations which existed between them it was 
 agreed that the bull which pursued Caesar should be 
 slain by Alphonzo, and that Caesar should deal with the 
 one which pursued Alphonzo. 
 
 Caesar, in the first place, remained alone on horseback 
 in the arena while Alphonzo went out through a gateway 
 cut in one of the barricades, and left it half open so that 
 he could return when his presence became necessary. At 
 the same time the bull was admitted from the opposite 
 side, and was instantly assailed with a shower of darts 
 and arrows, some of which contained powder which ex¬ 
 ploded, and irritated the bull to such a point that, after 
 he had rolled on the ground in agony, he rose again in 
 a frenzy of rage, and spying a man on horseback made 
 a frantic rush at him. Thereupon, in that confined 
 space, pursued by a nimble-footed and infuriated beast, 
 Csesar displayed the marvelous grace and dexterity 
 which made him one of the finest horsemen of his time. 
 Notwithstanding his great skill and address, however, he 
 could not long have eluded, in such a narrow space, an 
 adversary from whom he had no means of escape but 
 flight, had not Alphonzo suddenly appeared, waving a 
 red cloak in his left hand, while in his right he held 
 a long, keen Aragonese sword. 
 
 It was high time, for the bull was but a few paces dis¬ 
 tant from Csesar, and his peril seemed so imminent that 
 a woman shrieked at one of the windows; but, at sight 
 of a man on foot, the bull stopped short, and concluding 
 that he could make shorter work of his new enemy than 
 of the old, turned upon him, and after standing still for 
 a moment, bellowing, raising clouds of dust with his 
 hind feet, and lashing his sides with his tail, rushed upon 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 189 
 
 Alphonzo with blood-shot eyes, ploughing up the ground 
 with his horns. Alphonzo calmly awaited the onslaught, 
 and when he was within three feet leaped aside, aiming 
 a blow at him as he passed with his sword, which was 
 buried up to the hilt; the bull at once came to a stand¬ 
 still, stood for an instant, tottering on his legs, then fell 
 upon his knees with a hoarse bellow, and at last rolled 
 over dead upon the very spot where he was struck. 
 
 Loud applause burst from all sides, the blow was de¬ 
 livered so skilfully and quickly. Caesar remained on 
 his horse and instead of interesting himself in what was 
 going on about him, was seeking to discover the fair 
 spectator who had given so pronounced an indication of 
 her interest in him. His search was not fruitless; he 
 recognized one of the maids of honor of Elizabeth, 
 Duchess of Urbino, who was betrothed to Giovanni 
 Caracciolo, captain general of the Republic of Venice. 
 
 It was now Alphonzo’s turn to run and Caesar’s to fight; 
 they exchanged parts, therefore, and while four mules 
 with much ado were dragging off the body of the dead 
 bull, and the valets and servants of his Holiness were 
 bringing sand to cover up the spot of blood, Alphonzo 
 mounted a superb Andalusian steed, of Arabian ances¬ 
 try, swift as the wind which blew upon his mother in the 
 Desert of Sahara. Caesar, on the other hand, alighted 
 and left the arena, to return when Alphonzo should be 
 in the same dangerous plight from which he had just 
 rescued him. 
 
 Another bull was then introduced, and driven frantic 
 in the same way by pointed darts and burning arrows. 
 Like the first, when he spied a man on horseback, he 
 rushed upon him, and thereupon began a wonderful 
 trial of speed, in which, so swiftly did they pass and re¬ 
 pass, it was impossible to tell which it was, whether bull 
 
190 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 or horse which was pursuing the other. But, after they 
 had made the circuit of the arena five or six times, the 
 bull began to gain upon the son of Arabia, fleet as he 
 was, and one could distinguish between pursuer and pur¬ 
 sued. An instant more, and there was only the length 
 of a lance between them, when suddenly Caesar Borgia 
 appeared in his turn, armed with one of the long two- 
 handed swords commonly used by the French. 
 
 As the bull, hot on the track of Don Alphonzo, passed 
 in front of him, Caesar, whirling his sword through the 
 air like a flash of lightning, cut off his head, which fell 
 to the ground, while his body carried on by the force of 
 inertia, fell ten paces farther on. The blow was so 
 entirely unexpected and was dealt with such marvelous 
 dexterity, that it was greeted not with mere applause, 
 but with frantic enthusiasm and frenzied cries. Caesar 
 meanwhile acted as if he had forgotten everything, even 
 at the moment of his triumph, except the shriek called 
 forth by his danger in the first encounter ; he picked up 
 the bull’s head and handed it to one of his squires, order¬ 
 ing him to lay it at the feet of the fair Venetian who had 
 demonstrated her sympathy for him so unmistakably. 
 
 This function had another purpose besides the giving 
 each of the young men an opportunity to display his 
 prowess; it was designed to prove to the common people 
 that the best of good feeling reigned between them, since 
 each had saved the other’s life. Thenceforth, if any 
 mishap should befall Caesar no one would think of ac¬ 
 cusing Alphonzo of causing it; and in like manner no 
 one would lay at Caesar’s door the responsibility for any¬ 
 thing that might happen to Alphonzo. 
 
 There was to be a supper party at the Vatican : Al¬ 
 phonzo arrayed himself with great care, and about ten 
 in the evening started to go from the wing in which he 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 191 
 
 was quartered to the part of the palace occupied by the 
 pope. But the door between the two court-yards was 
 fastened, and, knock as he would, no one came to open 
 it. It then occurred to him that it would be a simple 
 matter to go around through the Square of St. Peter’s ; 
 so he went out unattended through a gate of the Vatican 
 gardens, and walked through the dark streets leading to 
 the stairway which led up to the square. But he had no 
 sooner placed his foot in the first step than he was set upon 
 by a party of armed men. He tried to draw his sword ; 
 but before it was out of his scabbard he received two 
 blows from a halberd, one on the head and the other on 
 the shoulder, a sword thrust on the side, and two cuts on 
 the temple and the leg. He fell senseless to the ground ; 
 his assassins, believing him dead, ran hastily up the 
 stairs, and found forty horsemen awaiting them, under 
 whose escort they left the city unhindered, by the 
 Portese Gate. 
 
 Alphonzo was discovered by passers by in a moribund 
 condition, but not dead ; some of them recognized him, 
 and at once carried the news of the murder to the Vati¬ 
 can, while the others took him in their arms and carried 
 him to his apartment in the Torre-Nova. The pope 
 and Csesar, who received the intelligence just as they 
 were taking their places at the table, were apparently 
 so overcome by it, that they left their guests and went im¬ 
 mediately to Don Alphonzo’s bedside, to make sure 
 whether his wounds were or were not mortal. The next 
 morning, in order to turn aside the suspicion which 
 might have fallen upon them, they caused the arrest of 
 Francesco Gazella, Alphonzo’s maternal uncle, who ac¬ 
 companied his nephew to Rome. False witnesses con¬ 
 victed him of being the author of the murder, and his 
 head was cut off. 
 
192 
 
 THE BOKGIAS. 
 
 But only half of the task was done; suspicion was 
 turned aside to such an extent that no one would ever 
 dare to accuse the real assassins ; hut Alphonzo was not 
 dead, and by virtue of his vigorous constitution and the 
 skill of his physicians, who took the pretended grief of 
 the pope and his son seriously, and believed that the re¬ 
 covery of the patient would be agreeable to them, he 
 was progressing favorably toward convalescence. At 
 the same time the news arrived that Lucrezia, having 
 heard of the attack upon her husband, proposed to come 
 to Rome and nurse him herself. There was no time to 
 be lost, so Csesar sent for Michelotto. 
 
 a That same night,” says Benchard, “ Don Alphonzo, 
 who declined to die of his wounds, was strangled in his 
 bed.” 
 
 The next day his obsequies took place, and if they 
 were not on a scale of magnificence suited to his rank, 
 they were at least respectable. Don Francesco Borgia, 
 Archbishop of Cosenza, acted as chief mourner at St. 
 Peter’s, where the body was interred in the chapel of 
 Santa Maria. 
 
 Lucrezia reached Rome the night after the funeral. 
 She knew her father and brother too well to be the dupe 
 of their pretended grief; and although Csesar, immedi¬ 
 ately upon Don Alphonzo’s demise, caused the arrest of 
 his physicians and surgeons, as well as a poor devil of a 
 hunchback who was his valet-de-chambre, she saw at 
 once whence the blow came. And so, fearing that her 
 own sorrow, which was genuine enough this time, might 
 deprive her of her father’s and brother’s confidence, she 
 withdrew to Nepi with her whole household, her whole 
 court, and more than six hundred horsemen, there to 
 pass her period of mourning. 
 
 This momentous family affair adjusted, and Lucrezia 
 
THE BORG IAS 
 
 Don Alphonso of Aragon , husband of Lit¬ 
 er ezia, murdered by order of the Borgias . 
 

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THE BORGIAS. 
 
 193 
 
 once more a widow, and therefore ready to make herself 
 useful in the pope’s new political combinations, Caesar 
 Borgia remained at Rome only long enough to receive 
 the ambassadors of France and Venice. But as their 
 coming was somewhat delayed, and as the numerous 
 fetes recently given had created a vacuum in the pope’s 
 treasure chest, he employed the interval in creating 
 twelve new cardinals. This step had a twofold result; 
 it brought six hundred thousand ducats into the chest, 
 each hat being valued at fifty thousand, and it gave the 
 pope an absolutely certain majority in the Sacred College. 
 
 The ambassadors at last arrived. M. Villeneuve, the 
 same who came to Rome once before in the name of the 
 King of France to take Caesar Borgia back with him, 
 met on the road, as he was about to enter the city, a 
 masked man who, without removing his mask, expressed 
 his great delight at his arrival. It was Caesar himself; 
 not wishing to be recognized he left the ambassador after 
 a short conversation, without having exposed his fea¬ 
 tures. M. Villeneuve followed him into the city, and 
 found at the Porta del Popolo the ambassadors of all the 
 different powers, even those of Spain and Naples, whose 
 sovereigns were not as yet, it is true, openly hostile to 
 France, although relations between them were beginning 
 to be decidedly strained. 
 
 The Spanish and Neapolitan ambassadors, fearful of 
 compromising themselves, greeted their French colleague 
 with the simple phrase : “ welcome, Signor; ” whereupon 
 the master of ceremonies, surprised at such a curt greet¬ 
 ing, asked them if they had nothing further to say. They 
 answered no, and M. Villeneuve at once turned his back 
 on them with the retort that those who had nothing to 
 say required no reply. He then took his place between 
 the Archbishop of Reggio, Governor of Rome, and the 
 
 Vol. II.—13. 
 
194 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Archbishop of Ragusa, and rode to the palace of the 
 Holy Apostles which had been prepared for his reception. 
 
 A few days later Maria Georgi, ambassador extra¬ 
 ordinary of the Venetian Republic, arrived at Rome in 
 his turn. His mission was not only to deal with the 
 ordinary relations between the two powers; he had it 
 also in charge to bear to Alexander and Csesar patents of 
 nobility, and the records showing that their names had 
 been inscribed in the Book of Gold, an honor which 
 both had long been ambitious to obtain, less for the 
 empty glory it would bring them than for the additional 
 influence they might hope to reap from it. 
 
 The pope then proceeded to deliver the cardinal’s hats 
 to the recent purchasers thereof. These new princes of 
 the church were Don Diego Mendoza, Archbishop of 
 Seville; Giacomo, Archbishop of Oristagny, the pope’s 
 vicar-general; Tommaso, Archbishop of Strigonia; 
 Pietro, Archbishop of Reggio, and Governor of Rome; 
 Francesco Borgia, Archbishop of Cosenza, Treasurer- 
 general ; Giovanni, Archbishop of Salerno, Vice¬ 
 chamberlain ; Ludovico Borgia, Archbishop of Valencia, 
 Secretary to his Holiness and brother of Giovanni Bor¬ 
 gia, poisoned by Caesar; Antonio, Bishop of Como; 
 Giovanni-Batista Ferrara, Bishop of Modena; Amedee 
 d’Albret, son of the King of Navarre and Caesar’s 
 brother-in-law ; and lastly Marco Cornaro, a Venetian of 
 noble birth, in whose person the Holy Father recipro¬ 
 cated the honor conferred upon him by the most serene 
 republic. 
 
 As there was nothing more to delay the departure of 
 the Due de Valentinois, he took just so much time as 
 was necessary to negotiate a loan with a wealthy banker, 
 Augustine Chigi, brother of Lorenzo Chigi, who met his 
 death on the day of the pope’s hairbreadth escape from 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 195 
 
 the falling chimney; then, with his treasure-chest well 
 supplied, set out for Romagna, accompanied by Vitellozo 
 Vitelli, Giovanni Paolo Baglione, and Giacomo di Santa- 
 Croce, who were at this time his friends, but were later 
 to be his victims. 
 
 Caesar’s first enterprise was directed against Pesaro a 
 brotherly attention of which Giovanni Sforza realized 
 the probable results; and instead of trying to defend 
 his dominions by force of arms, or to obtain advantage¬ 
 ous terms by negotiation, he besought his subjects to hold 
 him in affectionate remembrance in the hope of better 
 days to come, and fled into Dalmatia, not wishing to ex¬ 
 pose the fair land of which he had so long been master 
 to the vengeance of an exasperated enemy. Malatesta, 
 lord of Rimini followed his example, so that Caesar took 
 possession of both those places without striking a blow. 
 Leaving a sufficient garrison in each of them he marched 
 upon Faenza. 
 
 There, matters took a different turn. Faenza was 
 then ruled by Astor Manfredi, a handsome and gallant 
 youth of eighteen. He was abandoned by the Benti- 
 vogli his near kinsmen, and by the Venetians and 
 Florentines, his allies, who did not dare to send him 
 succor, because of the friendship of the King of France 
 for Csesar; but he resolved nevertheless, knowing the 
 deep affection of his subjects for his family, to defend 
 the place to the last extremity. And so, when he learned 
 that the Due de Valentinois was marching against him 
 he assembled in all haste such of his vassals as were in 
 condition to bear arms, and the few foreign troops who 
 would consent to enter his service, and shut himself up 
 with them in the town, after laying in an abundant 
 supply of provisions and ammunition. 
 
 These preparations for defence disturbed Csesar but 
 
196 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 little. He had a magnificent army, made up of the best 
 troops of France and Italy, and which numbered among 
 its officers, aside from himself, Paolo and Guilio Orsino, 
 Vitellozo Vitelli, and Paolo Baglione, who were the first 
 captains of the time. Having carefully reconnoitered 
 the place, therefore, he at once began siege operations by 
 pitching his camp between the rivers Amona and 
 Marziano and placing his artillery on the side of the 
 town toward Forli, where the besieged had erected a 
 strong earthwork. 
 
 After some few days of opening trenches, a practicable 
 breach was made, and the Due de Yalentinois ordered 
 an assault, himself setting the example to his men by 
 leading the way. But, despite his rash courage, and 
 that of the captains who accompanied him, Astor Man- 
 fredi made such an heroic defence that the besiegers were 
 driven back with great loss, leaving in the moat Honorio 
 Savello, one of their most gallant leaders. 
 
 Faenza, however, notwithstanding the courage and 
 devotion of its defenders, could not long have held out 
 against so formidable an army, if winter had not come 
 to its aid. Unexpectedly overtaken by the rigors of 
 that season without shelter for his troops and with no 
 wood to build fires, the peasants having demolished the 
 houses, and carted away the wood, Caesar was obliged to 
 raise the siege, and go into winter quarters in the neigh¬ 
 boring towns, in order to be prepared for the return of 
 spring. For he could not forgive a small town which 
 had been long at peace, was governed by a child, and was 
 entirely without help from abroad, for holding him thus 
 at bay, and he had sworn to have his revenge. He 
 divided his army into three parts, sent one to Immola, 
 one to Forli, and fixed his own headquarters with the 
 third at Cesena, which was suddenly transformed from a 
 
THE B0RGIA8. 
 
 197 
 
 third-rate town into a city of luxury and debauchery. 
 Csesar’s mind was so active that he required to be un¬ 
 ceasingly employed either in war or in dissipation; and 
 when the war was necessarily interrupted, the fi§tes 
 began, as gorgeous and wanton as he knew how to make 
 them; the days were passed in games and riding parties ; 
 the nights in dancing and debauchery; for the most 
 beautiful women in all Romagna flocked to his camp, 
 and formed a seraglio which the Sultan of Egypt or the 
 Emperor of Constantinople might have envied him. 
 
 While the Due de Yalentinois was riding one day in 
 the outskirts of the town, with the court of fawning 
 noblemen and titled courtesans, who never left him, he 
 encountered upon the Rimini road a cortege of such size 
 as to indicate that it was in attendance upon some person 
 of rank. He soon discovered that that person was a 
 woman, and on drawing nearer recognized the same at¬ 
 tendant of the Duchess of Urbino, who shrieked her 
 sympathy when he was so near being gored by the in¬ 
 furiated bull. She was, as we then said, betrothed to 
 Giovanni Caracciolo, the Venetian general. Her 
 patroness and godmother, Elizabeth of Gonzaga, was now 
 sending her, with a fitting retinue, to Venice, where the 
 marriage was to be solemnized. 
 
 The young woman’s exceeding beauty made an im¬ 
 pression upon Csesar at Rome: but meeting her thus, 
 she seemed to him even more beautiful than before, and 
 he determined on the instant to keep for himself this 
 sweet flower of love, having more than once reproached 
 himself for passing her by so heedlessly. He greeted 
 her as an old acquaintance, and inquired if she did not 
 propose to tarry some time at Cesena, but she replied 
 that her coming was so impatiently awaited, that she 
 was making long stages, and expected to lie at Forli 
 
198 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 that night. This was all that Caesar wanted to know: 
 he summoned Michelotto, and said a few words to him 
 in an undertone. 
 
 The party made but a very brief stay at Cesena, and 
 went on again toward Forli, although the day was far 
 advanced. They had made less than a league when a 
 party of horsemen from Cesena overtook and surrounded 
 them. Although greatly outnumbered, the soldiers of 
 the escort essayed to defend their general’s bride: but 
 some of them were killed, and the others fled in terror. 
 The young lady descended from her litter and tried to 
 escape, but the leader seized her and placed her before 
 him on his horse, ordered his men to return to Cesena 
 without him, and galloped away across the fields and out 
 of sight, just as the twilight was falling. 
 
 Caracciolo learned of this abduction from one of the 
 fugitives, who insisted that he recognized the abductors 
 as soldiers in the employ of the Due de Valentinois. 
 At first, he was so reluctant to believe anything so ter¬ 
 rible, that he thought he could not have heard aright; 
 but, being convinced at last, he stood for a moment with¬ 
 out word or movement, as if turned to stone. But sud¬ 
 denly he roused himself from his stupor with a cry for 
 vengeance, and rushed to the Ducal palace, wheie the 
 doge and the Council of Ten were in session. He forced 
 his way to their presence without being announced, just 
 as they had themselves been advised of Caesar’s crime. 
 
 “ Most Serene Signori,” he cried, “ I have come to 
 take leave of you, being fully resolved to sacrifice in the 
 cause of my own vengeance, the life which I believed I 
 might devote to the service of the republic. I have 
 been outraged in the noblest part of my being—my 
 honor. My most precious treasure has been stolen from 
 me—my promised bride. And he who has done this 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 199 
 
 thing is the most treacherous, the most impious, the most 
 infamous of men—Yalentinois! Be not offended, 
 Signori, that I speak thus of a man who boasts that he 
 is of your nobility and entitled to your protection. He 
 is not, he lies ! his dastardly deeds and his crimes make 
 him unworthy of either distinction, as he is unworthy of 
 the life which I will wrest from him with this sword. 
 ’Tis true that such a man, sacrilegious by birth, a fratri¬ 
 cide, a usurper of other people’s property, an oppressor 
 of the innocent, a highwayman, a man who violates all 
 laws, even those of hospitality, which are held in respect 
 among the least civilized peoples, a man who does violence 
 in his own dominions to a maiden passing through, when 
 she had the right to expect from him the respect due not to 
 her sex and rank alone, but to the most serene republic, 
 whose general I am, and which he insults in my person 
 by dishonoring my bride; it is true, I say, that such a 
 man deserves to die by some other hand than mine. 
 But, as he whose duty it is to punish him, is a father as 
 guilty as his son, instead of being an incorruptible judge, 
 I will myself seek him out, and will sacrifice my life, not 
 only to avenge my own wrongs and the blood of so many 
 innocent ones, but to secure the welfare of the most 
 serene republic, which he aspires and intends to grind 
 beneath his heel after he has subjugated the other princes 
 of Italy.” 
 
 The doge and the senators, who, as we have seen were 
 already aware of the occurrence which brought Carac- 
 ciolo into their presence, listened to him with great in¬ 
 terest and indignation; as he truly said, they were 
 themselves outraged in the person of their general, and 
 they all swore upon their honor that, if he would trust 
 the affair to them instead of giving way to his wrath, 
 which would inevitably be his ruin, his wife should be 
 
200 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 restored to him without a single stain upon her bridal 
 veil or his vengeance should be apportioned to the insult. 
 
 Thereupon, as a proof of the zeal with which they 
 entered upon the matter, the august body at once 
 despatched Ludovico Manenti, secretary of the Ten, to 
 Immola, where the duke was said to be, to bear witness 
 to the displeasure of the most serene republic on account 
 of the outrage put upon its general. At the same time 
 the doge and the Ten called upon the French ambassador 
 to add his influence to theirs, and to go in person with 
 Manenti to the Due de Valentinois, and summon him, in 
 the name of King Louis XII. to send the victim of the 
 abduction to Venice on the instant. 
 
 The messengers went to Immola, where they found 
 Caesar. He listened to their demand with admirably 
 feigned astonishment, denying all knowledge of or parti¬ 
 cipation in the crime, and fully authorized Manenti and 
 the French ambassador to hunt down the perpetrators, 
 promising to investigate the matter thoroughly himself. 
 
 He spoke with such an appearance of perfect good 
 faith, that the envoys were deceived for the moment and 
 began a most minute investigation. They went to the 
 spot where the abduction took place, and made searching 
 inquiries. The people in the neighborhood found the 
 dead and wounded lying on the highway; they saw a 
 mounted man gallop by carrying a weeping woman 
 across his saddle, and strike across the fields. A peasant 
 returning from his work saw him appear and vanish like 
 a shadow in the direction of an isolated house. An old 
 woman said she saw him enter the house. But during 
 the night the house disappeared as if by magic and the 
 plow was driven over its site; so that no one could say 
 what had become of her whom they sought, since 
 neither the house itself, nor its occupants were to be found. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 201 
 
 Manenti and the French ambassador returned to 
 Venice, and related what the Due de Valentinois said 
 to them, what steps they took, and how their investiga¬ 
 tions led to no result. No one had the least doubt that 
 Caesar was the culprit, but no one could prove that he 
 was. And so the serene republic, which could not afford 
 to fall out with the pope, having a war with the Turks on 
 its hands, forbade Caracciolo to take any measures to 
 avenge himself, and the excitement over the abduction 
 gradually died away until at last it ceased to be spoken 
 of. Meanwhile the relaxations of the winter did not di¬ 
 vert Caesar from his designs upon Faenza. As soon as 
 the returning spring permitted him to take the field, he 
 marched against the town once more, camped in front of 
 the castle, and having made a new breach, ordered a 
 general assault, leading the way himself as before. But, 
 notwithstanding his individual gallantry, well seconded 
 as it was by his men, the assault was repulsed by Astor, 
 who, at the head of his men, stood his ground at the 
 breach, while the women hurled down stones and tree- 
 trunks upon the besiegers from the top of the ramparts. 
 After an hour’s hand to hand struggle Caesar was com¬ 
 pelled to retire, leaving two thousand men in the 
 trenches, among them Valentino Farnese, one of his 
 bravest officers. 
 
 Realizing after this failure that assaults were as inef¬ 
 fectual as excommunication, Caesar converted the siege 
 into a blockade. All the roads leading to Faenza were 
 obstructed and all lines of communication broken. As 
 there had been several indications of rebellion at Cesena, 
 he installed as governor there, a man whom he knew to 
 have an inflexible will, one Ramiro d’Orco, with power 
 of life and death over the people. Then he sat calmly 
 down before Faenza, to wait until hunger should drive 
 
202 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 the inhabitants forth from those walls which they de¬ 
 fended with such desperate determination. At the ex¬ 
 piration of a month, during which they underwent all 
 the horrors of famine, they sent a flag of truce to Caesar’s 
 camp to propose a capitulation. There was so much left 
 for him to do in Romagna, that he was more amenable 
 to reason than they dared to hope, and the town surren¬ 
 dered on condition that neither the persons nor property 
 of the people should be molested, that Astor Manfredi 
 should be free to go where he pleased and should enjoy 
 the income of his patrimony wherever he might be. 
 
 These terms were faithfully observed so far as the in¬ 
 habitants were concerned; but when Caesar’s eyes fell 
 upon Astor, whom he did not know, he was seized with 
 a strange passion for the handsome youth whose beauty 
 was almost feminine in its quality. He kept him with 
 him in his army, treating him with the respect due to a 
 young prince, and appearing to entertain the greatest 
 friendship for him. Then one day Astor disappeared, as 
 Caracciolo’s fiance had done, and no one knew what 
 had become of him. Caesar himself seemed much dis¬ 
 turbed, said that he had doubtless fled, and to encourage 
 a belief in his flight sent couriers after him in all direc¬ 
 tions. 
 
 A year after these occurrences there were found in the 
 Tiber, a short distance below the Castle of San Angelo, 
 the bodies of a lovely young woman, with her hands tied 
 behind her back, and a handsome youth, with the cord 
 with which he had been strangled still about his neck. 
 The young woman was Caracciolo’s fiance, and the 
 youth was Astor. 
 
 Both had ministered to Caesar’s pleasures during the 
 year, and when at last he grew weary of them he had 
 them thrown into the Tiber. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 203 
 
 The taking of Faenza procured for Caesar the title of 
 Duke of Romagna, which was in the first place conferred 
 upon him in full consistory, and was afterward ratified 
 by the King of Hungary, the Republic of Venice, and 
 the Kings of Castile and Portugal. The news of the 
 ratification arrived at Rome on the eve of the day when 
 the people were accustomed to celebrate the anniversary 
 of the founding of the Eternal City. This festival, 
 which dated back to the time of Pomponius Laetus, was 
 observed with more pomp than ever on account of the 
 good fortune which seemed to follow the pope and his 
 family. Guns were fired all day as a token of the 
 public delight; in the evening there were illuminations 
 and fireworks; and the Prince of Squillace, with the most 
 distinguished members of the Roman nobility, spent the 
 greater part of the night roaming through the streets 
 with torches in their hands, shouting: “ Long live Alex¬ 
 ander ! Long live Caesar! Long live the Borgias! Long 
 live the Orsini! Long live the Duke of Romagna! ” 
 Meanwhile Caesar’s ambition soared higher and higher 
 with his successes. He was no sooner master of Faenza 
 than he cast his eyes upon Bologna, incited thereto by 
 the Marescotti, long time enemies of the Bentivogli. 
 But Giovanni di Bentivoglio, whose ancestors had ruled 
 over the city from time immemorial, had taken warning 
 from the fate of his neighbors, and made every prepara¬ 
 tion for a sturdy resistance, besides placing himself under 
 the protection of France. So that, as soon as he learned 
 that Caesar was marching at the head of his army toward 
 the Bolognese frontier, he sent a courier to Louis XII. 
 to demand the fulfillment of his promise. Louis re¬ 
 sponded to the appeal with his customary good faith, 
 and when Caesar arrived before Bologna, he received an 
 intimation from the King of France that he had best 
 
204 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 not attempt to carry out any design upon the well-being 
 of his ally. But Caesar was not the man to take so 
 much trouble for nothing, and so he proposed certain 
 conditions on which he would consent to retire, and 
 Bentivoglio agreed to them, only too happy to be quit 
 of him at that price. He agreed to cede Castel Bolog¬ 
 nese, a fortress between Immola and Faenza, to pay a 
 tribute of nine thousand ducats, and to furnish him with 
 a hundred men-at-arms and two thousand infantry. In 
 exchange for these concessions Caesar confided to him 
 that he was indebted to the suggestions of the Mares- 
 cotti for his visit. He then set out for Tuscany, re¬ 
 inforced by the contingent furnished by his new ally. 
 
 He was hardly out of sight when Bentivoglio ordered 
 all the gates of Bologna to be closed, and directed his 
 son Hermes to kill Agamemnon Marescotti, the head of 
 the family, with his own hand, while he himself super¬ 
 intended the slaughter of thirty-four of his brothers, 
 sons and daughters and nephews, and two hundred of 
 their kindred and friends. The bloody work was done 
 by the youth of the noblest families of Bologna, whom 
 Bentivoglio compelled to stain their hands with murder, 
 so that their fear of reprisals might keep them faithful 
 to him. 
 
 Caesar’s designs upon Florence were hardly a mystery 
 now. In the month of January he sent Regnier della 
 Lassetta and Pietro di Gamba-Corti to Pisa with some 
 twelve hundred men, and as soon as the conquest of 
 Romagna was finished Oliverotto da Fermo was dis¬ 
 patched to the same city with additional forces. As 
 we have just seen he had reinforced the army under his 
 personal leadership with a hundred men-at-arms and two 
 thousand foot, and he was joined by Vitellozo Vitelli, 
 lord of Citta di Castello, and by the Orsini, who brought 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 205 
 
 him two or three thousand more men; so that he had 
 under his command, beside the troops sent to Pisa seven 
 hundred men-at-arms and five thousand foot. 
 
 Notwithstanding this formidable host he entered Tus¬ 
 cany, protesting that his intentions were entirely peaceful, 
 and that he desired nothing more than to pass over the 
 territory of the republic on his way to Rome; at the 
 same time he offered to pay cash for such supplies as his 
 army needed. But when he had passed through the de¬ 
 files of the mountains and reached Barberino, feeling 
 that Florence was in his power, and that its approaches 
 could not be successfully defended against him, he put a 
 price upon his friendliness, and began to talk about im¬ 
 posing conditions instead of submitting to them. His 
 conditions were that Pietro dei Medici, the kinsman and 
 ally of the Orsini, should be restored to his former 
 power; that six citizens, to be designated by Vitellozo, 
 should be put in his hands, in order that the death of 
 Paolo Vitelli, whom the Florentines unjustly executed, 
 might be expiated by the deaths of these six ; that the 
 seignorial body should bind themselves to furnish no 
 assistance to the lord of Piombino whom he proposed to 
 dispossess of his domain without loss of time ; and lastly, 
 that the republic should take him into its service for 
 such pay as his deserts demanded. 
 
 But just as Csesar reached this point in his negotia¬ 
 tions with Florence, he was called upon by Louis XII. 
 to make ready to accompany him with his army, as was 
 agreed between them, to the conquest of Naples, which 
 he was now in a position to undertake. Csesar did not 
 dare to break his word to so powerful an ally; he sent 
 word to him, therefore, that he was at his service, and 
 as the Florentines did not know that he was obliged 
 to leave Tuscany, he induced them to purchase his 
 
206 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 withdrawal by the promise of a yearly payment of thirty- 
 six thousand ducats, in exchange for which he agreed to 
 keep three hundred men-at-arms always ready to go to 
 the assistance of the republic at the first summons, what¬ 
 ever the occasion. 
 
 Hurried as he was, Csesar hoped to find time in pass¬ 
 ing to make himself master of the territory of Piombino, 
 and to obtain possession of its capital by a well-directed, 
 vigorous coup-de-main. Consequently he marched into 
 the dominions of Giacomo IV. of Appiano; but he 
 found that he had anticipated him by laying waste his 
 own fields, burning the crops, cutting down the trees, 
 tearing up the vines, and choking up the few springs of 
 drinkable water. This did not prevent Csesar from gain¬ 
 ing possession in a few days of Severeto Scarlino, the 
 island of Elba and Pianosa: but he was forced to a 
 stand at the castle, which offered a vigorous resistance. 
 At this time the French army was in full march toward 
 Rome, and Caesar, on the twenty-seventh of July, received 
 a second order to join it; he set out the next morning, 
 leaving Vitellozo and Baglione to carry on the siege in 
 his absence. 
 
 Louis XII. was advancing upon Naples, not with the 
 impulsive recklessness of Charles VII., but with the 
 prudence and circumspection which were characteristic 
 of him. In addition to his alliance with Florence and 
 Rome he had signed a secret treaty with Ferdinand the 
 Catholic, who claimed to have, through the family of 
 Hurazzo, as well-defined a right to the Kingdom of 
 Naples, as Louis had through the House of Anjou. By 
 this secret treaty the two kings divided up their conquest 
 in advance ; Louis XII. was to have Naples itself with 
 Laboni and the Abruzzi, and the title of King of Naples 
 and Jerusalem; Ferdinand was to have Puglia and 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 207 
 
 Calabria, with the title of duke of those provinces. 
 Both were to receive the requisite investiture from the 
 pope, and to hold of him. 
 
 This partition had the better chance of being carried 
 out, in that Frederic believing Ferdinand still to be his 
 generous and faithful friend, would surely open his gates 
 to him, and learn when it was too late that he had ad¬ 
 mitted his enemies and masters into his strong places 
 instead of allies. All this was not over-loyal, perhaps on 
 the part of the king who had so long coveted and finally 
 received the surname of Catholic; but that mattered 
 little to Louis XII., who shared the advantages of the 
 perfidy, without sharing the perfidy itself. 
 
 The French army, reinforced by Csesar and his troops, 
 consisted of a thousand lances, four thousand Swiss, and 
 six thousand Gascons and adventurers. It was to be 
 supported by a fleet under Philip of Rabenstein con¬ 
 sisting of sixteen Breton and Provencal war-vessels, and 
 three Genoese caracks, with sixty-five hundred men all 
 told. 
 
 To oppose this imposing array, the King of Naples 
 had but seven hundred men-at-arms, six hundred light 
 horse, and six thousand foot, all under the command of 
 the Colonnas, whom he took into his service when the 
 pope drove them out of the States of the Church. He 
 placed great reliance, however, upon Gonzalvo of Cor¬ 
 dova, who was to join him at Gaeta, and to whom, in 
 his confidence, he threw open the gates of all the 
 fortresses in Calabria. 
 
 But Frederic’s reliance upon his faithless ally was not 
 of long duration. On their arrival at Rome the French 
 and Spanish ambassadors exhibited to the pope the 
 treaty signed at Grenada, on November 11, 1500, 
 between Louis XII. and Ferdinand the Catholic, and 
 
208 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 which had not before transpired. Alexander, with 
 keen prevision of what was to happen, had broken all 
 the ties which bound him to the House of Aragon, by 
 the death of Alphonzo. At the outset, however, he 
 made some objections, until it was pointed out to him 
 that this new arrangement had been made for the sole 
 purpose of affording the Christian princes greater facil¬ 
 ities for attacking the Ottoman Empire; to such an 
 argument all the pope’s scruples were bound to yield, and 
 on June 25th he decided to convoke a consistory which 
 declared Frederic to be no longer King of Naples. 
 
 Frederic learned at one and the same time of the 
 arrival of the French army at Rome, the treason of 
 Ferdinand, and the sentence of deposition pronounced 
 by Alexander; he realized, of course, that it was all 
 over with him, but he did not choose to let it be said 
 that he had abandoned his kingdom without even trying 
 to defend it. He therefore sent Fabricio Colonna and 
 Ranucio de Marciano, his two new generals, to delay the 
 French before Capua, with three hundred men-at-arms, 
 a few light horse and three thousand foot; he himself 
 occupied Aversa with another portion of his army, while 
 Prosper Colonna with the remainder was entrusted with 
 the defence of Naples, and the expulsion of the Span¬ 
 iards from Calabria. 
 
 These dispositions were hardly completed when 
 D’Aubigny crossed the Voltorno, and laid siege to 
 Capua on both sides of the river. As soon as their 
 tents were pitched under the ramparts the French placed 
 their batteries in position, and opened fire, to the in¬ 
 tense alarm of the poor besieged, who were almost all 
 strangers to the city, having hurried thither from all 
 sides in the hope of finding shelter behind its walls. 
 And so it happened that as soon as the French made one 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 209 
 
 assault, although it was bravely repulsed by Fabricio 
 Colonna, the feeling of terror throughout the city was 
 so general, and so utterly blind, that every one wished to 
 throw open the gates at once, and it was with greatest 
 difficulty that Colonna made the panic-stricken mob 
 understand that they ought at least to profit by the 
 check the besiegers had met with to the extent of ob¬ 
 taining an honorable capitulation. 
 
 Having at last convinced them he sent a flag of truce 
 to D’Aubigny, and a conference was fixed for the second 
 day thereafter, at which the terms of surrender should 
 be discussed. 
 
 But such an arrangement did not tally with the de¬ 
 signs of Csesar Borgia. He had remained behind to 
 confer with the pope, and joined the French army with 
 part of his troops on the very day that the conference 
 was agreed upon. A capitulation on any terms would 
 rob him of part of the satisfaction, to say nothing of the 
 booty, which he promised himself in taking by assault 
 so wealthy and populous a city as Capua. So he entered 
 into negotiation on his own account with an officer in 
 charge, of the defences at one of the gates, secret, golden 
 negotiations, which are always more quickly made and 
 more efficacious than the other sort. The result was 
 that, while Fabricio Colonna was discussing the terms 
 of capitulation with the French generals in a bastion in 
 the outer works, they suddenly began to hear shrieks of 
 distress:—Csesar Borgia, without advising any one of 
 his purpose, had entered the city, accompanied by his 
 faithful army from Romagna, and was slaughtering the 
 garrison, who had relaxed their vigilance because they 
 knew that the capitulation was ready to be signed. The 
 French, seeing that the city was half taken, rushed upon 
 the gates so impetuously that the besieged did not even 
 
210 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 try to defend them, and forced their way in at three 
 different points. After that, there was no hope of check¬ 
 ing the butchery and pillage that had already begun: 
 the work of destruction must go on to the end. In vain 
 did Fabricio Colonna, Ranucio di Marciano and Don 
 Ugo di Cardona try to hold their ground against French 
 and Spaniards with a handful of men whom they had 
 succeeded in getting together. Colonna and Don Ugo 
 were taken prisoners by the French, and Ranucio, 
 wounded by a cross-bow bolt, fell into the hands of the 
 Duke of Romagna. Seven thousand of the inhabitants 
 were massacred in the streets, among them the traitor 
 who opened the gate: the churches were pillaged; the 
 convent doors were forced and many of the saintly nuns 
 threw themselves into the wells and into the river to 
 escape the brutal soldiery. Three hundred women of 
 the noblest families fled for refuge to a tower; Csesar 
 burst open the doors, selected forty of the fairest for 
 himself, and turned over the rest to his army. 
 
 The pillage lasted three days. Capua fallen, Frederic 
 saw that it was useless for him to attempt to make any 
 further defence. He shut himself up in Castel-Nuovo, 
 and gave Gaeta and Naples permission to treat with the 
 conqueror. Gaeta saved itself from pillage by the pay¬ 
 ment of sixty thousand ducats, and Naples by the sur¬ 
 render of the castle which was put into D’Aubigny’s 
 hands by Frederic himself, on condition that he should 
 be permitted to take his money, jewels and household 
 goods to the island of Ischia, and remain there with his 
 family unmolested for six months. The conditions w’ere 
 faithfully adhered to on both sides; D’Aubigny entered 
 Naples, and Frederic withdrew to Ischia. 
 
 Thus fell for the last time, and “ great was the fall 
 thereof,” this branch of the House of Aragon which 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 211 
 
 had reigned in Naples for sixty-five years. Frederic, 
 its head, asked and obtained a safe-conduct to France, 
 where Louis XII. bestowed upon him the Duchy of 
 Anjou and a pension of thirty thousand ducats on con¬ 
 dition that he should not leave the kingdom, and he died 
 there on September 9, 1504. His eldest son, Don Fer¬ 
 dinand, Duke of Calabria, made his way into Spain, 
 where he was allowed to marry twice, but in each case a 
 woman who was known beforehand to be barren. He 
 died in 1550. 
 
 Alphonzo, the second son, who went into France with 
 his father, died by poison, so it was said, at Grenoble at 
 the age of twenty-two: Caesar, the third son, died at 
 Ferrara before he completed his eighteenth year. 
 
 Charlotte, Frederic’s daughter, married in France, 
 Nicolas Comte de Laval, Governor and Admiral of 
 Bretagne; one daughter was born of this marriage, 
 Anne de Laval, who married Francis de la Tremouille, 
 and it was through her that the family of La Tremouille 
 acquired the rights which it afterwards enforced to the 
 Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. 
 
 The surrender of Naples restored Caesar’s freedom of 
 action; he left the French army with renewed assur¬ 
 ances from its leader of the friendship of the King of 
 France, and returned to the siege of Piombino which he 
 had been forced to abandon. In the meantime Pope 
 Alexander was paying a visit to his son’s conquests, and 
 making the tour of Romagna accompanied by Lucrezia, 
 who was at last consoled for her husband’s death, and 
 had never been so high in favor with his Holiness: on 
 their return to Rome she occupied an apartment in her 
 father’s suite. 
 
 There resulted from this recrudescence of pontifical 
 affection two bulls, erecting the towns of Nepi and 
 
212 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Sermonetta into Duchies. One of them was given to 
 Giovanni Borgia, one of the pope’s children by some 
 other mistress than Yanozza or Guilia Farnese, and the 
 other to Don Rodrigo, of Aragon, son of Lucrezia and 
 Alphonzo. The Colonna estates went with the titles by 
 way of appanage. 
 
 But Alexander was dreaming of a new means of add¬ 
 ing to the fortunes of himself and his family—the mar¬ 
 riage, namely, of Lucrezia with Don Alphonzo, of Este, 
 son of Hercules, Duke of Ferrara; the project had the 
 advantage that it was looked upon favorably by Louis 
 XII. 
 
 His Holiness seemed to have struck a vein of good 
 luck, for he learned on the same day that Piombino had 
 surrendered to the Duke of Romagna, and that Duke 
 Hercules had given his word to the King of France. 
 
 Both pieces of news gave the greatest satisfaction to 
 Alexander, but in point of real importance there was no 
 comparison between them. The news that Madame 
 Lucrezia was to wed the heir-presumptive to the Duchy 
 of Ferrara was received by him with a frantic joy which 
 smacked a little of the parvenu. The Duke of Romagna 
 was requested to return to Rome to share in the family 
 rejoicings, and on the day when public announcement 
 of the betrothal was made the governor of the Castle of 
 San Angelo was ordered to fire a gun every fifteen min¬ 
 utes from noon to midnight. At two o’clock, Lucrezia, 
 in the appropriate garb of a fiance, accompanied by 
 her brothers, the Duke of Romagna and the Prince of 
 Squillace, left the Vatican, attended by all the nobility 
 of Rome, and went to the Church of the Madonna del 
 Popolo, where the Duke of Gandia, and Cardinal Gio¬ 
 vanni Borgia were buried, to return thanks for the latest 
 dispensation of Providence in favor of their family. In 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 213 
 
 the evening, with the same escort made even more brill¬ 
 iant by the glare of torches, and the gorgeous illumina¬ 
 tions, she made the circuit of the city amid cries of: 
 “ Long live Pope Alexander! Long live the Duchess of 
 Ferrara! ” uttered by heralds arrayed in cloth of gold. 
 
 On the following day the announcement was made 
 throughout the city that there would be races for women 
 from the Castle of San Angelo to the Square of St. 
 Peter’s; that on one day there would be a bull fight 
 after the Spanish fashion; and that from the current 
 month of October until the first day of Lent masquer¬ 
 ades would be permitted in the streets of Rome. 
 
 Such were the amusements provided for the outside 
 public ; the programme of the entertainments enjoyed by 
 those within the Vatican was not given to the public. 
 If we may believe Burchard, who was an eye-witness, 
 the following is a sample of their character. 
 
 “On the last Sunday in October fifty courtesans 
 supped in the apartments of the Due de Valentinois at 
 the papal palace, and after supper danced with the 
 squires and servants, at first with their clothes on, and 
 later without them. After a while the table was removed, 
 a number of candlesticks were symmetrically arranged 
 on the floor, and quantities of chestnuts thrown among 
 them, which these fifty women picked up with their 
 teeth, walking about on all fours among the lighted can¬ 
 dles. The pope, the Due de Valentinois and his sister 
 Lucrezia looked on at this spectacle from a gallery, and 
 warmly applauded the most skillful and most active 
 among them, who received as prizes, embroidered gar¬ 
 ters, velvet boots and caps made of cloth of gold and 
 lace. Then they passed to amusements of a different 
 sort, and- 
 
 We humbly ask pardon of our readers, especially 
 
214 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 those of the gentler sex; but although we succeeded in 
 finding words to describe the first part of the spectacle, 
 we have sought in vain for any that we could venture to 
 commit to paper in describing the second part; we will 
 say simply this—that, there were prizes for obscenity 
 and beastliness as well as for dexterity. 
 
 A few days after this extraordinary performance, 
 which recalls so vividly the day of Tiberius, Nero and 
 Heliogabalus, Lucrezia, attired in a gown of gold bro¬ 
 cade, the train of which was borne by young women 
 dressed in white and crowned with roses, came forth 
 from her own palace, attended by the most aristocratic 
 cavaliers, and the loveliest women in Rome, and walked 
 to the Vatican to the music of trumpets and clarions, 
 through streets which were spread with carpet in her 
 honor. The pope was awaiting her in the Pauline hall 
 with the Duke of Romagna, Don Ferdinand, acting as 
 proxy for Duke Alphonzo of Este, and the Cardinal of 
 Este, his cousin. 
 
 The pope took his seat at one side of the table while 
 the envoys from Ferrara remained standing on the other 
 side. Madame Lucrezia walked towards them and Don 
 Ferdinand placed the wedding ring on her finger. When 
 this was done the Cardinal of Este drew near and pre¬ 
 sented the bride with four superb rings, made of different 
 jjrecious stones in beautiful settings; then they placed a 
 richly inlaid ivory casket upon the table, and the cardi¬ 
 nal took from it a quantity of jewels, chains and neck¬ 
 laces, pearls and diamonds, the workmanship being no 
 less beautiful than the materials, and begged Lucrezia 
 to accept them as a makeshift, until her husband should 
 in person offer her some which would be more worthy of 
 her. 
 
 Lucrezia accepted the gifts with every indication of 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 215 
 
 unstinted delight; then she withdrew, leaning on the 
 pope’s arm, to an adjoining room; she was followed by 
 the female portion of her suite, and Caesar was left to do 
 " the honors of the Vatican to the men. In the evening 
 the guests met again, and while a magnificent display of 
 fireworks was taking place on the Square of St. Paul’s, 
 they danced half the night through. 
 
 When the ceremony of the betrothal was at an end, 
 the pope and the Duke of Romagna busied themselves 
 with preparations for the bride’s departure. The pope 
 desired that the journey should be performed with the 
 utmost pomp and magnificence, and to that end added to 
 his daughter’s retinue, consisting of her two brothers-in- 
 law, and the gentlemen who had come to Rome with 
 them, the whole Roman Senate, and those of the great 
 nobles whose wealth enabled them to make the most 
 gorgeous display in the matter of clothing and livery. 
 Among this brilliant train were Oliviero and Ramiro 
 Mattei, sons of Pietro Mattei, Chancellor of the city, 
 and a daughter of the pope by some obscure mistress. 
 His Holiness also appointed in consistory Francesco 
 Borgia, Cardinal of Cosenza, legate a latere , to escort his 
 daughter to the frontier of the States of the Church. 
 
 The Duke of Romagna, to do his part toward attain¬ 
 ing the desired result, sent messengers to all the cities of 
 Romagna to give orders that Lucrezia should be received 
 in each one of them as if she were its sovereign mistress; 
 and preparations on a grand scale were at once inaugu¬ 
 rated. But the messengers reported that they were much 
 afraid there might be some murmuring at Cesena, where, 
 as the reader will remember, Caesar had left Ramiro 
 d’Orco as governor, with full powers to put down symp¬ 
 toms of insubordination. Ramiro d’Orco did his work 
 so thoroughly that there was nothing more to be feared 
 
216 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 in the way of an uprising, for a sixth of the inhabitants 
 perished on the scaffold. But the natural result of such 
 a state of things was that the city could hardly be ex¬ 
 pected to indulge in such fervid expressions of delight 
 as were looked for from Immola, Faenza and Pesaro. 
 
 The Duke of Romagna extricated himself from this 
 dilemma with the promptness and certainty which were 
 characteristic of him. One morning the people of Cese- 
 na, when they woke from their slumbers, found a scaffold 
 erected on the public square, and on the scaffold was a 
 man’s body cut in four pieces, and surmounted by the 
 head stuck on the end of a pike. 
 
 The man was Ramiro d’Orco. 
 
 No one ever knew by what hands the scaffold was 
 erected, nor by whom the terrible deed was done. The 
 Republic of Florence interrogated Machiavelli, its am¬ 
 bassador at Cesena, as to his opinion of the affair and 
 received the following reply: 
 
 “ Magnificent Signori: 
 
 “ I can tell you nothing concerning the execution of 
 Ramiro d’Orco, save this—that Caesar Borgia is the most 
 accomplished of all princes in the matter of making and 
 unmaking men according to their deserts. 
 
 “ Nicolo Machiavelli.” 
 
 Caesar made no mistake as to the probable effect of 
 this step ; the Duchess of Ferrara’s reception in all the 
 cities which lay in her route left nothing to be desired ; 
 especially was this true of the city of Cesena. 
 
 While Lucrezia was on her way to Ferrara to join her 
 fourth husband, Alexander and the Duke of Romagna 
 determined to make a tour through their latest conquest, 
 the Duchy of Piombino. The ostensible purpose of 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 217 
 
 their journey was that Caesar’s new subjects might take 
 an oath of allegiance to him, but their real object was 
 to establish an arsenal in Appiano’s capital, within reach 
 of Tuscany, the conquest of which had never been 
 seriously abandoned by the pope or his son. 
 
 They set sail from the port of Corneto on a fleet of 
 six galleys, accompanied by a great number of cardinals 
 and prelates, and arrived the same evening at Piombino. 
 The papal court remained there some days, partly to 
 give time for the duke to be acknowledged as their lord 
 by the people, and partly to take part in certain ecclesi¬ 
 astical functions, of which the principal one was a solemn 
 service of state on the third Sunday in Lent, at which 
 the Cardinal of Cosenza said mass, in presence of the 
 pope and all the cardinals. 
 
 These solemn functions were succeeded by the ac¬ 
 customed forms of dissipation ; the pope sent for the 
 loveliest damsels in the city, and ordered them to perform 
 their national dances before him. 
 
 The dances were followed by banquets of unheard of 
 splendor, where the pope made no scruple about eating 
 flesh in everybody’s sight, although it was the Lenten 
 season. The whole performance, however, had no other 
 purpose than to put a quantity of money in circulation, 
 and insure the popularity of Caesar Borgia, while heaping 
 dust upon the memory of poor Appiano. 
 
 From Piombino the pope and his son went to the 
 island of Elba, where they remained only long enough 
 to visit the old fortifications and give orders for new to 
 be built. 
 
 At last the illustrious voyagers took ship to return to 
 Rome; but they were barely at sea when the weather 
 took an unfavorable turn, and as the pope would not 
 consent to return to Porto-Ferrajo, they remained five 
 
218 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 days upon the galleys, although they were provisioned 
 for but two. During the last three days the pope had 
 nothing to eat but a few fried fish which were caught with 
 much difficulty on account of the heavy weather. At 
 last they came in sight of Corneto, and there the Duke 
 of Romagna who was not on board the pope’s galley, 
 seeing that he could not hope to make the land in his 
 own, took a small boat, and was rowed ashore. The 
 pope was fain to keep on toward Pontercole, which place 
 he reached at last after being exposed to the full fury of 
 a storm of such violence that all his shipmates were on 
 the verge of despair, either from sea-sickness or fear of 
 death. The pope alone did not lose his self-possession 
 for a single instant, or exhibit one symptom of alarm; 
 throughout the storm he remained on deck, sitting in his 
 arm-chair, calling upon the name of Jesus, and making 
 the sign of the cross. 
 
 At last his galley entered the harbor of Pontercole; 
 there he went ashore, and having sent to Corneto for 
 horses, joined his son who was awaiting him there. 
 They then returned to Rome by easy stages through 
 Civita-Vecchia and Palo, and reached the Eternal City 
 after an absence of a month. 
 
 Cardinal d’Albret arrived at about the same time 
 in quest of his baretta; he was accompanied by the two 
 infants of Navarre, who were received not only with the 
 honors suited to their rank, but as brothers-in-law, to 
 whom Caesar was intensely anxious to show how highly 
 he valued their alliance. 
 
 The turn had now come for Caesar to resume his career 
 of conquest. On the first of May of the previous year 
 the pope had pronounced, in consistory, sentence of 
 deposition against Giulio-Cesare di Yarano, whereby, 
 as a penalty for the murder of his brother Rudolph, 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 219 
 
 and for affording shelter to the pope’s enemies he was 
 dispossessed of his fief of Camerino, which reverted to 
 the apostolic chamber. Caesar now set out from Rome 
 to put the sentence in execution. When he reached the 
 frontiers of Perouse, which belonged to his lieutenant 
 Giovanni-Paolo Baglione, he sent Olivetto da Fermo and 
 Gravina Orsino to lay waste the March of Camerino, 
 and at the same time called upon Guido d’Ubaldo of 
 Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, to loan him troops and 
 artillery to assist in the undertaking. The unfortunate 
 Duke of Urbino, being on the best of terms with the 
 pope, and having no reason to distrust Caesar, did not 
 dare to refuse. But on the very same day that his troops 
 marched to Camerino, Caesar’s troops marched into the 
 Duchy of Urbino, and took possession of Cagli, one of 
 the four cities comprised therein. The duke realized 
 what fate awaited him if he should attempt to resist, and 
 made his escape in the garb of a peasant; and within a 
 week Caesar was master of the entire duchy except the 
 fortresses of Maiolo and San-Leo. 
 
 He then turned his attention once more to Camerino, 
 which was still holding out, the garrison and people 
 taking heart from the presence of Giulio-Cesare di 
 Yarano, and his two sons, Venantio and Annibalis the 
 eldest son, Giovanni-Maria, was at Venice on a mission 
 for his father. 
 
 Caesar’s appearance led to negotiations between be¬ 
 siegers and besieged. Terms of capitulation were ar¬ 
 ranged, whereby Yarano agreed to surrender the city on 
 condition that he and his sons were allowed to take their 
 departure without molestation, and carry their household 
 goods, treasure and servants with them. This arrange¬ 
 ment by no means accorded with Caesar’s views ; and so 
 he took advantage of the relaxation of vigilance on the 
 
220 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 part of the garrison, which was a natural result of the 
 capitulation, and surprised the city during the night pre¬ 
 ceding the day on which it was to be surrendered. He 
 seized the persons of Yarano and his two sons, who 
 were strangled soon after, the father at Pergola and the 
 sons at Pesaro, by Don Michele Correglia. Although the 
 former bravo had risen to the rank of captain, he occa¬ 
 sionally resumed the practice of his early profession. 
 
 Meanwhile Vitellozo Vitelli, who had assumed the 
 title of General of the Church, and had eight hundred 
 men-at-arms and three thousand foot under his orders, 
 was following out the scheme of invasion embraced in 
 Caesar’s secret and verbal instructions to him, the pur¬ 
 pose of which was to surround Florence with a network 
 of steel and put her in a position from which she would 
 some day find it impossible to extricate herself. A 
 worthy pupil of his master, under whose tuition he had 
 learned to use the cunning of the fox or the strength of 
 the lion as occasion required, he had opened negotiations 
 with certain young noblemen of Arezzo looking to the 
 surrender of that town to him. The conspiracy was 
 discovered by Giulielmo dei Pazzi, commissioner of the 
 Florentine Republic, who caused two of the conspirators 
 to be arrested. But the others, who were much more 
 numerous than he supposed, at once scattered through 
 the city, calling the people to arms, and the whole 
 republican faction, who thought they could see in any 
 sort of an overturn, a hope of shaking off the yoke of 
 Florence, joined them, freed the two prisoners, and 
 seized the person of Giulielmo. They then proclaimed 
 the re-establishment of the old constitution, and besieged 
 the citadel, whither Cosmo dei Pazzi, Bishop of Arezzo, 
 Giulielmo’s son, had fled. 
 
 Finding that his stronghold was invested on every 
 
THE BORGIAS. 221 
 
 side, he dispatched a messenger to Florence in hot haste 
 for assistance. 
 
 Unfortunately for the cardinal, the troops of Vitellozo 
 Vitelli were nearer to the besiegers than those of the 
 magnificent republic were to the besieged, who, witnessed 
 in dismay the arrival of the enemy’s whole army, instead 
 of reinforcements for themselves. This army was com¬ 
 manded by Vitellozo, Baglione, and Fabio Orsino, with 
 whom were the two Medici, who were always ready to 
 run to any point where a league was being formed against 
 Florence, and to return on any conditions Borgia might 
 choose to exact, to the city which had driven them from 
 its gates. 
 
 On the following day the besiegers were further re¬ 
 inforced with men and money sent by Pandolfo Petrucci, 
 and on the eighteenth of June, no word having been re¬ 
 ceived from Florence, the citadel of Arezzo was obliged 
 to surrender. 
 
 Vitellozo left the town in the hands of his inhabitants, 
 put Fabio Orsino in the citadel with a thousand men, 
 and, taking advantage of the universal terror inspired 
 by the fall of Urbino, Camerino and Arezzo in such 
 rapid succession, he marched upon Monte San-Severino, 
 Castiglione-Aretino, Cortona and the other towns in the 
 valley of Chiana, which surrendered one after another, 
 almost without a blow. Thus he arrived within ten or 
 twelve leagues of Florence, and sent word to Caesar to 
 that effect, not daring to make any movement against 
 the city itself on his own responsibility. Caesar deemed 
 it a fitting time to strike the blow he had so many times 
 postponed, and at once set out to be himself, the bearer 
 of his reply to his faithful lieutenants. 
 
 But the Florentines, although they sent no reinforce¬ 
 ments to the relief of Arezzo, made a request for some 
 
222 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 for themselves from Chaumont d’Amboise, Governor of 
 the Milanais under Louis XII. They pointed out to him 
 not only that their immediate danger was great, but that 
 Caesar’s ambition soared so high, that, after he had made 
 himself master of the petty principalities, and then of 
 the States of the second rank, his overweening vanity 
 might lead him to the point of attacking the King of 
 France himself. Inasmuch as the news from Naples 
 was far from reassuring, grave dissensions having arisen 
 between the Comte d’Armagnac and Gonzalvo of Cor¬ 
 dova, Louis might at any time find that he had need 
 of Florence, his tried and ever faithful friend ; so he de¬ 
 termined to arrest Caesar’s progress. He dispatched im¬ 
 perative orders to him not to go a step farther, and put 
 Captain Imbaut in the field with four hundred lances to 
 see that his orders were obeyed. 
 
 Caesar received on the frontiers of Tuscany a copy of 
 the treaty between the republic and the King of France, 
 whereby the latter bound himself to defend his ally 
 against attack from any source. He also received Louis’ 
 formal order to him to go no farther, and learned at the 
 same time that, in addition to Captain Imbaut’s four 
 hundred lances which were on the way to Florence, 
 Louis XII., on arriving at Asti, at once hurried Louis 
 de la Tremouille off to Parma with two hundred men-at- 
 arms, three thousand Swiss and a considerable train of 
 artillery. These two movements combined seemed to in¬ 
 dicate an attitude of hostility to him; so he wheeled 
 about with his customary adroitness, and taking advan¬ 
 tage of the fact that he had given none of his lieutenants 
 any other than verbal orders, wrote Vitellozo a crushing 
 letter, in which he reproached him bitterly for compro¬ 
 mising him to serve his private purposes, and ordered 
 him to restore to the Florentines at once, the cities and 
 
THE BOKGIAS. 
 
 223 
 
 fortresses he had taken from them, threatening, if he 
 hesitated an instant to march upon him in person and 
 wrest them from him. 
 
 This letter written and dispatched, Caesar set out at 
 once for Milan, where Louis XII. then was, carrying to 
 him, as proof that he had been calumniated, intelligence 
 of the evacuation of the conquered cities. He also had 
 it in charge from the pope to renew for eighteen months 
 the title of legate a latere to the French court, borne by 
 the Cardinal d’Amboise, the friend rather than the min¬ 
 ister of Louis XII. Thanks to this public proof of his 
 innocence, and the secret influence of Amboise, Caesar 
 soon made his peace with the King of France. 
 
 But this was not all. It was the peculiar characteris¬ 
 tic of Caesar’s genius that he always succeeded in emerg¬ 
 ing greater than ever by virtue of some new combination 
 from every catastrophe that threatened to overwhelm 
 him; and so he at once calculated the advantage he 
 might reap from the alleged disobedience of his lieuten¬ 
 ants. More than once before this he had been somewhat 
 disturbed by the growth of their power, and had cast a 
 covetous eye upon the cities belonging to them, and he 
 thought perhaps the hour had now come to wipe them 
 off the face of the earth, and seek, in the invasion of 
 their dominions, some recompense for this Florence which 
 continually eluded him just as he felt sure that he had 
 her in his clutches. 
 
 Doubtless it was an annoying thing for him to see 
 these cities and strong places flying other banners than 
 his own in the midst of that lovely Romagna which he 
 proposed making into a kingdom for himself. Vitellozo 
 was the proprietor of Citta di Castello, Bentivoglio of 
 Bologna, Giovanni-Paolo Baglioni of Perouse; Oliver- 
 otto had recently seized Fermo, and Pandolfo Petrucci 
 
224 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 was lord of Sienna. It was high time that all these 
 should come under his undisputed sway: his lieuten¬ 
 ants, like Alexander’s, were becoming too powerful, 
 and he must needs inherit betimes from them to make 
 sure that they did not inherit from him. He obtained 
 three hundred lances from Louis XII. to be used against 
 them. 
 
 Yitellozo Vitelli understood from the mere perusal of 
 Caesar’s letter that in intention at least he was already 
 sacrificed to his fear of the King of France. But he 
 was not a man to be victimized so for a mere error of 
 judgment, he was a veritable Romagnese buffalo, one of 
 those who stands his ground with lowered horns against 
 the sacrificial knife ; and then, too, the fate of the 
 Yarani and Manfredi was fresh in his mind, and, death 
 for death, he much preferred to die with arms in his hand. 
 
 He assembled at Maggione those whose lives and 
 dominions were threatened by this latest sudden change 
 in Caesar’s policy. There were Paolo Orsino, Giovanni- 
 Paolo Baglioni, Hermes Bentivoglio, representing his 
 father Giovanni, Antonio Venafro, envoy of Pandolfo 
 Petrucci, Olivoretto daFermo, and the Duke of Urbino. 
 The first five had everything to lose, and the last had 
 already lost everything. 
 
 A league was formed, whereby they all bound them¬ 
 selves to resist Caesar, whether he tried to overthrow 
 them one by one, or attacked them all together. 
 
 The Duke of Romagna learned of this league by its 
 first result. The Duke of Urbino who was adored by 
 his subjects, made his appearance with a handful of 
 soldiers before the fortress of San-Leo, which at once 
 surrendered to him, and in less than a week, other cities 
 and fortresses having followed its example, the whole 
 duchy was once more in the power of the duke. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 225 
 
 At the same time each of the confederates openly 
 proclaimed himself in revolt against the common enemy, 
 and assumed an attitude of hostility. 
 
 The duke was at Immola almost without soldiers, 
 waiting for those to be sent him from the French army. 
 If Bentivoglio, who was in possession of one part of 
 that region, and the Duke of Urbino, who had just re¬ 
 conquered another part, had marched against him, it is 
 probable that they would either have taken him, or 
 would have forced him to fly, and leave Romagna; espe¬ 
 cially as the two men upon whom he relied, Don IJgo di 
 Cardona, who entered his service after the fall of Capua, 
 and Michelotto were for the moment separated from him, 
 through a misunderstanding of his orders. He ordered 
 them to fall back upon Rimini, and to bring him the two 
 hundred light horse and five hundred foot whom they 
 commanded: but they failed to realize the urgency of 
 the situation, and just as they were making an attempt 
 to carry Pergola and Fossombrune by surprise, they 
 were surrounded by Orsino, Gravina and Vitellozo. 
 
 Ugo 'di Cardona and Michelotto defended themselves 
 like lions, but despite their heroic efforts their little band 
 was cut in pieces. Ugo di Cardona was made prisoner 
 and Michelotto escaped a similar fate only by lying 
 among the dead: after nightfall, he made his escape to 
 Fano. 
 
 Notwithstanding this success, and although he was 
 almost defenceless at Immola, the confederates dared not 
 attack Caesar, whether because of the fear inspired by 
 his personality, or because they respected in him the 
 friend of the King of France. They contented them¬ 
 selves therefore with seizing the towns and fortresses in 
 the neighborhood. Vitellozo took the fortresses of Fos¬ 
 sombrune, Urbino, Cagli and Aggobbio; Orsino and 
 
 Vol. II.—15. 
 
226 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Gravina recaptured Fano, and the whole of that prov¬ 
 ince ; and Giovanni Maria di Yarano, who had escaped 
 the fate of the rest of his family because he was absent 
 at Venice, re-entered Camerino, borne aloft in triumph 
 by his people. 
 
 All these threatening conditions did not destroy 
 Caesar’s confidence in his own good fortune, and while 
 on the one hand he was hurrying on the coming of the 
 French troops, and mustering into his service all the 
 petty nobles, who were known as “ broken lances,” be¬ 
 cause they roamed about the country with only five or 
 six horsemen, letting out the swords to any one who had 
 need of them, on the other hand, he entered into negotia¬ 
 tions with his enemies, feeling sure that if he could once 
 induce them to consent to a conference they were lost. 
 It is the truth that Caesar had received from heaven the 
 fatal gifts of a smooth tongue and great powers of per¬ 
 suasion ; so that, however well aware one might be of 
 his duplicity, it seemed to be impossible to resist, not his 
 eloquence but the air of good natured frankness and 
 bonhomie , which he knew so well how to assume, and 
 which won the admiration of Machiavelli, who was 
 taken in by it more than once himself, although he was 
 the most subtle of politicians. 
 
 In order to induce Paolo Orsino to meet him for pur¬ 
 poses of negotiation at Immola, he sent Cardinal Borgia 
 to the confederates as a hostage : Paolo’s hesitation van¬ 
 ished and he arrived at Immola on the twenty-fifth of 
 October, 1502. 
 
 The duke welcomed him as one would welcome an old 
 friend, from whom one has been estranged for a few days 
 by some trifling temporary disagreement. He admitted 
 with engaging frankness that all the fault was undoubt¬ 
 edly on his side, since he had succeeded in alienating 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 227 
 
 the good-will of men who were such loyal gentlemen 
 and such gallant soldiers. But he added that, with 
 such men as they were, a frank and straightforward ex¬ 
 planation, such as he proffered, ought to put everything 
 back on the old footing. Thereupon, to prove that it 
 was not fear, but his good-will to them which led him to 
 seek a reconciliation, he showed Orsino letters from Car¬ 
 dinal d’Amboise announcing the speedy arrival of the 
 French troops: he showed him those he had levied him¬ 
 self, desiring, as he said, that they should be thoroughly 
 convinced that his bitterest regret in all this was not so 
 much his own loss of officers of such merit that they 
 were the soul of his vast undertaking, as the idea which 
 the world might conceive, to his great disadvantage, that 
 he could for a single moment have underestimated their 
 worth. He therefore left it in the hands of Paolo 
 Orsino, for whom he had always the greatest affection, 
 to induce the confederates to consent to a peace which 
 would be as advantageous to all concerned as the war 
 was harmful, to each and every one of them, being him¬ 
 self prepared to agree to any sort of accommodation not 
 prejudicial to his honor. 
 
 Orsino was just the man for Caesar’s purpose. Being 
 inflated with self-esteem and self-confidence, he was con¬ 
 vinced of the truth of the old proverb which says: 
 
 “ No pope can reign a week if he has both the Colon- 
 nas and Orsini against him.” 
 
 He believed, if not in Caesar’s good faith, in the neces¬ 
 sity he was under of being reconciled to them, and con¬ 
 sequently he signed, subject to ratification, the following 
 convention on the eighteenth of October, 1502. We 
 copy it from Machiavelli’s dispatch to the magnificent 
 republic of Florence. 
 
228 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Agreement Between the Duke of Romagna and 
 
 the Confederates. 
 
 “ Let all persons to whom these presents shall come 
 take notice, that his Excellency the Duke of Romagna 
 on the one part, and the Orsini and their allies on the 
 other, desiring to put an end to the discord, enmity, mis¬ 
 understanding and suspicion now existing between them, 
 , do hereby agree to the following terms: 
 
 “There shall be peace and alliance between them, 
 without reserve and perpetual, with complete oblivion 
 of all wrongs and insults which may have been hitherto 
 inflicted on either side ; the parties reciprocally agreeing 
 to harbor no resentment. In pursuance of the said al¬ 
 liance, his Excellency the Duke of Romagna does take 
 unto himself as confederates and allies forever all the 
 aforesaid nobles; and each of them binds himself to de¬ 
 fend the estates of all in general and of each in particu¬ 
 lar against every power which may attempt to molest or 
 attack them for any cause whatever, always excepting 
 the Pope, Alexander VI. and his Most Christian Majesty 
 Louis XII., King of France; and the aforesaid nobles 
 promise in the same terms to hasten to the defence of the 
 person and estates of his Excellency, as well as those of 
 the Most Illustrious Don Guiffry Borgia, Prince of Squil- 
 lace, Don Rodrigo Borgia, Duke of Sermonetta and 
 Biselli, and Don Giovanni Borgia, Duke of Camerino 
 and Nepi, brothers or nephews all of his Excellency the 
 Duke of Romagna. 
 
 “ Furthermore, as the uprising and invasion of the 
 Duchy of Urbino and of Camerino have come to pass 
 during the aforesaid misunderstanding, all the aforesaid 
 confederates and each of them hereby bind themselves 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 229 
 
 to march with all their available forces to recover said 
 States as well as all other places which have risen in re¬ 
 volt or been attacked. 
 
 “ His Excellency the Duke of Romagna agrees to re¬ 
 store the Orsini and Vitelli to their former rank in his 
 military service, on the same terms as before. 
 
 “ He agrees, also, to require but one of them, to be se¬ 
 lected by themselves, to serve in person; any service 
 performed by the others will be voluntary. 
 
 “ He agrees also to secure the ratification by the sover¬ 
 eign pontiff of a second treaty providing that the said 
 pontiff cannot require Cardinal Orsino to remain in 
 Rome for any greater length of time than best suits the 
 convenience of that prelate. 
 
 “ Furthermore, as there are certain matters at issue be¬ 
 tween the pope and Signor Giovanni Bentivoglio, the 
 aforesaid confederates agree that they shall be referred 
 without right of appeal to the arbitrament of Cardinal 
 Orsino, his Excellency the Duke of Romagna, and Sig¬ 
 nor Pandolfo Petrucci. 
 
 “The aforesaid confederates also bind themselves, 
 jointly and severally, to place in the hands of the Duke 
 of Romagna, as soon as they shall be called upon by him 
 so to do, one of the legitimate sons of each of them, at 
 such time and place as he shall appoint. 
 
 “ The said confederates do also mutually agree, each 
 with all the others, that if any plot against one of them 
 shall come to his knowledge, he will warn him of it as 
 well as all the others. 
 
 “ It is furthermore agreed by the Duke of Romagna 
 and the aforesaid confederates to regard as a common 
 enemy any one who shall fail to observe all or any of 
 the stipulations contained herein, and to join hands to 
 
230 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 destroy any powers which do not act in conformity 
 hereto. 
 
 “ Signed: 
 
 “ CAESAR, 
 
 “ Paolo Orsino, 
 
 “ Agapit, Secretary ” 
 
 r 
 
 While Orsino was reporting to the confederates the 
 result of his negotiations with Csesar, Bentivoglio, being 
 unwilling to accede to the proposed arbitration, sug¬ 
 gested to Csesar that they should settle the points at 
 issue between them by a separate treaty, and sent his 
 son to him to formulate the conditions; after some dis¬ 
 cussion they were finally agreed upon as follows : 
 
 Bentivoglio agreed to cut adrift from the Vitelli and 
 Orsini; he was to furnish Csesar with a hundred men-at- 
 arms and a hundred mounted cross-bow men for eight 
 years, and pay him twelve thousand ducats a year for 
 the support of a hundred lances. 
 
 In return therefor his son Annibal was to marry the 
 sister of the Bishop of Enna, Csesar’s niece, and the 
 pope agreed to recognize his sovereignty in Bologna. 
 
 The King of France, the Duke of Ferrara, and the Re¬ 
 public of Florence were to be the guarantors of the treaty. 
 
 Meanwhile the provisions of the treaty reported by 
 Orsino met with but slight favor among the confederates. 
 Vitellozo Vitelli particularly, who knew Csesar more 
 thoroughly than any of the others, repeated again and 
 again that the terms were too liberal and were accorded 
 too promptly not to hide some trap. But in the mean¬ 
 time Csesar had collected a considerable force at Immola, 
 and the four hundred lances loaned by Louis XII. had 
 at last joined him, so that Vitellozo and Oliverotto con¬ 
 cluded to sign the Orsino treaty, and so notified the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 231 
 
 Duke of Urbino and the lord of Camerino, who saw 
 that it was impossible for them to defend themselves 
 alone, and so withdrew, one to Citta di Castello, and the 
 other to the Kingdom of Naples. 
 
 On the tenth of December, without divulging his 
 plans to any one, Caesar marched toward Cesena with the 
 powerful force he had been collecting. Immediately a 
 feeling of terror spread throughout all Northern Italy. 
 Florence, although he was moving away from her borders, 
 feared that this march was undertaken for no other pur¬ 
 pose than to cloak his real intentions; and Venice, whose 
 frontier he was approaching, had sent all her troops 
 away to the banks of the Po. Caesar took note of this 
 feeling of alarm, and as it was calculated to interfere 
 with his plans by arousing suspicion, he dismissed all 
 the Frenchmen in his service, when he reached Cesena, 
 except a hundred men-at-arms, commanded by M. de 
 Candale, his brother-in-law. This left him with but two 
 thousand cavalry, and ten thousand foot. 
 
 Several days were spent in talk, for Caesar found in 
 the town envoys from the Vitelli and Orsini, who were 
 themselves at the head of their army in the Duchy of 
 Urbino. At the very beginning of the discussion as to 
 the course to be pursued in continuing their career of 
 conquest, there was so much difference of opinion between 
 the commander-in-chief and these envoys that they saw 
 themselves that it was impossible to accomplish anything 
 through intermediaries, and that a conference between 
 Caesar and one at least of the chiefs was urgently necessary. 
 
 Oliverotto da Fermo therefore took his life in his 
 hand, and joined the Duke of Romagna, proposing that 
 they should either march upon Tuscany or seize Sini- 
 gaglia, which was the last place in the Duchy of Urbino 
 that had not fallen again into Caesar’s hands. 
 
232 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Caesar replied that he was unwilling to carry the war 
 into Tuscany, because the Tuscans were his friends; but 
 he approved the project of seizing Sinigaglia, and at 
 once moved his army in the direction of Fano. 
 
 Thereupon, the daughter of Frederic, the former 
 Duke of Urbino, who held the town of Sinigaglia (and 
 who was called the “ prefectess, ” because she was the 
 w T ife of Giovanni della Rovere, appointed prefect of Rome 
 by his uncle Sixtus IV.), concluded that it would be im¬ 
 possible to defend the place against the force brought by 
 the Duke of Romagna; so she left the citadel in command 
 of a captain, whom she urged to obtain the best possible 
 terms for the town, and herself embarked for Venice. 
 
 Caesar was advised of this at Rimini by a courier from 
 Vitellozo and the Orsini, who informed him that the 
 commandant of the citadel refused to surrender it to 
 them, but was willing to treat with him; and that they 
 had therefore promised that he would pay a visit to the 
 town and adjust the matter. Caesar sent word to them 
 in reply that, in consequence of the intelligence received 
 from them he should send part of his troops to Cesena and 
 Immola ; that they were of no use to him since he could 
 rely upon theirs, who, with the escort he proposed to 
 retain, would be quite sufficient for his present purpose, 
 which was simply the complete pacification of the Duchy 
 of Urbino. But, he added, that such pacification was 
 impossible so long as his former friends continued to 
 distrust him to such an extent that they refused to dis¬ 
 cuss plans in which they were as deeply interested as he, 
 except through the medium of third persons. 
 
 The courier carried back this reply to the confederates, 
 who, although they realized the truth of his observations, 
 hesitated nevertheless to do what he asked. Vitellozo 
 Vitelli in particular manifested a distrust of Caesar, which 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 233 
 
 it seemed impossible to overcome. At last, however, he 
 gave way to the persistent entreaties of Oliverotto, 
 Gravina, and Orsino, and consented to await the duke’s 
 arrival; but he was influenced much more by his reluc¬ 
 tance to appear more fearful than his companions, than 
 by any confidence in Csesar’s show of continuing good¬ 
 will. 
 
 When the duke reached Fano on December 20,1502, 
 he was apprised of this decision which he was so desi¬ 
 rous of bringing about. He at once summoned eight of 
 his most faithful adherents, among whom were his nephew 
 Signor d’Enna, Michelotto, and Ugo di Cardona, and 
 ordered them, as they approached Sinigaglia, and Oliv¬ 
 erotto, Gravina, Vitellozo and Orsino came forth to meet 
 him, to take their places on their right and left, two 
 for each of the four, as if to do them honor, and in such 
 way that they could at a given signal either arrest them, 
 or stab them. He then designated the particular indi¬ 
 vidual to whom each of them should give his attention, 
 and impressed upon them that they must not leave him 
 until he had entered Sinigaglia and arrived at the quarters 
 prepared for him. He also sent orders to those of his 
 soldiers who were quartered in the neighborhood to as¬ 
 semble to the number of eight thousand on the banks of 
 the Metauro, a small river of Umbria which flows into 
 the Adriatic, and known to history as the scene of 
 Hasdrubal’s defeat. 
 
 The duke reached the rendezvous appointed for his 
 army on the thirty-first of December. He at once sent 
 two hundred cavalry on before, and the whole body of 
 infantry a short distance behind them; then he took up 
 the line of march himself, surrounded by his men-at-arms, 
 and followed the shore of the Adriatic, with the moun¬ 
 tains on his right and the sea on his left, sometimes so 
 
234 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 closely pressed between them that the troops could march 
 only ten abreast. 
 
 After a march of four hours the duke, on turning an 
 angle in the road, found himself in sight of Sinigaglia, 
 which lies about a mile from the sea, and within an ar¬ 
 row’s flight of the mountains. Between the army and 
 the town flowed a little stream which they were obliged 
 to follow down for some distance until at last they found 
 a bridge opposite a suburb of the town. At that point 
 Caesar drew up his cavalry in two lines, one between the 
 road and the river and the other on the side away from 
 the river, leaving the whole width of the road for the in¬ 
 fantry, who marched through, crossed the bridge, entered 
 the town, and drew up in order of battle on the public 
 square. 
 
 Yitellozo, Gravina, Orsino and Oliverotto had quar¬ 
 tered their troops in the small towns or villages nearby 
 in order to make room for the duke’s army. Oliverotto, 
 however, retained about a thousand foot and a hundred 
 and fifty horse, whose barracks were in the suburb by 
 which the duke’s troops entered the town. 
 
 Csesar had ridden but a few steps toward the town 
 when he spied Yitellozo, the Duke of Gravina and Or¬ 
 sino waiting at the gate to welcome him; the last two 
 were light-hearted and trustful, but Yitellozo was so sad 
 and depressed that one would have said he divined the 
 fate that was in store for him. Doubtless he had some 
 foreboding of it, for when he left his troops to go to Sini¬ 
 gaglia, he bade them adieu as if he never expected to 
 see them again, commending his family to the care of his 
 officers, and kissed his children with tears streaming 
 down his cheeks; a weakness which seemed strange on 
 the part of a stern, brave-hearted warrior. 
 
 The duke rode up to them and held out his hand with 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 235 
 
 such a frank and amiable expression that it drove away 
 the last vestige of doubt as to his sincerity from the 
 minds of Gravina and Orsino; Vitellozo Vitelli alone 
 retained his air of melancholy dejection. 
 
 At the same moment the duke’s trusty adherents took 
 their places, as they were bid, at the right and left of 
 those whom they were to watch, and who were all pres¬ 
 ent, save Oliverotto. The duke noticed his absence, and 
 looked uneasily about for him; but as they were passing 
 through the suburb he saw him drilling his troops upon 
 the square. He at once sent Michelotto and Enna to 
 him to say that it was extremely imprudent for him to 
 bring his men out in that way, for they might get into a 
 dispute with the duke’s troops, and cause an affray; so 
 that it would be much better for him to send them back 
 to their barracks, and join his companions. Oliverotto, 
 whose destiny drew him in with the others to his fate, 
 made no objection, but ordered his troops back into their 
 barracks, and galloped off to join Caesar, with Enna and 
 Michelotto on either side. As soon as he spied him Cae¬ 
 sar called to him, grasped his hand, and continued his 
 march toward the palace assigned for his headquarters, 
 with his four victims in his train. 
 
 He alighted first at the door, and with a sign to the 
 leader of his men-at-arms to await his orders, passed 
 into the building, followed by Oliverotto, Gravina, Vitel¬ 
 lozo Vitelli and Orsino, each still attended by his two 
 familiars. But they had no sooner mounted the stair¬ 
 case and entered the first room than the door was closed 
 behind them, and Caesar turned about, saying: 
 
 “ The hour has come! ” 
 
 It was the appointed signal. Instantly each of the 
 confederates was seized and thrown to the floor, and 
 with a dagger at his throat forced to give up his weapons. 
 
236 
 
 THE BOKGIAS. 
 
 The next moment, while they were being led off to 
 prison, Csesar opened the window, went out upon the bal¬ 
 cony and shouted to the leader of his men-at-arms: 
 
 “ Go! ” 
 
 The leader knew what was expected of him, and hur¬ 
 ried off with his troop to the barracks occupied by 
 Oliverotto’s force, who were taken by surprise and made 
 prisoners. Then the town was given over to pillage, and 
 the duke sent for Machiavelli. 
 
 Csesar and the Florentine envoy were closeted together 
 for some two hours, and we will allow Machiavelli to de¬ 
 scribe the interview in his own words. 
 
 “ He sent for me and with a most serene expression di¬ 
 lated upon the satisfaction he derived from the success 
 of this enterprise which he insisted that he had men¬ 
 tioned to me the day before. I recalled the fact, although 
 I did not then understand what he meant. He explained 
 very reasonably and with protestations of the highest 
 regard for our good city, the various reasons which led 
 him to desire your alliance, a desire which he hoped that 
 you would reciprocate. He concluded by making me 
 promise to prefer three requests to your lordships in his 
 name : first that you rejoice with him because that has 
 happened which wipes out at a single blow, the king’s 
 enemies, yours and his own, and destroys the seeds of 
 trouble and discord which were only too likely to over¬ 
 run Italy ; this service, taken in conjunction with his 
 refusal to join these same prisoners in marching against 
 you ought, he thinks, to arouse your sense of gratitude. 
 Secondly, that you consent to give him a striking proof 
 of your friendship by dispatching cavalry to Borgo, and 
 mustering infantry there, to be at hand, in case of need, 
 to march with him upon Castello or Perouse. Lastly, 
 and this is the third request he makes of you, that you 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 237 
 
 cause the Duke of Urbino to be arrested, if he should 
 flee from Castello to your dominions, upon learning of 
 Vitellozo’s detention. When I pointed out to him that 
 it would not be in consonance with the dignity of the 
 republic to give him up, and that you would never con¬ 
 sent to do it, he agreed with me, and said that he would 
 be content if you would detain him and not restore him 
 to liberty without his sanction. I promised his Excel¬ 
 lency to write all this to you, and he awaits your reply.” 
 
 That same night eight masked men went down into 
 the dungeon where the prisoners were confined. They 
 all supposed that their last hour had struck, but at the 
 moment only Vitellozo and Oliverotto were wanted. 
 When these two were informed that their doom was 
 sealed Oliverotto bitterly reproached Vitellozo, charging 
 him with being responsible for his having taken up arms 
 against the duke. The only thing that Vitellozo himself 
 said was that he begged the pope to give him plenary 
 absolution for all his sins. The masked men then led 
 them out, leaving Orsino and Gravina to await their turn. 
 The others were taken to a lonely spot outside the fortifi¬ 
 cations, where they were strangled, and their bodies at 
 once tossed into graves which had been dug in antici¬ 
 pation. 
 
 Orsino and Gravina were allowed to live until Caesar 
 learned whether the pope had secured the arrest of 
 Cardinal Orsino, Archbishop of Florence, and lord of 
 Santa-Croce. As soon as his Holiness sent word that it 
 had been done, the two prisoners, who had been trans¬ 
 ferred to the castle of La Pievre, were also taken out 
 and strangled. 
 
 The Duke of Romagna left Sinigaglia immediately 
 after the first execution, leaving full instructions with 
 Michelotto. He assured Machiavelli that he had never 
 
238 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 had any other purpose than that of restoring tranquillity 
 in Romagna and Tuscany, and that he believed he had 
 accomplished that purpose by putting to death those who 
 were the cause of all the troubles. As to any uprisings 
 which might take place thereafter they would be nothing 
 more than sparks which a drop of water would extinguish. 
 
 The moment that the pope learned that Csesar had his 
 enemies in his power, being in great haste to play the 
 same game for himself, he sent word to Cardinal Orsino, 
 although it was then midnight, that his son had gained 
 possession of Sinigaglia, and urged him to come to him 
 in the morning and talk over the good news. The 
 cardinal, enchanted by this indication of high favor, was 
 careful not to fail to keep the appointment. Betimes in 
 the morning he mounted his horse to ride to the Vatican; 
 at the first street corner he met the Governor of Rome 
 with a detachment of cavalry, who expressed his pleasure 
 at the happy accident which led them both in the same 
 direction, and escorted him to the door of the pope’s 
 palace. There the cardinal alighted, and began to ascend 
 the steps, but was not half way up before his mules and 
 attendants were seized and shut up in the palace stables. 
 
 Upon entering the hall of the Parrot he and all his 
 suite were surrounded by armed men, who led him to 
 another apartment, called the Vicar’s hall, where he 
 found the Abb& Alviano, the prothonotary Orsino, 
 Giacomo Santa-Croce, and Rinaldo Orsino, prisoners all 
 like himself. At the same time the governor received 
 orders to take possession of the Castle of Monte-Giardino, 
 which belonged to the Orsini, and take away all the 
 jewels, hangings, furniture and plate which it contained. 
 
 The governor acquitted himself of this duty conscien¬ 
 tiously, and carried to the Vatican everything that he 
 found, even to the cardinal’s account books. On 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 239 
 
 consulting these books the pope made two discoveries: 
 one was that a sum of two thousand ducats was owing to 
 the cardinal, for which no debtor’s name was given ; and 
 the other, that the cardinal purchased, three months 
 before, for fifteen hundred Roman crowns, a magnificent 
 pearl which was not among the property found in his 
 possession. He thereupon gave orders that, until these 
 errors in the cardinal’s accounts were rectified, the men 
 who brought food to him from his mother twice each day, 
 should not be admitted to the Castle of San Angelo. 
 The same day the cardinal’s mother sent the pope the 
 two thousand ducats, and the next day his mistress 
 appeared, dressed in man’s clothes, and brought the miss¬ 
 ing pearl. But his Holiness, enraptured by her beauty in 
 that garb, allowed her to keep it at the same price which 
 she paid before, if common report is to be believed. 
 
 As to the cardinal, the pope allowed food to be 
 brought him, as before, so that it is not to be wondered 
 at that he died by poison on the twenty-second of Feb¬ 
 ruary, two days subsequent to that on which his accounts 
 were adjusted. 
 
 On the evening of the same day the Prince of 
 Squillace left Rome to take possession, in the pope’s 
 name, of the estates of the defunct. 
 
 Meanwhile the Duke of Romagna pursued his course 
 to Citta di Castello and Perouse, and gained possession 
 of both places without striking a blow ; for the Vitelli fled 
 from the first-named and Giovanni-Paolo Baglione aban¬ 
 doned the second, without even an attempt at resistance. 
 
 There remained Sienna, where Pandolfo Petrucci had 
 shut himself up, the only one left of all those who 
 signed the league against him. But Sienna was under 
 the protection of the French ; furthermore Sienna was 
 not parcel of the States of the Church, and Caesar had 
 
240 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 no shadow of claim to it. He contented himself there¬ 
 fore with demanding that Pandolfo Petrucci should leave 
 the city, and withdraw to Lucca, which he did. 
 
 Thereupon, as everything was tranquil in that quarter, 
 and the whole of Romagna was under his heel, Caesar 
 resolved to return to Rome, to assist the pope in getting 
 rid of what remained of the Orsini. 
 
 This task was made the easier of accomplishment, be¬ 
 cause Louis XII. having met with reverses in the King¬ 
 dom of Naples, was thenceforth too deeply engrossed in 
 his own affairs to disturb himself about those of his 
 allies. And so Caesar, dealing with the neighborhood 
 of the Eternal City, as he had dealt with Romagna, 
 seized upon Yicovaro, Cera, Palombera, Lanzano and 
 Cervetti in rapid succession. 
 
 This conquest accomplished, Caesar, having subdued 
 the papal territories from the frontiers of Naples to 
 those of Venice, returned to Rome, to concert with his 
 father a plan for transforming his duchy into a kingdom. 
 
 Caesar arrived in Rome just in time to share with 
 Alexander in the succession to Cardinal Giovanni 
 Michele, who had recently died, poisoned by a glass of 
 wine which he took from the pope’s own hands. 
 
 The future King of Italy found his father meditating 
 an extensive speculation; he had resolved to celebrate 
 St. Peter’s Day by the creation of nine cardinals. 
 
 He had this to gain by this wholesale creation. 
 
 In the first place, those whom he promoted would 
 leave their present posts vacant; they would revert to 
 the pope, and he would sell them. 
 
 Secondly, each of the new selections would purchase 
 his appointment at a higher or lower figure according to 
 his means; the price would be left to the pope’s caprice 
 and would vary from ten to forty thousand ducats. 
 
THE BORG/AS 
 
 The accidental poisoning of Alexander 
 VI. and of his son Ccesar Borgia , Duke of 
 Romagna. 
 

 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 241 
 
 Lastly, when they became cardinals, the law took 
 away from them the right to make a will, so that the 
 pope had only to poison them in order to inherit all their 
 possessions. This put him in a position similar to that 
 of the butcher, who when he needs money has only to 
 kill the fattest sheep in his flock. 
 
 The promotions took place as planned. The new car¬ 
 dinals were Giovanni Castellar Valentino, Archbishop 
 of Trani; Francesco Remolino, ambassador of the King 
 of Aragon, Francesco Soderini, Bishop of Volterra; 
 Melchior Copis, Bishop of Brissina; Nicolas Fiesque, 
 Bishop of Frejus; Francesco di Sprate, Bishop of 
 Leone; Adriano Castellense, clerk of the chamber, 
 treasurer-general, and secretary of apostolic letters; 
 Francesco Loris, Bishop of Elva, Patriarch of Constan¬ 
 tinople, and secretary to the pope; and Giacomo Casa¬ 
 nova, prothonotary, and private chamberlain to his Holi¬ 
 ness. 
 
 When the price of their elevation was duly paid, and 
 the places left vacant by them had been sold, the pope 
 made his selection of those who were to be poisoned. 
 The number was fixed at three—one of earlier creation, 
 Cardinal Casanova, and two of the new set, Melchior 
 Copis, and Adriano Castellense, the latter of whom took 
 the name of Adriano di Corneto, from the town where 
 he was born ; he had amassed an immense fortune in the 
 offices of clerk of the chamber, treasurer-general, and 
 secretary of apostolic letters. 
 
 When this course of action was fully agreed upon by 
 Caesar and the pope, they issued invitations to a supper- 
 party to be given at a villa not far from the Vatican 
 belonging to Cardinal di Corneto. In the morning of 
 the day appointed for this festival, which was the second 
 of August, they sent their own servants and their maitre 
 
 Vol. II.—16. 
 
242 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 d’ hotel to make all necessary preparations, and Caesar 
 himself handed to the pope’s butler two bottles of wine, 
 with which was mixed a quantity of that white powder 
 resembling sugar, the deadly properties of which he had 
 so often put to the test. He directed him not to serve it 
 until he should tell him to do so, and then only to such 
 of the guests as he should indicate. The butler there¬ 
 fore placed it on a buffet by itself, and cautioned the 
 servants not to touch it, as it was reserved for the pope * 
 Toward evening Alexander left the Vatican on foot, 
 leaning on Caesar’s arm, and walked in the direction of 
 the villa, accompanied by Cardinal Caraffa. It was very 
 hot and the ascent was somewhat sharp, so that the pope 
 when he reached the terrace stopped to take breath. 
 At that moment, as he put his hand to his breast, he 
 found that he had left in his bedroom a chain which he 
 was accustomed to wear around his neck, and to which 
 was attached a gold locket containing a consecrated 
 wafer. He had adopted the habit of wearing it because 
 an astrologer had predicted that, so long as he carried a 
 consecrated wafer about with him neither steel nor poison 
 could harm him. He at once ordered Cardinal Caraffa 
 to hurry back to the Vatican to fetch the talisman, de¬ 
 scribing to him minutely just the spot where he left it. 
 As the walk had made him very thirsty, he turned to a 
 
 * The poison used by the Borgias, so say contemporary authors, was of 
 two kinds, a powder and a liquid. The powder was a sort of impalpable 
 white flour, with the taste of sugar, and called Cantarelle. Its composi¬ 
 tion was not known. As to the liquid poison, it was prepared, according 
 to the chroniclers, in such an extraordinary fashion that we cannot pass 
 it over in silence. We will simply quote what we have read, and state 
 nothing upon our own responsibility, lest science take us to task: 
 
 “They forced a boar to swallow a strong dose of arsenic; just as the 
 poison was beginning to work they hung him up by his feet; convulsions 
 soon ensued and a poisonous froth flowed freely from his mouth. It was 
 this froth, collected in a silver platter, and hermetically sealed in a flask, 
 which constituted the liquid poison.” 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 243 
 
 servant and asked him for something to drink ; and 
 Caesar, whose thirst was equally great, ordered him to 
 bring two glasses. 
 
 By a strange chance it happened that the butler had 
 returned to the Vatican to fetch some superb fish, which 
 were presented to the pope that very day, and which he 
 forgot to bring with him. The servant therefore applied 
 to the under-butler, saying to him that his Holiness and 
 the Duke of Romagna were very thirsty and desired 
 something to quench their thirst. The under-butler, see¬ 
 ing two bottles of wine standing apart, and remembering 
 that he had heard some one say that they were for the 
 pope, took one of them, and from it filled two glasses, 
 which the servant carried to them upon a salver. They 
 both drank without a suspicion that it was the wine 
 which they had themselves prepared to poison their 
 guests. 
 
 Meanwhile Cardinal Caraffa ran back to the Vatican, 
 and as he was perfectly familiar with the palace went up 
 to the pope’s chamber with a light in his hand, unaccom¬ 
 panied by any servant. As he turned a corner of the 
 corridor, the wind blew his light out; but he kept on, 
 thinking that he had no need to see in order to find what 
 he sought, his instructions were so minute. 
 
 But when he opened the door of the apartment he re¬ 
 coiled with a shriek of terror. He thought that he saw 
 before his eyes in the centre of the room, between the 
 door, and the chiffoniere in which the locket was, Alex¬ 
 ander VI. lying motionless and livid in a coffin, with 
 torches burning at the four corners—a fearful vision. 
 
 The cardinal stood for a moment with staring eyes 
 and hair on end, without strength to go forward or back; 
 but he finally convinced himself that it was either an 
 illusion of his senses, or an infernal apparition, and made 
 
244 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 the sign of the Cross, invoking God’s holy name. Im¬ 
 mediately it all vanished, torches, bier, and corpse, and 
 the room became dark once more. 
 
 Thereupon Cardinal Caraffa (afterwards Pope Paul 
 IV.), who is himself the only authority for this extraor¬ 
 dinary experience, boldly entered the room, and although 
 the cold sweat was still standing on his forehead, he 
 went straight to the chiffonibre, and found the gold 
 chain and locket in the drawer described by the pope. 
 He took them and left the palace in hot haste to return 
 to the villa. He found the guests assembled, the supper 
 served, and his Holiness just about to take his place at 
 the table. As soon as Caraffa appeared in the distance, 
 the pope, who was very pale, started to walk toward him. 
 Caraffa quickened his pace, and handed him the locket, 
 but as he was putting out his hand to take it, he fell 
 backward to the ground with a cry of agony, which was 
 immediately followed by violent convulsions. A few 
 seconds later Caesar was attacked by the same symptoms 
 as he was running to assist his father. The poison 
 worked more swiftly than usual, for Caesar had put in a 
 double dose, and their heated state when they drank it, 
 doubtless increased its activity. 
 
 The two sick men were carried side by side to the 
 Vatican, where they parted, each to go to his own apart¬ 
 ments ; from that moment they never saw each other 
 more. 
 
 As soon as he was put to bed, the pope was seized with 
 a violent fever which refused to yield, either to emetics 
 or to blood-letting, and it was deemed best to administer 
 the last sacraments of the Church almost immediately. 
 But his vigorous constitution, which seemed to have set 
 the natural effect of advancing years at defiance, strug¬ 
 gled against death for a whole week. He died at last 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 245 
 
 without once mentioning the name of Caesar or Lucrezia, 
 although they were the two centres around which all his 
 affections and all his crimes revolved. He was seventy- 
 two years old, and his pontificate had lasted eleven 
 years. 
 
 It may be that Caesar drank less of the deadly com¬ 
 pound than his father, it may be that the vigor of his 
 youth overpowered the vigor of the poison, it may be, as 
 some claimed, that, when he was taken to his room he 
 swallowed an antidote which was known to none but 
 himself; at all events he did not for an instant lose his 
 perception of the terrible position in which he was 
 placed. He sent at once for his faithful Michelotto 
 with those of his men in whom he placed the most confi¬ 
 dence, and distributed them through the various rooms 
 preceding his own ; he ordered the leader not to leave 
 the foot of his bed for an instant, and to sleep upon a 
 blanket with his hand on his sword hilt. 
 
 The treatment employed in Caesar’s case was the same 
 as in his father’s, emetics and blood-letting, with the ad¬ 
 dition of a strange kind of bath which he asked for 
 himself, having heard it said that King Ladislas of 
 Naples was once cured thereby under similar circum¬ 
 stances. 
 
 Four upright posts were firmly attached to the floor 
 of his room ; every day a bull was brought in and 
 thrown over on his back, and his legs made fast to the 
 posts. Then an incision a foot and a half long was 
 made in his belly, through which the intestines were 
 taken out, and Caesar crawled into the still living recep¬ 
 tacle, and bathed himself in the animal’s blood. When 
 the bull was dead he crawled out again and was rolled 
 in blankets soaked in boiling water, and the profuse per¬ 
 spiration thus induced almost always relieved him. 
 
246 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Every two hours he sent to ask for news of his father’s 
 condition ; the instant he learned that he was dead, al¬ 
 though he was still at the point of death himself, he 
 called into play the force of character and self-command 
 which were a part of his nature, ordered Michelotto to 
 close the gates of the Vatican before his father’s demise 
 was known in the city, and absolutely forbade the ad¬ 
 mission of any person whatsoever until the pope’s papers 
 and money had been removed. Michelotto at once exe¬ 
 cuted his orders; he sought out Cardinal Casanova, and 
 with his dagger at his throat compelled him to give up 
 the keys of the pope’s apartments and cabinets. Under 
 his guidance he carried off two chests filled with gold, 
 containing some hundred thousand Roman crowns, sev¬ 
 eral boxes filled with jewels, and a vast quantity of plate 
 and valuable vases. It was all taken to Csesar’s cham¬ 
 ber and the guard at the door doubled ; then the gates 
 of the Vatican were thrown open once more, and the 
 proclamation was made of the pope’s demise. 
 
 Although it was anticipated, it produced nevertheless 
 a terrible effect throughout the city, for, although Caesar 
 was still living, his dangerous condition left every one in sus¬ 
 pense. Certain it is that if the valiant Duke of Romagna, 
 the mighty man of war, who had taken thirty cities and 
 fifteen fortresses in five years, had been astride his war- 
 horse, sword in hand, in the streets of Rome, there would 
 not have been an instant of hesitation or uncertainty ; 
 for, as Machiavelli afterwards said, his ambitious mind 
 had provided for every possible contingency when the 
 pope should die, except that he might be at the point of 
 death himself. But he was nailed to his bed, sweating 
 with agony caused by his own poison ; and, although his 
 power of thought was left to him, he had lost his power 
 of action, so that he was fain to wait for what might 
 
THE BORGIAS. 247 
 
 happen, and abide by it, instead of going forth to meet 
 it, and imparting direction to it. 
 
 He was obliged to regulate his actions not by his own 
 plans, but according to circumstances. His most bitter 
 and inveterate foes, those who could do him the most 
 injury, were the Orsini and the Colonnas; of the former 
 he had shed the blood, and he had stolen the property of 
 the latter. He turned in his need to those, to whom he 
 could restore what he had taken from them, and opened 
 negotiations with the Colonnas. 
 
 Meanwhile the obsequies of the pope were proceeded 
 with in due form. The vice-chancellor sent imperative 
 orders to the higher dignitaries among the clergy, to the 
 superiors of convents, and to the lay brethren, not to fail, 
 under penalty of being deprived of their dignities and 
 offices, to betake themselves, each with his flock, to the 
 Vatican, to take part in the funeral ceremonies. Almost 
 without exception they appeared at the appointed hour 
 at the papal palace, whence the body was to be interred. 
 They found the body lying abandoned and alone in the 
 chamber of death ; for everybody who bore the name of 
 Borgia, not knowing what might happen, had gone into 
 hiding. It was well for them that they did so, as was 
 shown by what befel one of them, who fell in with Fabio 
 Orsino ; the latter stabbed him, and in token of the 
 mutual hatred they had sworn to each other, rinsed his 
 mouth and washed his hands with his blood. 
 
 The excitement was so intense in Rome, that, just as 
 Alexander’s body was being taken into the church, there 
 arose one of those hoarse, sullen murmurs, characteristic 
 of periods of popular commotion. It produced on the 
 instant so great disturbance in the procession, that the 
 guards drew up in battle order, the clergy sought shelter 
 in the sacristy, and the bearers set down the bier; the 
 
\ 
 
 248 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 mob at once tore away the pall and uncovered the body, 
 and every one was free to look with impunity upon the 
 man, who, a fortnight earlier, made princes, kings and 
 emperors tremble from one end of the world to the other. 
 
 But the instinctive respect for death which every 
 man feels, and which is only sentiment akin to religious 
 feeling that lives in the heart of the veriest atheist, 
 restrained the excitement of the people; the bier was 
 taken up and borne to the foot of the high altar of St. 
 Peter’s where it was placed upon trestles, and the face of 
 the deceased pope exposed to the public gaze. But it 
 had turned so black and the features were so bloated and 
 distorted that it was a hideous sight; his mouth was 
 wide open, and his tongue so swollen that it completely 
 filled the cavity. In addition to the frightful appear¬ 
 ance, the odor was so unpleasant that not a single soul 
 offered to kiss the hand on which was the fisherman’s 
 ring, although it is the invariable custom so to do at the 
 funeral of God’s representative on earth. 
 
 About seven in the evening, that is to say at the hour 
 when the gathering darkness renders the deathly silence 
 of a church more oppressive and melancholy, four street 
 porters and two workmen carried the pope’s body into 
 the chapel where it was to be buried. There it was 
 removed from the catafalque on which it had lain in 
 state, and placed in the casket which was to be its last 
 home. But the casket turned out to be too short, so that 
 they could only get the body in by bending the legs, and 
 pushing with all their strength. Then the carpenters put 
 the lid in place and while one of them sat on it to force 
 down the knees, the other nailed it on to the accom¬ 
 paniment of divers Shakesperean witticisms—a fitting 
 funeral oration to sound a warning to the great ones of 
 the earth. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 249 
 
 He was interred according to Tommaso Tommasi, at 
 the left of the high altar of St. Peter’s, in a wretched 
 tomb. The next day, this epitaph was found written 
 on the tombstone: 
 
 “ Vendit Alexander claves , altaria , Christum: emerat 
 ille prius , vendere jure potest.” 
 
 Which means: 
 
 “ Alexander sold the keys , the altar and Christ himself: 
 it was right that he should sell them , however , as he bought 
 them in the first place” 
 
 By the effect produced at Rome by the demise of 
 Alexander VI., we can conceive of its effect upon the 
 whole civilized world, to say nothing of the rest of Italy. 
 For an instant Europe wavered, for the pillar which 
 sustained the keystone of the political structure had 
 crumbled away, and the fiery blood-red star, around 
 which the universe had revolved for eleven years, was 
 extinct. 
 
 Christendom was seized with a sudden paralysis, and 
 remained for a moment speechless in the darkness. 
 
 But after the first stupefaction had passed away, 
 everybody who had an injury to avenge rose up and 
 rushed upon the quarry. Sforza recaptured Pesaro, 
 Baglione Perouse, Guido of Ubaldo Urbino, and Rovere 
 Sinigaglia; the Vitelli regained possession of Citta di 
 Castello, the Appiani of Piombino, and the Orsini of 
 Monte-Giordano and their other domains. Romagna 
 alone was unshaken in its fidelity, for the common peo¬ 
 ple, who cared little for the quarrels of the nobles so 
 long as they did not reach them, had never been so 
 happy as they were under Caesar’s rule. 
 
 The Colonnas had given them word to observe strict 
 neutrality, in consideration of which they had been re¬ 
 stored to possession of their castles, and the cities of 
 
250 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Chinazzano, Capo d’Anno, Frascati, Kocca di Popa, 
 Nettuno, all of which they found in better shape than 
 when they left them, for the pope had spent large sums 
 in beautifying and fortifying them. 
 
 Caesar continued to hold the Vatican with his troops, 
 who remained faithful to him in adversity, and kept 
 guard around the palace where he lay writhing on a bed 
 of pain, roaring like a wounded lion. The cardinals, 
 who scattered in every direction in their fright instead 
 of presiding at the obsequies of the pope, began to hold 
 meetings, sometimes at Minerva, and sometimes at Car¬ 
 dinal Caraffa’s. In their alarm at the force which 
 Caesar still had at his disposal, especially that portion 
 of it which was commanded by Michelotto, they contri¬ 
 buted all the money they could raise to levy an army 
 of two thousand men, of whom Carlo Taneo was ap¬ 
 pointed commander, with the title of Captain of the 
 Sacred College. 
 
 They were beginning to hope that this step would 
 really result in restoring tranquillity when they learned 
 that Prosper Colonnawas approaching from Naples with 
 three thousand men, and Fabio Orsino from Viterbo 
 with two hundred horse and more than a thousand foot. 
 They entered Kome on successive days, both being 
 moved by the same ardent wish to make the most of the 
 opportunity. 
 
 Thus there were five armies in Kome, almost in sight 
 of each other; Caesar’s which was in possession of the 
 Vatican and the Borgo; the army of the Bishop of 
 Nicastro, to whom Caesar had given .charge of the Cas¬ 
 tle of San Angelo, and who refused to give it up; the 
 army of the Sacred College, quartered in the suburb of 
 Minerva; Prosper Colonna’s in camp by the Capitol; 
 and Fabio Orsino’s in barracks at Eipetta. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 251 
 
 The Spaniards too, had advanced to Terracina, and 
 the French to Nepi. 
 
 The cardinals realized that Rome was over a mine 
 which the least spark would explode. They assembled 
 the ambassadors of the Emperor of Germany, the Kings 
 of France and Spain, and the Republic of Venice, to 
 urge them to make themselves heard in the names of 
 their masters. The ambassadors were thoroughly im¬ 
 pressed with the gravity of the situation, and began by 
 declaring the Sacred College inviolable; they then or¬ 
 dered the Colonnas, the Orsini, and the Duke of Ro¬ 
 magna, severally, to leave Rome at once. 
 
 The Orsini were the first to bow to this order; on the 
 following day their example was followed by the Colon¬ 
 nas. Csesar alone was left, and he said that he would 
 consent to go, but desired first to exact certain condi¬ 
 tions. He declared that the cellars of the Vatican were 
 mined, and that if they refused what he asked, he would 
 blow himself up with those who came to take him. They 
 were well aware that there was nothing he was not cap¬ 
 able of doing, so they treated with him. 
 
 It was agreed that he should leave Rome with his 
 army, his artillery and his baggage-train, and that the 
 Sacred College should add four hundred infantry to his 
 force to insure him against attack or annoyance in the 
 streets of Rome. 
 
 Caesar promised that he would remain at least ten 
 miles from Rome during the sessions of the conclave, 
 and that he would engage in no undertaking against the 
 city or any other of the States of the Church. Fabio Or- 
 sino and Prosper Colonna made a similar agreement. The 
 Venetian ambassador guaranteed the performance of the 
 agreement by the Orsini, the Spanish ambassador did as 
 much for the Colonnas, and the ambassador of Louis 
 
252 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 XII. for the Duke of Komagna. At the appointed 
 time Caesar dispatched in the first place his artillery, 
 consisting of eighteen guns, accompanied by the four 
 hundred foot-soldiers sent by the Sacred College, to each 
 one of whom he gave a ducat. Behind the artillery 
 came a hundred chariots, escorted by his vanguard. 
 
 The duke emerged from the Vatican, lying on a bed 
 shaded by a scarlet canopy, and borne by twelve of his 
 halberdiers. His elbow was resting on the cushions, 
 and his head was supported by his hand, so that every 
 one could see his purple lips and bloodshot eyes. His 
 naked sword lay at his side, as if to indicate that, w T eak 
 as he was, he would make use of it at need; his best 
 war horse, with black velvet trappings upon which his 
 arms were embroidered, was led by a page beside his 
 bed, so that he could leap into the saddle in case of a 
 sudden attack. Before and behind him, and to right 
 and left, his army bore him company, with arms in 
 readiness, but with no sound of drum or trumpet, the 
 result being that the whole effect of the cortege was 
 decidedly funereal. 
 
 At the city gate they found Prosper Colonna waiting 
 with a considerable force. 
 
 Caesar’s first thought was that Colonna proposed to 
 break his agreement, as he himself had so often done, 
 and attack him. He at once ordered a halt, and pre¬ 
 pared to mount his horse ; but Colonna divined his fear, 
 and came forward alone to his bedside. His purpose in 
 waiting, he said, was to offer to escort Caesar to his desti¬ 
 nation, fearing an ambuscade on the part of Fabio 
 Orsino, who had freely sworn that he would either avenge 
 the death of his father, Paolo Orsino, or lose his own 
 honor in the attempt. 
 
 Caesar thanked him, but replied that so long as Orsino 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 253 
 
 was alone he had no fear of him. So Colonna saluted 
 him, and rode back to his troops, with whom he took 
 the direction of Albano, while Csesar, headed for Citta 
 Castellana, which was still true to him. 
 
 When he arrived there Csesar found that he not only 
 had his own fate in his own hands once more, but that 
 he was in a position to decide the fate of others as well. 
 Out of the twenty-two votes his father had in the Sacred 
 College, twelve were faithful to himself, and as the con¬ 
 clave consisted in all of thirty-seven cardinals, he held 
 the balance of power with his twelve, and could give 
 whatever direction he chose to the action of the con¬ 
 clave. Consequently he was made much of by the 
 Spanish faction and the French faction in equal measure, 
 each being desirous of the election of a pope of its own 
 nation. Csesar listened to them all without promising 
 or refusing anything, and finally gave his twelve votes 
 to Fra^esco Piccolomini, Cardinal of Sienna, one of 
 his father’s creatures, who continued to be friendly to 
 him. He was chosen pope on October 8, and took the 
 name of Pius III. 
 
 Caesar’s hopes were not disappointed: as soon as his 
 election was announced, Pius sent him a safe-conduct to 
 return to Rome, and the duke reappeared there with two 
 hundred and fifty men-at-arms, and eight hundred infan¬ 
 try. He took up his quarters in his own palace, and his 
 troops camped in the neighborhood. 
 
 Meanwhile the Orsini, in pursuance of their purpose 
 to wreak vengeance upon Csesar, were levying great 
 numbers of troops in Perouse and its neighborhood with 
 whom to attack him even in Rome itself. They thought 
 they could discern that France, in whose service they then 
 were, was very considerate in her treatment of the duke, 
 on account of his twelve votes, upon which she relied to 
 
254 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 secure the choice of Cardinal d’Amboise at the approach¬ 
 ing conclave ; and so they went over to the Spaniards. 
 
 About the same time Caesar signed a new treaty with 
 Louis XII., whereby he bound himself to support him 
 with all his power, and in person, as soon as he could 
 sit a horse, in maintaining his hold upon Naples : Louis 
 XII. on his side guaranteed him the possession of those 
 States which he still held and promised to assist him to 
 recover those he had lost. 
 
 On the day when this treaty was known, Gonzalvo of 
 Cordova caused to be promulgated to the sound of trum¬ 
 pets in the streets of Rome, an order to every subject of 
 the King of Spain serving in the army of any other 
 nation to break his engagement at once, under pain of 
 being deemed guilty of high treason. This measure 
 deprived Caesar of ten or twelve of his best officers and 
 about three hundred soldiers. 
 
 Thereupon the Orsini, knowing of this reduction of 
 his army entered Rome, under the countenance of the 
 Spanish ambassador, and cited Caesar to appear before 
 the pope and the Sacred College, there to be called to 
 account for his crimes. 
 
 True to his promise, Pius III. replied that the Duke 
 of Romagna, being a sovereign prince, was responsible 
 to no human being but himself so far as his temporal 
 acts were concerned, and only God could call him to 
 account therefor. 
 
 However, the pope felt that, notwithstanding that his 
 will was good, he might not be able to protect Caesar 
 against his enemies for long; and so he advised him to 
 try and join the French army which was still marching 
 upon Naples, insisting that there and only there would 
 he be in safety. 
 
 Caesar determined to withdraw to Bracciano, where 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 255 
 
 Giovanni Giordano Orsino, who once went with him to 
 France, and was the only one of his family who had not 
 declared against him, offered him protection in the name 
 of Cardinal d’Amboise. One morning he ordered his 
 troops under arms, and, taking his place at their head, 
 rode out of Rome. 
 
 But, although Caesar had maintained absolute secrecy 
 concerning his plan, the Orsini had notice of it. The 
 night before his departure they led all their available 
 troops out by the San-Pancrazio gate, and, by making a 
 long detour succeeded in intercepting him. So that 
 when Caesar reached Storta, he found the army of the 
 Orsini, which was at least half as large again as his own, 
 awaiting his coming in order of battle. 
 
 Caesar realized that to fight in his still feeble state was 
 to rush straight upon destruction; he therefore ordered 
 his troops to retrace their steps, and being an excellent 
 strategist he managed his retreat so skilfully, that the 
 enemy, while following close upon his heels, did not dare 
 to attack him, and he re-entered the papal city without 
 the loss of a single man. 
 
 On this occasion Caesar rode straight to the Vatican in 
 order to place himself still more directly under the pope’s 
 protection. He distributed his soldiers around the palace 
 in such way as to keep watch upon all the exits therefrom. 
 
 The Orsini were determined to bring matters to a crisis 
 with him wherever he might be, without regard to the 
 sanctity of the spot; and they attempted so to do, but 
 without success, his troops kept such good watch, and 
 presented such a bold front. 
 
 When they failed to force the defences of the Castle 
 of San Angelo, they hoped to have better luck by leav¬ 
 ing the city again, and returning to the attack by the 
 Torione gate. But Caesar anticipated the manoeuvre, 
 
256 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 and they found the gate barricaded and well guarded. 
 They nevertheless persisted in their plan, and thence¬ 
 forth pursued openly the vengeance which they hoped to 
 obtain by stratagem. Having taken by surprise the 
 approaches to the gate they set fire to it; and through 
 the opening thus made forced their way into the garden 
 of the Vatican where they found Caesar awaiting them at 
 the head of his cavalry. 
 
 Brought face to face with imminent danger, Caesar 
 seemed to recover all his prowess; he led his troops in a 
 headlong rush upon the enemy, calling loudly upon 
 Orsino by name, in the hope of making an end of him 
 in a personal encounter. But Orsino either did not hear 
 him, or did not dare meet him hand in hand; and after 
 a desperate struggle, Caesar, whose numerical strength 
 was less than a third that of his adversary, saw his 
 cavalry cut to pieces, and was obliged to seek refuge 
 in the Vatican, having himself performed miracles of 
 strength and daring. 
 
 He found the pope writhing in the death agony. The 
 Orsini, weary of struggling against the effects of the 
 promise the old man had given to Caesar, had succeeded, 
 through the medium of Pandolfo Petrucci, in winning 
 over the pope’s surgeon, who applied a poisoned plaster 
 to a wound on one of his legs. 
 
 The pope, as we say, was at the point of death when 
 Caesar, covered with dust and reeking with blood, rushed 
 into his apartment, hotly pursued by his enemies, who 
 stopped only at the very walls of the palace, behind which 
 the remnant of his army was drawn up in some sort of order. 
 
 Pius III., who felt that he was dying, rose in his bed, 
 and handed Caesar the key of the passage leading to the 
 Castle of San Angelo, together with an order to the gov¬ 
 ernor of the fortress to admit him with his family, to 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 257 
 
 defend him to the last extremity, and to allow him to 
 take his leave whenever he so desired. Then he fell 
 back in a swoon upon the bed. 
 
 Csesar took his two daughters by the hand, and took 
 refuge in this last asylum which was open to him, followed 
 by the little dukes of Sermonetta and Nepi. 
 
 That same night the pope died after a reign of twenty- 
 six days. 
 
 About two o’clock in the morning, just as the breath 
 was leaving his body, Csesar, who had thrown himself 
 fully dressed upon his bed, heard the door of his chamber 
 open. Unable to conceive what any one could want 
 with him at that hour, he raised himself on his elbow, 
 feeling with the other hand for the hilt of his sword; 
 but at the first glance he recognized his nocturnal visitor ; 
 it was Giulio della Rovere. 
 
 Devoured by poison though he was, abandoned by his 
 troops, and lamentably fallen from the dizzy height of 
 power and influence, Csesar, although he could do noth¬ 
 ing for himself might still make a pope ! Giulio della 
 Rovere had come to buy the votes of his twelve cardinals. 
 
 Csesar laid down his conditions, which were accepted. 
 
 Immediately after his election Giulio was to assist him 
 to recover his Romagnese dominions ; Csesar was to con¬ 
 tinue to be General of the Church ! and Francesco 
 Maria della Rovere was to wed one of his daughters. 
 
 On these conditions Csesar sold his twelve cardinals 
 to Giulio. 
 
 On the following day at Giulio’s request, the Sacred 
 College ordered the Orsini to leave Rome during the 
 sittings of the conclave. 
 
 On the thirty-first of October, 1503, on the first ballot, 
 Giulio della Rovere was chosen pope, and took the name 
 of Julius II. 
 
 Vol. II.—17. 
 
258 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Almost his first act after his installation at the Vati¬ 
 can was to invite Csesar to return thither, and to give 
 him his former apartment. Thereupon the duke, whose 
 convalescence was well advanced, began to look to the 
 rehabilitation of his affairs, which had been going from 
 bad to worse for some time past. 
 
 The defeat of his army, and his withdrawal to the 
 Castle of San Angelo, where he was thought to be held 
 a prisoner, had brought about great changes in Romag¬ 
 na. Cesena became once more a fief of the Church as 
 formerly ; Giovanni Sforza re-entered Pesaro; Ordelafi 
 seized upon Forli; Malatesta made good his claim to 
 Rimini; the people of Immola murdered their governor, 
 and the city was about equally divided between those 
 who wished to restore the Riarii to power, and those who 
 wished to become one of the States of the Church. 
 Faenza remained faithful longer than any other place, 
 but at last it, too, lost hope of Csesar’s recovering his 
 power, and recalled the Manfredi in the person of Fran¬ 
 cesco, natural son of Galeotto Manfredi, the last and 
 only scion of that ill-starred race, of which all the legiti¬ 
 mate descendants had been murdered by Borgia. 
 
 It should be said that the fortresses in these various 
 places had taken no part in the general overturning, but 
 remained unshaken in their fidelity to the Duke of 
 Romagna ; so that it was not the defection of the towns 
 which caused him and Julius II. the greatest uneasiness, 
 for the possession of the fortresses would make it easy to 
 reconquer them. The attitude assumed by Venice with 
 reference to these towns was a much more fruitful source 
 of anxiety. 
 
 In the spring of that year Venice concluded a treaty 
 of peace with the Turk. Being thus rid for the time of 
 her eternal enemy, she moved her troops in the direction 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 259 
 
 of Romagna, which she had always coveted. They were 
 massed at Ravenna, the last place within her territories, 
 and placed under the command of Jacopo Yenieri, who 
 came within an ace of taking Cesena by surprise, and 
 failed only because of the dauntless bravery of the peo¬ 
 ple. This rebuff, however, was soon compensated by the 
 surrender of the fortresses of Val di Lamone, and 
 Faenza, by the capture of Forlini Popoli, and by the 
 surrender of Rimini, which Pandolfo Petrucci, its suzer¬ 
 ain, exchanged for the lordship of Cittadella in Padua, 
 and a place in the ranks of the Venetian nobility. 
 
 Thereupon Caesar made a proposition to Julius II., 
 namely that the Church should take over his Romagnese 
 dominions temporarily, so that the respect entertained by 
 the Venetians for the papal jurisdiction might save them 
 from their incursions. But, says Guicciardini, Julius II., 
 in whose heart the ambition so natural to sovereign 
 princes had not yet stifled every vestige of uprightness, 
 refused to take over the places, to avoid the inevitable 
 temptation to retain them, contrary to his promises, when 
 called upon to give them back. 
 
 As the situation was becoming serious, however, he 
 suggested to Caesar that he leave Rome and take ship at 
 Ostia for Spezzia, where Michelotto was waiting to re¬ 
 ceive him, at the head of a hundred men-at-arms and a 
 hundred light horse, the only remnant of his magnifi¬ 
 cent army. Thence he could go by land to Ferrara, and 
 from Ferrara to Immola, and from that place raise his 
 war-cry loud enough to be heard throughout Romagna. 
 
 This was advice after Caesar’s own heart, and he ac¬ 
 cepted it without a moment’s hesitation. His plan was 
 approved by the Sacred College, and Caesar set out for 
 Ostia, accompanied by Bartolomeo della Rovere, his 
 Holiness’ nephew. 
 
260 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Caesar believed that he was free at last, and in his 
 fancy saw himself astride his war-horse, bearing his 
 blood-stained banner once more into those regions where 
 he had already fought and conquered ; but at Ostia he 
 was overtaken by the Cardinals of Sorrento and Vol- 
 terra, who demanded, in the name of Julius II., the 
 delivery of the self-same citadels which only three days 
 before he refused to receive. The fact was that in the 
 interim the pope had learned that the Venetians were 
 steadily advancing, and had come to see that Caesar’s 
 plan was the only one which would check them. 
 
 But now it was Caesar’s turn to refuse, for all this 
 vacillation alarmed him; he feared that it concealed 
 some trap, and he consequently replied that the cession 
 which the pope called for was useless, for with God’s 
 help he would be in Romagna within a week. 
 
 The Cardinals of Sorrento and Volterra returned to 
 Rome with his refusal, and the next morning, as Caesar 
 was stepping aboard his galley, he was arrested in the 
 name of the pope. 
 
 His first thought was that it was all over with him ; 
 he was thoroughly familiar with such modes of proce¬ 
 dure, and knew how short is the distance between the 
 prison and the tomb. Indeed there would be even less diffi¬ 
 culty about making the journey short in his case than in 
 most, because the pope could if he chose, find no end of 
 pretexts for proceeding against him. But the then 
 pope’s heart was of a different temper from his ; he was 
 quick to wrath, but equally quick to recover from it, 
 and when the Duke of Romagna was brought back to 
 Rome by his guards, the momentary irritation which 
 Julius felt at his refusal had already vanished, and he 
 was welcomed by him with his usual courtesy and affa¬ 
 bility. It was easy to see, however, that close watch 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 261 
 
 was kept upon his movements thereafter. In return for 
 his cordial welcome Caesar agreed to cede to him the 
 fortress of Cesena, as a town which formerly belonged to 
 the Church and was now restored to her. He placed the 
 act of cession signed by himself, in the hands of one of 
 his captains, named Pierre Oviedo, and ordered him to 
 take possession of the fortress in the name of the Holy 
 See. Oviedo at once set out for Cesena, and presented 
 himself, armed with the aforesaid act, before Diego 
 Chignone, a Spanish nobleman and general, who held the 
 fortress on behalf of the Duke of Romagna. 
 
 After perusing the document handed him by Oviedo, 
 Don Diego replied that he knew his lord and master to 
 be a prisoner, and it would be rank infamy in him to 
 obey an order which was in all probability extorted from 
 him by duress. He added, that in his opinion the bearer 
 of the order deserved death for having undertaken so 
 dastardly a mission; he therefore ordered his soldiers 
 to throw him from the top of the wall, and his orders 
 were executed on the spot. 
 
 This scrupulous fidelity was near being fatal to Csesar; 
 when the pope learned of the way his messenger had 
 been treated he flew into such a towering passion that 
 his prisoner for the second time thought himself lost. 
 He therefore attempted to purchase his liberty by 
 making certain new propositions to Julius, which 
 were put in the form of a treaty and sanctioned by 
 a bull. 
 
 The Duke of Romagna was bound thereby to place in 
 the hands of his Holiness within forty days the fortresses 
 of Cesena and Bertorino, and to countersign the order 
 for the surrender of the fortress of Forli; the whole to be 
 guaranteed by two bankers of Rome in the sum of fifteen 
 thousand ducats, the sum total of the expenses alleged 
 
262 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 by the governor to have been incurred there on the 
 duke’s account. 
 
 On his side the pope agreed that Caesar should be 
 escorted to Ostia with no other guard than the Cardinal 
 of Santa-Croce and two officers, who were to restore him 
 to liberty absolutely as soon as his agreements were 
 carried out. If he failed to carry them out he was to be 
 taken back to Rome and imprisoned in the Castle of 
 San Angelo. 
 
 In pursuance of this treaty Caesar descended the 
 Tiber to Ostia, accompanied by the pope’s treasurer, 
 and several of his servants; the Cardinal of Santa- 
 Croce set out somewhat later, and overtook him the 
 same day. 
 
 However, Caesar feared that, after the fortresses were 
 given up, Julius II. might break his word, and detain 
 him as a prisoner; so he made a request, through the 
 medium of Cardinals Borgia and Remolino, who had 
 fled to Naples because they thought that they were not 
 safe in Rome, he made a request, through them, for a 
 safe-conduct from Gonzalvo of Cordova, and for two 
 galleys, that he might join him in Naples. The same 
 courier returned at once with the safe-conduct, and an¬ 
 nounced that the galleys would follow very soon. 
 
 Meanwhile the Cardinal of Santa-Croce had learned 
 that the governors of Cesena and Bertorino had turned 
 over those fortresses to the agents of his Holiness; 
 so that he gradually relaxed his vigilance, and began to 
 allow him to go about without a guard, knowing that his 
 liberty would be fully restored within a day or two. 
 
 Caesar, with the fear at his heart that the same thing 
 which happened to him as he was stepping aboard the 
 pope’s galleys a short time before, might happen to him 
 again as he was stepping aboard Gonzalvo’s, concealed 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 263 
 
 himself in a house just outside the town, and after night¬ 
 fall rode to Nettuno on a peasant’s sorry nag. There he 
 hired a small boat, and set sail for Mont-Dragone, whence 
 he made his way to Naples. 
 
 Gonzalvo received him with such exuberant delight 
 that Csesar went entirely astray as to his motive, and 
 congratulated himself that he was safe at last. His con¬ 
 fidence increased twofold when he laid his projects 
 before Gonzalvo, and told him that he proposed to go to 
 Pisa and make his way thence into Romagna, for 
 Gonzalvo authorized him to levy as many soldiers in 
 Naples as he chose, and promised him two galleys to 
 transport them. 
 
 Csesar, with every possible suspicion lulled to sleep by 
 these demonstrations, tarried at Naples nearly six weeks, 
 meeting the Spanish governor every day, and discussing 
 his present and future projects with him. 
 
 But Gonzalvo’s object in detaining him was simply to 
 gain time to advise the King of Spain that his foe was 
 in his hands. When Csesar betook himself to the castle, to 
 take his leave of Gonzalvo, having already sent his troops 
 aboard the galleys in anticipation of speedy departure, 
 the governor received him as courteously as his wont was, 
 wished him all sorts of good luck, and embraced him when 
 they parted. But at the castle gate, Csesar found one of 
 Gonzalvo’s officers, one Nuno Campejo, who arrested him 
 in the name of Ferdinand the Catholic. 
 
 Csesar heaved a deep sigh, and bitterly cursed his luck, 
 which had led him, who had so often broken his own 
 word, to trust to the word of an enemy. 
 
 He was immediately taken to the castle, and the dun¬ 
 geon door closed upon him, leaving him utterly helpless 
 of succor from any quarter; for the only being on earth 
 whose devotion still endured was Michelotto, and he was 
 
264 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 told that Michelotto had also been arrested in the 
 neighborhood of Pisa by order of Julius II. 
 
 While he was being taken to prison an officer came to 
 him and took away the safe-conduct sent him by 
 Gonzalvo. 
 
 On the day following his arrest, which took place on 
 the twenty-seventh of May, 1504, Caesar was taken 
 aboard a galley, which at once weighed anchor, and 
 made all sail for Spain ; throughout the voyage he had 
 nobody but a single page to serve him, and immediately 
 upon his debarkation he was taken to the Castle of 
 Medina del Campo. 
 
 Ten years later Gonzalvo, on his death bed at Loxa, 
 himself a proscribed and hunted man, confessed that 
 there were two actions which weighed heavily upon his 
 conscience when he thought of appearing before the 
 judgment seat of God; one was his treachery to Ferdi¬ 
 nand, and the other his breach of faith with Csesar. 
 
 Caesar remained two years in prison, living on the hope 
 that Louis XII. would demand his release as a peer of 
 France. But Louis XII. was panic stricken by the 
 defeat of his army in the battle of Garigliano, which 
 rescued the Kingdom of Naples from his grasp, and he 
 had enough to occupy him with his own affairs, without 
 undertaking to intervene in his cousin’s. 
 
 The prisoner was beginning to despair, when, on break¬ 
 ing the bread brought to him one morning for breakfast, 
 he found inside a file, a vial of some sleep-producing 
 liquid, and a note from Michelotto to the effect that he 
 had escaped from prison, had left Italy and followed him 
 to Spain, and was in hiding in the nearest village with 
 the Count of Benevento. He added that he and the 
 count would await him every night on the road from the 
 fortress to the village with three excellent horses; and 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 265 
 
 that he, Caesar, must make the best possible use of the 
 file and the vial. When the whole world turned its 
 back upon the Duke of Romagna, a mere hired desperado 
 remembered him. 
 
 The confinement Caesar had endured for two years 
 bore too hard upon him for him to lose a single instant. 
 He set to work the same day upon one of the bars at 
 his window, which looked upon an interior courtyard, 
 and easily succeeded in putting it in such a state that 
 but one wrench was needed to sever it. But not only 
 was the window some seventy feet from the ground ; the 
 only means of exit from the courtyard was a postern re¬ 
 served exclusively for the governor, of which he alone 
 had a key; and that key never went out of his pos¬ 
 session but hung at his belt by day, and lay beneath his 
 pillow at night. Therein lay the principal difficulty to 
 be overcome. 
 
 Prisoner as he was Caesar was always treated with the 
 consideration due his name and rank. Every day at 
 the dinner hour the governor sent to his cell to invite 
 him to dine with him, and did the honors of his table 
 like the noble, courteous gentleman he was. It should 
 be said that Don Manuel, the governor, was an old cam¬ 
 paigner who had served with honor under King Ferdi¬ 
 nand : the result being that, while he kept the closest 
 watch upon Caesar, in accordance with strict orders he 
 had received, he had the greatest respect for such a gal¬ 
 lant officer, and listened with great delight to his stories 
 of the battles he had taken part in. 
 
 He frequently insisted that Caesar should breakfast as 
 well as dine with him ; but fortunately for him, perhaps 
 because he had a presentiment of what was to happen, 
 he always declined that honor up to this time. Well 
 was it for him that he did so, for if he had not breakfasted 
 
266 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 alone he would not have received the means or instru¬ 
 ments of escape sent in by Michelotto. 
 
 It so happened that Caesar, on the very evening after 
 he received them, made a misstep as he was ascending 
 the stairs to his room, and sprained his ankle. When 
 the dinner hour arrived he tried to go down, but the 
 pain was so great, so he said, that he gave up the idea. 
 The governor went to his room to see him, and found 
 him at full length upon the bed. 
 
 The next day Caesar seemed to be no better, and the 
 governor after a solitary dinner came to visit him as he 
 did the night before. He found him so depressed and 
 bored by solitude that he offered to take supper with 
 him there, and Caesar gratefully welcomed the suggestion. 
 
 On this occasion the prisoner entertained his gaoler, 
 and did it with charming tact and courtesy. The gov¬ 
 ernor took advantage of their mutual waiver of reserve 
 to ask him many questions as to the manner of his arrest, 
 and like a true knight of old Castile, in whose mind 
 honor still counted for something, begged to know the 
 truth as to the breach of faith committed by Gonzalvo 
 and Ferdinand in respect of him. Caesar seemed more 
 than willing to tell him the whole story, but implied by 
 a sign that the servants were in the way. This seemed 
 so natural, that the governor took no offence, but hur¬ 
 ried everybody out of the room so that the story might 
 be begun as soon as possible. 
 
 When the door was closed, Caesar filled his own glass 
 and the governor’s, proposing the king’s health; the 
 governor drank it enthusiastically. Caesar thereupon 
 began his narrative, but was less than a third of the 
 way through when his guest’s eyes closed as if by magic, 
 despite the engrossing interest of the story, and he fell 
 forward upon the table, sound asleep. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 267 
 
 Half an hour later the servants, hearing no noise, en¬ 
 tered the room and found one of the two under the table 
 and the other upon it. It was not an event sufficiently 
 out of the common for an} T great notice to be taken of 
 it; so they simply took Don Manuel away to his apart¬ 
 ments and lay Csesar upon his bed: the dessert was 
 postponed until the following day. They then secured 
 the door with the greatest care, and left the prisoner 
 alone. 
 
 He lay for a moment without motion and apparently 
 plunged in most profound slumber. But when the steps 
 died away he gently raised his head, opened his eyes, 
 slipped off the bed, walked to the door (slowly, it is true, 
 but without apparent inconvenience from his accident 
 of the night before), and stood for some moments with 
 his ear to the key hole. Then he raised his head with 
 an indefinable expression of satisfaction, drew his hand 
 across his forehead, and for the first time since his guards 
 left him breathed freely. 
 
 There was no time to lose ; his first care was to secure 
 the door as firmly on the inside as it was secured on the 
 outside: then he blew out his lamp, opened the window 
 and finished cutting through the bar. When this was 
 done, he unwound the bandages on his leg, and tore 
 down the bed curtains and those at the window; these 
 he tore into strips and added the sheets, coverlid and 
 napkins. All these different articles tied together made 
 a rope some fifty or sixty feet long; he then made knots 
 in it at short intervals, tied the rope securely by one end 
 to the bar next the one he had cut, climbed through the 
 window, and began to carry out the really dangerous 
 part of his undertaking, clinging with feet and hands to 
 his slender support. Happily he was as strong as he 
 was clever, and let himself down the whole length of 
 
268 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 the rope in safety; but when he reached the end and 
 was clinging with his hands to the last knot he felt in 
 vain with his feet for the solid earth; the line was too 
 short! 
 
 He was in a fearful plight; the darkness was so intense 
 that he could not see how far he was from the earth and 
 he was too weary to think of trying to retrace his steps. 
 He uttered a short prayer (he alone can say whether it 
 was addressed to God or Satan); then let go the line, 
 and fell some twelve or fifteen feet. 
 
 The danger was too pressing for the fugitive to think 
 about the few slight bruises he sustained ; he scrambled 
 at once to his feet, and looking about for his window 
 took his bearings and went straight to the little postern. 
 He put his hand in the pocket of his doublet,—horror 
 of horrors!—the cold sweat stood on his brow : whether 
 he had left it in his cell, or dropped it in his fall, certain 
 it was that he no longer had the key. 
 
 On reflection, however, he discarded the first idea, 
 and decided that he must have dropped it. He walked 
 back through the courtyard trying to locate the spot 
 where it must have fallen, with reference to the wall of 
 a cistern upon which he remembered placing his hand 
 when he rose, but the key was so small, and the night 
 so dark that there was little chance that his search would 
 be rewarded. However, Caesar bent all his energies 
 upon it, for the key was his last resource. Suddenly he 
 heard a door open, and a night patrol appeared preceded 
 by two torches. For a moment Caesar thought he was 
 lost; but he remembered the cistern behind him, and at 
 once climbed down into it, leaving only his head above 
 the water. In that position he followed with the deepest 
 anxiety the movements of the soldiers, who came to¬ 
 ward him, passed within a few feet of him, crossed the 
 
THE BORGIAS. 269 
 
 courtyard and disappeared through a door on the op¬ 
 posite side. 
 
 Although the lights carried by the party passed almost 
 like a flash of lightning, their rays fell upon the ground, 
 and Caesar saw the key shine where it lay. The door 
 through which the soldiers disappeared was no sooner 
 closed behind them than he was a free man once more. 
 
 Half way to the village two horsemen, with a led 
 horse, were awaiting him : they were the Count of Bene- 
 vento and Michelotto. Caesar leaped upon the led horse, 
 and pressed the hands of the count and the bravo with 
 equal warmth, and all three rode away at full speed for 
 the frontier of Navarre, where they arrived after a three 
 days’ journey, and where he received a cordial welcome 
 from King Jean d’Albret, his wife’s brother. 
 
 From Navarre Caesar intended to make his way into 
 France, and from France, with the concurrence of Louis 
 XII., renew his attempts upon Italy. But during his 
 detention in the Castle of Medina del Campo, Louis had 
 made peace with the King of Spain ; so that, when he 
 heard of Caesar’s flight, instead of supporting him, as 
 he had some right to expect that he would do, being 
 connected with him by marriage, he deprived him of his 
 duchy of Yalentinois and discontinued his pension. 
 Caesar still had, however, about two hundred thousand 
 ducats to his credit with certain bankers at Genoa; he 
 wrote them to send him that sum, proposing to employ it 
 in raising troops in Spain and Naples for a descent upon 
 Pisa. Five hundred men, two hundred thousand ducats, 
 his name and his sword, were more than enough to keep 
 hope alive in his breast. 
 
 The bankers refused to honor his drafts, and Caesar 
 was at his brother-in-law’s mercy. 
 
 About this time a vassal of the King of Navarre, 
 
270 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 Prince Alarino, raised the standard of revolt. Caesar 
 took command of the army sent against him by Jean 
 d’Albret, and was accompanied by Michelotto, whose 
 fidelity was the same in adversity as in prosperity. By 
 virtue of Caesar’s gallant conduct, and the skilful dispo¬ 
 sition of his forces, Prince Alarino was defeated in the 
 first engagement; but two days later, having rallied 
 what remained of his army, he offered battle about three 
 o’clock in the afternoon. 
 
 Caesar accepted the challenge, and for more than four 
 hours the struggle was most desperate on both sides; at 
 last as the sun w r as sinking below the horizon, Caesar de¬ 
 termined to decide the affair one way or the other by 
 leading a charge with a hundred men-at-arms, upon a 
 squadron of cavalry which formed the mainstay of his 
 opponent’s force. To his great astonishment the cavalry 
 fell back at the first onset, and fled, as if seeking cover, 
 to a little wood. Caesar followed with lance in rest to 
 the edge of the forest; but at that point the fugitives 
 suddenly turned about, and were reinforced by three or 
 four hundred archers, who rushed out from beneath the 
 trees. Caesar’s followers, seeing that they had fallen 
 into an ambuscade, took to their heels and basely de¬ 
 serted their master. 
 
 Although he was left entirely alone, Caesar refused to 
 yield an inch. It may be that he had had enough of 
 life, and that his heroism was due to disgust rather than 
 to courage. However that may be, he defended himself 
 like a lion, but at last, when he was fairly riddled with 
 arrows and cross-bow bolts, his horse fell and pinned his 
 leg to the ground. At once his adversaries rushed upon 
 him, and one of them aimed a blow at his defenceless 
 breast with a pike, and ran him through with its keen, 
 slender head. Csesar shrieked out a fearful curse, and died. 
 
THE BOEGIAS. 
 
 271 
 
 Meanwhile the rest of Alarino’s army was beaten, 
 thanks to the personal prowess of Michelotto, who bore 
 himself like a gallant soldier ; but when he returned to 
 camp in the evening, he learned from those who had fled 
 that they left Caesar behind, and he had not reappeared. 
 He was but too well convinced, in view of his master’s 
 well-known courage, that some misfortune must have 
 happened to him, and he determined to prove his devo¬ 
 tion for the last time by rescuing his body from the 
 wolves and birds of prey. He ordered torches to be 
 lighted, for it was a very dark night, and with ten or 
 twelve of those who followed Caesar as far as the little 
 w r ood, began to search for his master. When they 
 reached the spot in question he saw five bodies stretched 
 out side by side; four were dressed, but the fifth had 
 been robbed of his clothing, and was entirely naked. 
 
 Michelotto alighted, raised the dead man’s head and 
 laid it on his knee, and by the fitful glare of the torches 
 recognized Caesar. 
 
 Thus died, on March 10,1507, on an unknown battle¬ 
 field, near-by an obscure village called Yiane, in a pal¬ 
 try skirmish with the rebellious vassal of a petty king, 
 the man whom Machiavelli has presented to earthly 
 princes as a model of ability, political genius, and per¬ 
 sonal courage. 
 
 Lucrezia, the beautiful Duchess of Ferrara, died full 
 of years and honors, adored by her subjects as a queen, 
 and extolled as a goddess by Ariosto and Bembo. 
 
 vL# \L» U/ U* 
 
 /fi 
 
 There was once at Paris, if we may believe Boccac¬ 
 cio, a worthy and upright merchant, one Jean de Civ- 
 igny, who drove a thriving trade as a cloth-maker, 
 and was closely connected in business, and on intimate 
 terms as a neighbor, with a very wealthy confrere, named 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 272 4 
 
 Abraham, whose reputation was of the best, although 
 he was a Jew. 
 
 Now Jean de Civigny appreciated the worthy Israel¬ 
 ite’s many good qualities, and dreaded to think that such 
 a fine fellow might be led to everlasting perdition by his 
 false belief. So he began in a mild and friendly way to 
 beg him to renounce his errors, and to open his eyes to 
 the beauty of the Christian religion, which, so far as he 
 could judge, was waxing greater and more prosperous 
 every day, as it came to be more generally recognized as 
 the only true faith; while his, on the other hand, was 
 losing ground so rapidly that it would soon disappear 
 altogether from the face of the earth. 
 
 The Jew replied that there was no salvation except in 
 the Jewish religion, that he was born therein, and pro¬ 
 posed to live and die therein, and that he knew of no 
 consideration under heaven which would bring him to a 
 different view. Nevertheless, so fervent was his desire to 
 make a convert, Jean refused to admit defeat, and there 
 was not a day on which he did not conclusively demon¬ 
 strate the superiority of the Christian to the Jewish re¬ 
 ligion in the honeyed words with which the clever 
 merchant seduces the unwilling purchaser. Although 
 Abraham was a leading light among the believers in the 
 Mosaic law, either because of his friendship for Jean de 
 Civigny, or because the Holy Spirit gave force to the 
 eloquence of the new apostle, he began at last to relish 
 the good merchant’s preaching. He still persisted, to be 
 sure, in his allegiance to the old faith, and refused to 
 change; but his obstinacy did but redouble Jean’s deter¬ 
 mination to effect his conversion, until at last, with God’s 
 help he succeeded in making him waver. 
 
 “ Listen, Jean,” said Abraham one day ; “ as you are 
 so very earnest in your desire to convert me, I am more 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 273 
 
 than inclined to gratify you; but first of all I propose 
 to go to Rome, and see the man whom you call God’s 
 vicar upon earth, study his mode of life and his habits, 
 as well as those of his brothers the cardinals; and if, as 
 I doubt not, they are in harmony with the moral pre¬ 
 cepts which you preach, I will admit, what you have 
 taken such infinite pains to prove to me, that your faith 
 is better than mine, and I will do as you wish ; but if, on 
 the other hand, I find a different state of things, I will 
 remain a Jew as I am, for it is not worth while, at my 
 age, to change my belief for a worse one.” 
 
 Jean was in despair when he heard this, for he said to 
 himself, disconsolately: 
 
 “ Here I have thrown away all the time and trouble 
 which I thought I was employing to such good advantage 
 in the attempt to convert this unfortunate Abraham ; 
 for if he is so ill-advised as to go to Rome, as he suggests, 
 and see the disgraceful life which the pillars of the 
 Church lead, instead of turning Christian, he would be 
 more inclined to turn Jew if he were a Christian.” 
 
 He turned to Abraham, and said: 
 
 “ Oh! why do you go to all the expense and weariness 
 of a journey to Rome, my friend ? Furthermore, whether 
 you go by land or sea, it’s a very hazardous undertaking 
 for so wealthy a man as you are. Ho you imagine that 
 there is no one here to baptize you? Qr, if you still 
 have some doubts as to what I have urged upon you, 
 where will you find theologians better fitted to combat 
 and destroy them than here in Paris ? For these reasons, 
 you see, the journey seems to me altogether unnecessary ; 
 just imagine that the prelates down yonder are just as 
 their brethren here are, and even better on account of 
 their nearness to the supreme shepherd. If you take 
 
 my advice you will postpone this fatiguing enterprise 
 Vol. II.—18. 
 
274 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 until the time when you require plenary absolution for 
 some heinous sin ; then we will go together.” 
 
 “ I believe, my dear Jean,” the Jew replied, “ that it’s 
 all as you say; but you know how obstinate I am. 
 Either I will go to Rome, or I will not turn Christian.” 
 
 Jean saw that it was useless to argue further with 
 him, and wished him a pleasant journey. He aban¬ 
 doned all hope of his conversion, however, for he was 
 sure that if the court of Rome was what it was when he 
 saw it himself, his friend would return from his pilgrim¬ 
 age a more devout Jew than ever. 
 
 Abraham mounted his horse, and made such speed as 
 he was able to the Eternal City, where he arrived in due 
 time, and was received with open arms by his co-reli¬ 
 gionists. After he had taken his bearings, so to speak, 
 he set about investigating the manners and customs of 
 the pope and cardinals, the other prelates, and the whole 
 court. But to his unbounded astonishment, he found, by 
 what he saw himself, as well as by what was told him, 
 that from the pope down to the humblest sacristan of St. 
 Peter’s, every man of them was steeped to the lips in 
 guilty unbridled indulgence in every sort of debauchery, 
 without remorse or shame: so that the attractive young 
 people of both sexes were supreme in the distribution of 
 honors and favors. In addition to the open prevalence 
 of the sin of debauchery, he found that they were glut¬ 
 tons and hard drinkers, and that to such a degree, that 
 they were more the slaves of their stomachs than the very 
 swine. 
 
 When he probed still deeper he found that they were 
 so avaricious, and so greedy of gain, that they bought 
 and sold human blood and things divine for cash, and 
 with less conscience than characterized the dealings of 
 the merchants of Paris. 
 
THE BORGIAS. 
 
 275 
 
 Having seen all this and many things more, so dis¬ 
 graceful that they would sully the page on which they 
 were written, Abraham, who was a chaste, sober, upright 
 man, thought that he had seen enough, and determined 
 to return to Paris, which he did with the promptness 
 with which he ordinarily carried out his resolutions. 
 
 Jean de Civigny was delighted beyond measure when 
 he returned, although he had lost all hope of finding him 
 a convert. He gave him time to settle down before he 
 broached the subject, thinking that any time would be 
 soon enough to learn the bad news he anticipated. But 
 after a few days’ rest Abraham came of his own motion 
 to visit his friend, and Jean ventured to ask him what 
 he thought of the Holy Father and the cardinals, and 
 the rest of the pontifical court. 
 
 “ God damn them every one! ” cried the Jew; “ for, 
 as wide as I opened my eyes, I could discover no trace 
 among them of sanctity, devotion, or inclination to good 
 works; on the other hand, it was all lust, avarice, glut¬ 
 tony, fraud, envy, false pride, and worse, if worse can be. 
 The whole great machine seemed to me to be impelled by 
 the power of the devil, rather than by any divine force. 
 Now my deliberate conviction, based upon what I saw, 
 is that your pope, and all the others with him, exert 
 all their skill, all their intellect, all their energy to wipe 
 the Christian religion off the face of the earth, although 
 they ought to be its firmest foundation and support. 
 And yet, notwithstanding all the pains and all the 
 thought which they employ to that end, I see that your 
 religion is extending every day, and every day becoming 
 purer and more glorious, therefore is it demonstrated to 
 my satisfaction that the Holy Spirit protects and defends 
 it as the only true faith, and the most blessed of all 
 faiths. That is why you find me as firmly fixed in my 
 
276 
 
 THE BORGIAS. 
 
 resolution to become a Christian since my return from 
 Rome, as I was deaf to your appeals and your desire 
 before I made my pilgrimage to that Sodom. So come 
 with me to the Church, my dear Jean, for I am all ready 
 to be baptized.” 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that Jean, who anticipated 
 anything else, was happy at Abraham’s change of heart; 
 without delay he accompanied his godchild to the 
 Cathedral of Notre-Dame, where he begged the first 
 priest he met to administer the rite of baptism. He 
 gladly complied and the new convert exchanged his 
 Israelitish name of Abraham for the Christian cognomen 
 of Jean. His journey to Rome had implanted his faith 
 deep in his heart, and the good qualities he already 
 possessed were so added to by the practice of our blessed 
 religion, that after an exemplary life he died in the full 
 odor of sanctity. 
 
 This tale of Boccaccio’s is in itself such an admirable 
 rejoinder to the reproach of being irreligious, which 
 those who mistake our purpose may bring against us, 
 that we do not hesitate to place it in its entirety before 
 the eyes of our readers, without seeking to justify our¬ 
 selves by any other reply. 
 
 Let us not forget, however, that, although the papacy 
 has had its Innocent VIII. and its Alexander VI., who 
 have left an indelible stain upon its records, it has also 
 had its Pius VII. and its Gregory XVI., who have shed 
 undying honor upon it. 
 

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