Duchess of Milan (65 page)

Rodolfo Gonzaga put his spurs to his horse. The big white Barbary stallion, bred in Francesco’s stables--considered the best in Italy--stepped off a shallow embankment into water almost to its belly. The cold torrent rushed into Rodolfo’s iron-plated shoes. He thought of the countless battles he’d been in; never in weather like this. Rodolfo had inherited the town of Castiglione from his mother, Barbara of Brandenburg, who had come from Germany to marry Lodovico III Gonzaga, the grandfather of the current Marquis of Mantua. Not content with the modest income from his property, Rodolfo had always made his living as a
condottiere.
It was the most glorious life he could imagine. The battles were great pageants, the armies meeting and acknowledging one another like opponents in a joust, then wheeling across the countryside in intricate, chesslike maneuvers, a contest of wits and horsemanship that was inevitably decided when one side found itself overmatched and simply retired from the field. In a lifetime of campaigns, Rodolfo could count on the fingers of one hand the men he had actually seen die in combat. Of course he’d seen the corpses of many noncombatants, but these he attributed to renegade mercenary infantry, peasant soldiers robbing and raping their fellow rustics. These deaths did nothing to tarnish what his nephew Francesco had so aptly described as “a gentlemen’s game of skill.”

Now the greatest game of skill ever played in Italy was about to take place, and Rodolfo was to be denied the sheer visual spectacle of it by this untimely deluge. Rodolfo had even counseled against the attack, suggesting that they at least wait until they could see. But Francesco had pointed out that the French gunners would be unable to keep their powder dry in these rains. The battle would thus be won with intellect and invention, not the brute force of mindless machines.

The water surged up to his horse’s flanks, and the mighty current sucked at Rodolfo’s legs, trying to pull them from his stirrups. He dug his spurs in hard, keeping his legs in position and his horse moving. There were no distinct sounds to the huge movement of men at his back, only the vast rattling of rain, river, and steel.

The water got no deeper or swifter even in the center of the torrent. The worst obstacle to the crossing was the left bank, a steep incline covered with tangled, thorny vines. After making the ascent, Rodolfo looked back briefly. The pikes of the stradiots covered the river like a bed of giant, prickly reeds.

They rode along the rocky slope at the base of the low hills-- invisible in the rain--that crowded the valley of the Taro into a rubble-strewn strip ranging from a quarter to three quarters of a mile in width, widening as they rode north. They skirted a tiny village, a forlorn cluster of farmhouses and barns illuminated in a sharp yellow burst of lightning. Thunder rolled through the valley, followed by another pulse of light, this time brighter, almost white. For an instant they could see directly ahead almost the entire configuration of the French army--the glinting little figures of the French knights, the brown, huddled shapes of the pack mules and baggage wagons.

“Some of their heavy cavalry have come back to defend the baggage train!” Francesco shouted. “When we are done with them, the entire army’s rear will be as naked as a whore’s ass!” Francesco had sent a third of his forces to make a diversionary attack on the vanguard of the French army, while his main shock force would gut the slogging underbelly of baggage carts, supply wagons, and camp followers. Once the French realized that they were caught in the Italian pincers, they would quickly surrender.

The lightning came every few seconds now, each flash presenting a closer, clearer image of the French knights. Their formation was disordered, offering no coherent line of defense. A group of archers clustered around one of the knights, a small man wearing a tunic of white silk over his armor. In the next flash of lightning the gold crosses embroidered on his tunic had a magical phosphorescence.

“Cacasangue!”
Francesco shouted. “The King has come back to guard his baggage train! This will be over in one minute!”

For Rodolfo the rest came too quickly for thought or fear. Visor locked down and lance couched against his breastplate, no fumbling: he had done it a thousand times at jousts. The narrowed horizon through the slit in his visor. The slowly gathering charge. The crossbowmen kneeling, firing one salvo, the glint of a bolt caught by lightning, no time for them to reload. Gold crosses, closer, closer. Then a French knight blocking the gold. Leaning forward, feet into the stirrups. The numbing shock in his hand and forearm and armpit. The lance broken, dropped, sword out. Everything a reaction. Francesco to his left, hammering with his sword, only one man between him and the gold crosses. Turning to the dull thudding blows on his back.

Down. How? No memory of the fall. Just the shock of being on the ground. Everything crazy above, rapid glimpses of steel and horses’ bellies and silk saddle cloths in a brilliant fusillade of lightning. Blood. A shadow passing over him and then the pain in his leg, shooting straight to the top of his head, then gone, leaving a curiously bearable throbbing.

Everything slowed down. The battle had swept past him. Rodolfo’s visor had been knocked loose, and he could see off to his left. The still, dark belly of a war-horse rose up over his legs. He realized that the horse that had fallen on him was dead. He tried to move his leg, and the pain shot into his head again. He would have to wait for someone to help him. He could see dozens of men and horses, all down like him. His world was strangely horizontal. God, the tales he would tell and hear tonight.

The pounding on his armor startled him, and he moved his leg, to predictable effect. But it was hail. He looked up. The lightning flashed and the thickly descending hailstones had an eerie, snowlike, soft whiteness. He closed his eyes, and the hailstones rattled around him, a few striking his face hard. He could see the lightning going on and off through his eyelids.

The hail stopped. When he opened his eyes and looked off to the left he saw the men, dull images in the rain. Standing. No armor or breastplates. They looked like peasants from the village. He shouted. These louts could help him. As they came toward him, he could hear them speak. French. For some reason this did not alarm him. They were merely wagon drivers from the French baggage train.

Their shapes came over him, three or four. In the glare of the lightning he saw the crude mattock-like axes they carried, and he thought to himself: What fools to think they can fight with those. The lightning flashed again, and when it was gone he could see his life with amazing narrative clarity, just like the fresco that Andrea Mantegna had painted all around the walls of his father’s bedchamber in Mantua, the entire Gonzaga family and court portrayed so true to life, in such detail, that to see himself on that wall for the first time had been frightening. That was what he could see now after every brilliant burst of lightning, these perfectly detailed pictures of his life, his father and mother and both his wives and the son each had given him, in a thousand vignettes, as if he were running past a fresco of enormous length. It was a magnificent pageant. Forty-four years. He had been present at every great battle and joust and wedding, he had been to France and Germany and Venice and Naples. . . .

Didn’t the fools know they shouldn’t move his leg! Something black darted over his face, and lightning exploded right above him in a huge white halo of numbing pain. Then miraculously the pictures came rushing back, and he saw the one he most cherished, his second wife, Caterina, dancing at his nephew Francesco’s wedding to Isabella d’Este. Caterina dancing, her beauty still fresh, her hands light and floating in the air, the delicious whiteness of her breasts, softly trembling as she turned . . . An instant later the lightning and pain shattered the image, and he fought to bring it back against the exploding light, and finally he did. The last thing he ever saw was Caterina dancing at Isabella d’Este’s wedding.

Extract of a letter of international traveler and raconteur Benedetto Dei to Leonardo da Vinci, military engineer at the Court of Milan. Asti, 15 August 1495

... I was admitted to the French camp here by virtue of my many friendships in all the capitals of Europe . . . after talking with the French commanders and men, I can now offer the most complete accounting of the Battle of Fornovo likely to be circulated in Italy for many years. . . . The lords of Italy can claim victory only in that they ended the day in possession of the French baggage train, a considerable booty indeed. But despite what we have been told, the great number of those slain that day were Italians. I can reliably report that the French losses in combat were only in the several hundreds, and as you know, it has been acknowledged that the Italian dead numbered four thousand, of whom three hundred and fifty were men of noble birth, among them the Marquis of Mantua’s uncle Rodolfo and his cousin Giovanni Maria. . . . The Marquis’s attack indeed was within a whisker of success, and had not the King himself fought so courageously (His Most Christian Majesty has been described to me as entirely unlike himself the morning of the battle, his eyes clear with purpose and his tongue quick with resolution), he should have been killed at once. . . . The opportunity was lost when the stradiots went off in pursuit of the baggage train, leaving the Italian knights without the support of their infantry. At that point, had the Marquis of Mantua not responded with fierce valor, the enterprise would have been utterly lost on our side. . . . Most of our dead were killed on the ground after they had been unhorsed, by French mule drivers armed with axes. . . . The entire battle lasted less than an hour, and most of those killed fell in the first few minutes. Thus in one quarter of an hour more Italian knights were slain than had perished by hostile arms in the preceding two hundred years.

The French suffered far more in their retreat to Asti than they did in the battle, and thousands of them perished from disease and want of sustenance. . . . His Most Christian Majesty has been unable to summon reinforcements to relieve the siege of Novara, in which the armies of the League are presently engaged. It is said that Louis Duc d’Orleans and his men are starving inside the walls, having put away no stores for this eventuality, while we hear that within the League encampment our Italian commanders have little to do but quarrel among themselves. Perhaps you can tell me if it is true that the Duchess of Milan was called upon to settle a dispute between Galeazzo di Sanseverino and the Marquis of Mantua? I understand that said Duchess and your lord Il Moro visited the camp at Novara on 3 August. I am also told that your lord Il Moro shows no ill effects of the malady that struck him down earlier this summer. Is that so? Once again all look to him to resolve the crisis. As for King Charles, he shows little inclination to leave Italy or, conversely, to relieve his cousin in Novara. His Most Christian Majesty spends his time in Chieri, near Turin, where he has found the healing hands of a young woman of noble birth named Anna Solieri. . . . You might also be interested to know that among the effects confiscated from the King’s baggage was a portfolio of sketches of various women to whom His Most Christian Majesty has made love, all rendered in the nude and in positions of such invention that they may be considered the singular French contribution to the culture of Italy. Perhaps we should regret that His Most Christian Majesty did not have an opportunity to meet you, my dear Leonardo. Think what use he would have made of your talent. . . .

CHAPTER 53

Extract of a letter of Philippe de Commines, Lord of Argenton and Councillor to His Most Christian Majesty Charles VIII, to Pierre de Beaujeu, Duc du Bourbon. Vercelli, 27 September 1495

. . . Much has happened since my letter of 15 September detailing our first meeting with the Italian representatives. . . . Three days ago Il Moro himself arrived here to conduct peace negotiations on behalf of the League. . . . We go to his villa at Cameriano, not far from here . . . and are escorted into his chambers. We sit in two rows of chairs facing one another. On their side are the ambassadors of Germany, Venice, Spain, and Ferrara, the Marquis of Mantua, and the Duke and Duchess of Milan. On their side no one speaks but Il Moro. However, since it is not our custom to speak with the sedateness of temper with which these Italians do, sometimes two or three of us will speak at a time, at which Il Moro always interrupts, saying, “Please. One at a time, gentlemen.” Il Moro remains absolutely inflexible on the matter of the territorial concessions His Most Christian Majesty has insisted upon, but he made quick assent to our suggestion that the garrison at Novara be allowed to leave the city. We adjourned for the day to conduct this merciful enterprise, though I wish God had spared me what I saw. No one who was not present can conceive of the pitiable condition of the men who marched out. They had no horses left, having eaten all of them, and of the five thousand who marched out, perhaps six hundred were capable of drawing a sword in their defense. They were so feeble that they collapsed frequently on the road (Novara is six French leagues or ten Italian miles from Vercelli), and the Italians were forced to carry many of them. I myself saved fifty of them ... by lodging them in a garden and giving them warm broth, so that only one died, though four more of my pitiful little group perished before we reached Vercelli. . . . But no sooner had Louis Duc d’Orleans had a few days to rest and refresh himself (he having been permitted to leave Novara three days in advance of the garrison) than he once again endeavored to whip into a fury those around His Most Christian Majesty who are opposed to peace. In this enterprise Orleans has been most improvidently assisted by the arrival here today of upwards of ten thousand Swiss mercenaries, though even with this reinforcement we are still outnumbered two to one by the armies of the League. (The voices of war are already shouting, “Yes! And we were at a three-to-one disadvantage at Fornovo!”) I cannot emphasize how grave the situation is for those of us who believe that this war can never be won. . . . My remaining hope is that Il Moro will be sufficiently concerned by this turn of events that he will make the concessions that His Most Christian Majesty declares we cannot leave Italy without, lest we also leave our honor behind. . . .