The Borgias (34 page)

By the end of the summer of 1493, the futures of Cesare, Juan, Lucrezia, and Jofrè seemed to be assured. Juan, who had inherited from a deceased elder brother (more about him later) the Spanish dukedom of Gandía, was married in Barcelona to a young cousin of Ferdinand and Isabella (who were themselves cousins, as we have seen). The monarchical couple attended the wedding, though Isabella was skeptical about the bridegroom—presciently doubtful about the kind of husband and courtier he was likely to be. At almost the same time Cesare became one of the dozen new cardinals appointed by Alexander VI, and in a ceremony at the Vatican, young Jofrè was quietly married by proxy to Sancia of Aragon, becoming thereby prince of Squillace in the kingdom of Naples and lord of extensive Neapolitan estates. Two months later, in a secret ceremony, Lucrezia was married to Giovanni Sforza and became countess of the city-state of Pesaro on the Adriatic coast. The sensitivities of Milan, Venice, and the other northern states made it seem prudent to defer making these arrangements public, and in light of the extreme youth of Lucrezia and Jofrè there was certainly no need to hurry. At Alexander’s insistence it was agreed that Lucrezia would remain in Rome and the consummation of her marriage would be deferred even after the performance of a public wedding ceremony.

All too soon it became clear that things were not working out as planned. Juan duke of Gandía, a difficult character under the best of circumstances, had been sent off to Spain in the care of a guardian appointed by Alexander and under a deluge of papal admonitions to behave himself. The first reports to reach Rome showed that he was already out of control. His tactless arrogance had offended the king and queen, and immediately after his wedding he went off on such a wild spree of drinking, gambling, and whoring that it was said to be improbable that he had bothered to consummate the marriage. Sent to Spain to cement the pope’s relationship with the dual kingdom’s royal family, beautifully positioned to reap the rewards of Ferdinand and Isabella’s
indebtedness to Alexander, Juan was becoming instead a threat to the survival of the connection.

Though Lucrezia eventually had a grand public wedding, a lavish spectacle used by Alexander to express the importance of the event and indulge his love of ceremony and display (the bride was escorted by 150 daughters of Rome’s leading families), it did not appear to be leading her into a happy or even a stable future. In the weeks following, Lucrezia’s husband became so dissatisfied with their sexless “white marriage,” and so uneasy about the way the pope appeared to be cooling in his friendship with the Sforzas and inching toward Naples instead, that he departed Rome alone and without explanation, sending back an insulting demand for money. He appears to have been an unusually ordinary Sforza, colorless in personality and devoid of ambition, but he was not wrong to be worried. The political landscape had changed considerably since he and Lucrezia were first betrothed, his marriage was losing its political value for the Borgias as a result, and his presence in Rome had become a nuisance for everyone concerned. His departure for Pesaro, by setting the tongues of Rome wagging, accomplished nothing except to create frenzies of speculation and embarrassment. The pope tried to show himself still friendly to the Sforzas of Milan, but his gestures in that direction were thin in substance and impressed no one.

In May 1494, when the Jofrè-Sancia marriage was made public and the youngest Borgia brother was sent off to Naples to take up his new life as a husband and prince, his situation was little less awkward than Giovanni Sforza’s. The problem in this case was that Jofrè, physically attractive like his siblings but scarcely out of childhood and already showing himself to be passive and as bland as Lucrezia’s husband, had been given as his wife a headstrong and recklessly pleasure-hungry young woman whose character had been shaped in the morally lax court of her grandfather Ferrante. She showed herself to be less than delighted with a spouse significantly younger and less lively than herself. The fact that Jofrè was by all accounts a well-behaved youth did nothing to ease her restlessness; good behavior never had much appeal for her. The marriage, ill conceived from the start, was already troubled and rich in potential for more of the same.

As for the eldest of the four, Cesare, in him there was potential not just for trouble but for calamity. Not yet twenty, he was already high in the Church and had been so from early childhood: appointed an apostolic protonotary at the preposterous age of seven, he became archdeacon in the Borgia hometown of Játiva and rector of Gandía not long afterward. He was bishop of Pamplona at about sixteen (this is not quite as appalling as it sounds, as Cesare got the title and the income that went with it, but was not expected and indeed would not have been allowed to actually
function
as bishop). Only a year after that, upon Rodrigo’s election, he was given the see of Valencia, and by the time another year had passed he was a teenage cardinal.

The problem was not just grossly premature advancement but the fact that, though intelligent, ambitious, educated in canon and civil law, and attractive both physically and in personality, Cesare never had and never pretended to have the slightest aptitude for an ecclesiastical career.
There survives a unique early description from about this time, written by the duke of Ferrara’s ambassador to Rome Giovanandrea Boccaccio, who exclaims that though only about seventeen Cesare “possesses marked genius and a charming personality; he bears himself like a great prince; he is especially lively and merry, and fond of society. Being very modest, he presents much better than his brother, the duke of Gandía, although the latter is also highly endowed.” Boccaccio’s words make it understandable that Alexander VI could come to dote on a youth of such promise, but even he, astute as he was, must have seen that this high-spirited, strong-willed, and lavishly talented youth, fearing nothing and no one, was not going to be easily kept on the path that had been laid out for him. He was not likely to be even briefly satisfied with the gift of a red hat, or to see in it any reason to moderate his behavior.

For a while things settled down, and the careers of all four young Borgias appeared to be coming right. Alexander rejoiced when word arrived from Spain that Duke Juan’s bride was pregnant: not only had the marriage been consummated, but an heir to the duchy of Gandía was possibly on his way. Not long afterward Cesare submitted to taking “minor” orders, first as a subdeacon and then as deacon. These were steps toward priestly ordination but did not involve the taking of permanent vows. It was not at all unusual for cardinals to be deacons only,
and it was not unheard of for newly elected popes to be ordained shortly before their coronation. One rationale for this was the demands that ordination put on a man’s time and the wish to keep senior Curia officials focused on their bureaucratic responsibilities. Rodrigo Borgia himself had been a cardinal for years before finally being ordained.

Jofrè and Sancia too were giving no great cause for worry. They appeared to be settling contentedly enough into their new life as married Neapolitan royalty—a grandiose life that provided the boy-prince with scores of attendants and his bride with almost as many. As for Lucrezia, she in company with her mother and her best friend and companion Giulia Farnese Orsini, the beautiful daughter-in-law of Pope Alexander’s cousin and housekeeper Adriana del Milà, had joined her husband at Pesaro, presumably now sharing with him the conjugal bed. All seemed to be well on the domestic front.

In the wider world things were not at all well. January 1494 brought a momentous event, the death from cancer of Ferrante of Naples. As shrewd as he was cruel, as treacherous as he was skilled in statecraft, through his three and a half decades as king Ferrante had remained always at the center of Italian power politics, constantly in search of opportunities to make trouble for his rivals and frequently succeeding. His last months, however, had been steeped in dread and the expectation of ruin, the fear that everything he had spent his life preserving and everything he had accomplished was soon to be laid waste. He knew of course that Charles of France was preparing an invasion, knew that Naples was Charles’s prime objective, and foresaw all too clearly that this meant disaster. At a less troubled time the demise of such a man might have given rise to jubilation, in Naples no less than elsewhere. But not now, and especially not in Rome. With the death of Ferrante it became impossible for Alexander to continue dancing on a diplomatic tightrope between Naples and Milan—and, beyond them, between Spain and France. Suddenly all eyes were on Rome, and the question being asked was who Alexander would recognize as Ferrante’s successor. It was a repeat of what had happened in the last days of Calixtus III’s reign, with the death of Ferrante’s father.

The most obvious choice was Ferrante’s eldest son, Alfonso duke of Calabria, whom Innocent VIII had pledged to invest with the crown when Ferrante was gone. On the personal level Alfonso was unpromising
material.
He was at least as objectionable as his father in moral terms; Renaissance historian Jacob Burckhardt would describe him as “a savage, brutal profligate.” But he was already in place as de facto ruler of his father’s and grandfather’s kingdom, understood the precariousness of his position, and was taking swift action to get himself firmly entrenched.

He knew that, with the king of France preparing to descend upon him, he needed to organize a defense and was going to require help in doing so. Ferrante had attempted to provide him with a lasting source of help by marrying him to the daughter of one Sforza duke and his daughter to another. Thanks to Ludovico Sforza’s usurpation, however, that connection was now worse than useless. The late Pope Innocent’s pledge to install him as king was likewise useless.
Other support was needed, which explains why Alfonso and Ferrante, to secure Pope Alexander’s friendship, had already bestowed rich estates, grand titles, and Sancia of Aragon on young Jofrè Borgia, endowed the duke of Gandía with a lifelong income, and granted lucrative benefices to Cardinal Cesare. The benefits of having done these things seemed almost trivial, however, when balanced against the certain knowledge that Charles VIII was preparing to invade and for that purpose was assembling an army bigger than any seen in Italy in living memory.

Alexander’s connections to the House of Aragon notwithstanding, the question of whom to anoint as Ferrante’s successor had no easy answer. Though at the urging of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere and others Charles was threatening to depose the pope, nothing could have been more obvious than his readiness to forgive and forget Alexander’s refusal to approve his invasion. In return he wanted only one thing, something that would cost the pope nothing in the near term. He wanted an assurance of papal investment as king of Naples once his campaign had succeeded. And he had much to offer in return. If as seemed likely the French army proved to be an irresistible force once it was on the march, it would place in Charles’s hands the ability to dispense rewards beyond anything that Alfonso of Naples could ever possibly offer. In any case the time for artful dodging—for positioning himself as the friend of Milan and Naples as well, or at least as the enemy of neither—had ended. Someone was going to become king of Naples, and Alexander had no choice but to place a bet.

He did so on April 18, when gathered with the cardinals in consistory. To the indignation of Ascanio Sforza and the French members of the Sacred College, he declared his intention to send a legate to Naples to crown Alfonso on his behalf without delay. Part of his motive was, almost certainly, to present King Charles with a fait accompli and thereby—with luck—discourage him from invading. Also, by showing his hand he was signaling to the other Italian rulers that the time had come for them to do the same. He underscored the point by assigning the coronation duties to his nephew and confidant Cardinal Giovanni Borgia, and by instructing him to proceed to Ferrara and Venice upon leaving Naples and encourage those cities too to come to Alfonso’s support. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere’s response was to depart for the north, first for Milan and then on to the court of the French king. He sensed the opportunity for which he had been waiting. Now that Alexander had in effect declared himself an opponent of France, or if not that at least unwilling to acquiesce in a French conquest of Naples, the gullible Charles was more likely than ever to see the wisdom of replacing him with someone more cooperative. It need hardly be said that della Rovere was confident that the king would not have to look far to find exactly the right replacement.

Wiser men than Charles might have thought success a certainty when so many important Italians were not only encouraging him to invade but offering to join his campaign and help to finance it. Within weeks of Alexander’s decision to confer the Neapolitan crown on Alfonso II, therefore, Charles had his war machine in motion, sending all the great and petty powers of Italy scrambling to save themselves from disaster or even, should opportunities arise, to profit from the confusion and mayhem. The jealousies and conflicting ambitions that had always divided the Italian states, worsened now by panic, removed any possibility of their coming together in the common defense. Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara, who had done his best to stay clear of war since his conflict with Venice a decade before had brought his dynasty to the edge of ruin, now saw a chance to recover some of what had been lost. He not only allied his duchy with France and Milan—that was no surprise, his family having long looked to Milan for protection against Venice, and his daughter Beatrice being married to Ludovico il Moro—but sent off a son to join the French army. The Venetians, whose resources
would have been sufficient to make even Charles think twice about proceeding, withdrew to a position of neutrality. Giovanni Bentivoglio, strongman of Bologna, also had the capacity to make things difficult for Charles but would continue to temporize until it was too late for his decision to matter.

Charles moved with glacial slowness at first, evidently not caring that as the weeks passed the summer was passing too and with it the best months for offensive operations. He was still at Lyons at the beginning of June, when Cardinal della Rovere caught up with him and added his insistent voice to the many urging him to press on and show no more mercy to Pope Alexander than to Alfonso II. Della Rovere, until recently on cordial terms with Naples, was now its implacable enemy thanks solely to Alfonso’s recognition by the pope. This was characteristic behavior on della Rovere’s part; he had thrown in with Charles for no better reason than that the French king was the only man in Europe able and presumably willing to tear the papal tiara from Alexander’s head. When Charles finally got his forces in motion once again, he advanced only as far as Vienne before stopping for three weeks of amusements including dalliance with the gaggle of mistresses that accompanied him wherever he went.