The Tigress of Forli (36 page)

No sooner had the plague subsided than the mail brought bad news: the French had entered Lombardy. Duke Ludovico had sent his finest
condottiere,
Galeazzo Sanseverino, count of Caiazzo, north to meet the oncoming French, who were led by the Milanese traitor and exile Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, but Sanseverino never intercepted the opposing army. Trivulzio arrived at Alessandria and at Caterina's childhood home of Pavia, both of which had capitulated without a fight. As the Venetians advanced to Lodi, Count Sanseverino was nowhere to be found; sensing certain defeat, he had abandoned the cause. Ludovico the Moor fled Milan on September 2 to seek asylum with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I of Hapsburg, related to the Sforza family through his marriage to Caterina's sister Bianca Maria. On August 31, one of Caterina's trusted agents in Florence, a priest named Francesco Fortunati, sent a hastily scribbled warning to the countess. "These are the times to have both men and money ... The moment is coming when they will need to be spent."
¹⁴
Fortunati was so fearful for his own safety that he also pleaded with her not to show his letters to Giovanni da Casale, Caterina's Milanese chancellor. No alliance was safe, no friendship honored. Each man would have to fend for himself.

Caterina continued her deliberations with Florence through Giovanni da Casale and even succeeded in convincing Niccolò Machiavelli to inform the French king that she was an ally of the Florentine Republic. Meanwhile she kept an agent, Vincenzo Calmeta, to further her suits at the court of King Louis XII, who was now the king of France and claiming the lordship of Milan.

But on October 31, the eve of the Feast of the Dead, Caterina received grave news. A letter from Vincenzo Calmeta informed the countess that he had finally been granted an audience with King Louis XII to discuss her case. Also present was Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. Calmeta swore that he had done everything in his power but that nothing could stop the ax from falling on Forlì. Trivulzio had confided to Calmeta that the French army had little interest in Forlì and that the true enemy of Forlì was the pope. The French had tried to avoid the wearisome campaign in Romagna by protesting to Pope Alexander VI that they had used all their war funds in capturing Milan, but he replied that his needs were minimal: some artillery and the loan of a few soldiers. The pope himself would pay for the siege of Forlì. In short, as Calmeta's blunt message proved, Caterina had been betrayed by all. The Florentines would not object for fear that Alexander would attack Pisa to give it to Cesare. Even Cardinal Riario and Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere had managed to put aside their differences to join the plot against her in Rome. "Everyone is waiting for your undoing and ruin, most of all Rome, from whence comes all this evil."
¹⁵
Louis XII dismissed any appeal that Caterina might make with a few words: "We are not the judges of the pope, nor can we forbid that he act as he wishes in his own jurisdiction." The king continued this pious lip service, telling Calmeta that "her captains had the right to defend against any other power; but against the pope who is your overlord it is not lawful."
¹⁶
Calmeta then begged the countess not to lose heart and to bolster her courage, for invasion was imminent. The following day, the pope issued his death sentence on Caterina's rule with a note written in his own hand. The Riario family was officially deposed and instructed to surrender Forlì and Imola immediately.

Caterina, always at her best when faced with the worst, immediately began readying her state for attack. On November 1 she called the governing Council of Forty and obtained promises of loyalty to Ottaviano. Starting with her own little farm, she ordered all rural buildings within a quarter mile around the city walls to be razed and gardens and trees cut down. Forlì would offer no food or shelter to her invaders. The bell tower of the city palace was outfitted with a lookout post so that the citizens could be warned instantly when the troops arrived. Rural inhabitants, who lived "three artillery shots away," were ordered to take all their belongings from their houses, harvest all the wheat and hay, and leave the land bare. She leveled all the parks in a mile radius around the city, again commencing with her own. Every citizen was to have rations on hand for four months. Caterina would personally assist those who could not afford to lay down such stores.

She sent some of her finest horses to the marquis of Mantua, who had long been angling for the fine creatures that Caterina bred herself. With her forests razed and her enemies at the gates, there would be no time to hunt and ride, but perhaps she could win back a little friendship. She mentioned the pope's persecution and her intention to resist the oncoming army. "We will not abandon our home, but we will defend our possessions as long as we can, and perhaps they will not find [the conquest] as easy as they think."
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She readied weapons and medicines and drilled her troops, anticipating the moment of confrontation. Florence, while publicly indifferent to Caterina's plight, sent weapons and supplies to her. Alexander VI, in his continuing effort to isolate Caterina completely, threatened the Signoria in a letter of November 16 with dire consequences should the Florentines continue to assist his enemies.

Aware that the beautiful and brave countess was as legendary as his own son Cesare, Alexander took steps to deflect sympathy from her. To cut off any hope of alliances for Caterina, the crafty pope wrote to the Signoria in Florence on November 21, accusing the countess of attempting to poison him. The story bruited by the papal agents was that these two men of Romagna were sent by Caterina to pretend they had a letter from the people of Forlì and to introduce the poison once they had gained admission to his presence. Here the versions differ, one claiming that the men had been handed a vial prepared by the countess herself, the other stating that she had given them letters that had been enclosed in the grave of a plague victim for two days. One of the two, the story went, decided he could make more money off the affair by telling the pope, informing His Holiness just in the nick of time. As preposterous as it sounded, Cardinal Riario scented imminent danger and fled the same night in disguise. The name had become a death sentence. Cardinal Riario, who had not known such fear since his days as a hostage after the Pazzi conspiracy, first took refuge with the Orsini family, long-standing Riario allies, but then smuggled himself across the Siena border and caught a boat for Savona near Genova, his hometown. Alexander continued to spread his own brand of poison, ensuring that every court in the land was informed about Caterina's attempt to murder the pontiff. It was an old but effective ploy. Twenty years earlier, Caterina's late and unlamented husband Girolamo had tried to lure Lorenzo the Magnificent into a similar trap. The papal claims of foul play achieved their aim; everyone understood that helping the countess would be a very serious offense against a very powerful man. Florence, however, despite all its quibbles with Caterina, proved the most loyal of her friends. They refused to sell gunpowder and ammunition to Cesare Borgia. Taking a leaf from Caterina's book, they claimed that they had run out. Meanwhile they continued to ply the king of France with requests to put Forlì under his protection, warning him that the political ambitions of the Borgias were boundless and that someday soon they would come into conflict with his own. Fearful for their own precarious position, the Florentines secretly aided Caterina, hoping that her defense would buy them enough time to convince the French king to leave Tuscany in peace.

Caterina's last preparations were made in early December. While the rest of Europe was counting off the days of Advent, waiting to celebrate the birth of Jesus, Caterina was waiting for the arrival of the man whom many would dub the "Antichrist," Cesare Borgia. The city of Imola had already surrendered, but the castellan, Dionigio Naldi, was detaining Cesare at the fortress of Imola to gain a few more precious days for the countess. His honorable surrender on December 11 awakened the Forlivesi to the cold reality that there were no more obstacles between Cesare and Forlì. The next day, Caterina sent Ottaviano to Florence, where her other children and her sister had taken refuge. This time, no one would use her loved ones as leverage against her. She would have liked to have her oldest son fight by her side, but having fostered and followed his military career from the beginning, she knew that Ottaviano had inherited more of his father's trepidation toward the battlefield than his mother's boldness.

Caterina called her people together once more. Would they resist the Borgia storm together? The frightened Forlivesi were losing heart. Undecided, they referred the question to the Elders of Forlì, who also wavered. They timidly suggested that although they knew no one could defend the city better than she, perhaps Caterina should emulate the duke of Milan and leave town, so as to minimize the damage to its people. They proposed this weak solution as merely a "temporary retreat," arguing that she could save herself and her citizens and then return when the pope died.

Then, more villainously, on December 14 Luffo Numai, who had consigned the city of Forlì to Caterina after Girolamo's death, and Giovanni delle Selle, who had risen to great heights under her reign, abandoned the countess and the defense of Forlì. Undoubtedly hoping to negotiate even better political positions under Borgia rule, they swayed the people of Forlì to take the state from Caterina and her children and confer it upon the enemy. Crying "The People, the People!" Numai and delle Selle rang Caterina's warning bell in the city palace before riding to Imola to offer the submission of the Forlivesi to Cesare Borgia, who gladly accepted. The Forlivesi raced to the Abbey of San Mercuriale in thanksgiving and took up the statue of Mercuriale, their patron saint, carrying it in procession out to the main square, where they lit candles and made an improvised shrine above the monument to the twelve thousand French soldiers they had repelled and massacred three hundred years earlier. No longer the proud resisters of foreign invaders, the Forlivesi became the shame of Italy. On December 19, 1499, heavy rains extinguished the candles around the statue of Mercuriale. The clatter of hoofbeats grew louder as a white horse carrying the Borgia commander entered the square. The enemy was at the countess's door.

O
N DECEMBER
26, 1499, Caterina awoke in Paradise. Although her beloved Giovanni was no longer by her side and her chambers were devoid of the happy chatter of her children, she still relished her comfortable inner sanctum next to the keep. From her window, Caterina could see the sun glowing along the tip of the Apennines. Cesare Borgia had begun the siege of Forlì a week earlier. The town had capitulated even before Cesare had arrived, leaving only Ravaldino to resist the invaders. So far Caterina had held her own well. She had stopped Cesare's soldiers from looting and pillaging on Christmas Day by distracting them with the threat of a Venetian attack, and her own actions as a warrior were limited to a few well-aimed cannon shots at the palaces of Forlì's foulest traitors.

It was Saint Stephen's Day, the twenty-third anniversary of her father's murder in Milan. As she heard Mass with her commanders, Caterina may have thought of her father, Duke Galeazzo Maria. Never in written, spoken, or recorded word did she show any rancor toward the man who had married her off at age ten to the pope's dissolute nephew; indeed, in her thirty-six years, she had never known among her husbands, lovers, or adversaries anyone who equaled her father's strength of will and love of life. At every confrontation, Caterina always cited her father's "fearlessness" or "strategic brilliance," and she had spent her whole life trying to emulate those qualities, never more so than in her bold defense of her lands. How different she had been at fourteen—so naively excited to be going to Rome despite the hasty departure after her father's death. A lifetime later, Caterina had borne eight children, buried three husbands, and fought off endless plots and intrigues. Most of all, with the help of Savonarola's instruction, she had found spiritual peace. Should she die that day, Caterina was confident that she would find her way to Paradise, while if Cesare Borgia were to be killed, he would have Hell to pay.

Trumpets broke Caterina's reveries and summoned her to the battlefield. She strapped on her cuirass, one of the very few made for a woman in that age. It was as expertly crafted as her luxurious gowns had been in her youth; the steel was shaped to her curves and reinforced to prevent crushing or compressing her breasts. It was also streamlined so that she could wear it underneath her clothes. Tiny plates fit perfectly together to allow for a wide range of movement. The delicate floral pattern lightly incised on the front was the only concession to ornament, and on the upper left plate Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Caterina's patron saint, was etched into the steel.

She raced up the narrow spiral steps that led from her rooms to the lookout point over the bastions, her long skirts rustling. Her men-at-arms were gawking as they peered over the moat. No cannon fire, no projectiles, no billowing acrid smoke greeted her, only the crisp, cold winter wind. Looking down over the low wall, she could clearly see Cesare Borgia, duke of Valentinois, astride his white horse. He was poised at the edge of the moat and surrounded by a small coterie of liveried guards. Cesare had thrown a silver and black cloak over his suit of armor, and instead of a helmet, he sported a black velvet beret adorned with a long white feather. It was hard to tell from his apparel whether he had come to fight or to court. The duke slid easily from his horse and with a polished gesture swept his hat from his head, extending it at arm's length as he made a deep bow toward the lady on the ramparts. Caterina, well versed in courtly manners, returned the greeting with a regal nod.

Hat in hand, Cesare addressed the countess in the most complimentary terms, praising both her education and her wisdom. He observed that states come and they go, assuring her that if she would cede the fortress to him, his father, Pope Alexander VI, would happily give her another. As crafty as he was bold, and aware of Caterina's soft spot for handsome young men, Cesare was flirting.