The Tigress of Forli (45 page)

Many recalled when, in 1521, Giovanni was charged to wrest Milan, his mother's ancestral home, from the French. Giovanni, stationed to the east on the other side of the river Adda, appeared to be only preventing any further advance by the French army. Suddenly, in full armor and followed by his men, Giovanni swam across the river, surprising the enemy at the gates and successfully regaining the city. This feat had been recounted in every town in Italy and made him a coveted commander among mercenary armies.

Pope Leo sent effusive congratulations to the army, his last letters to them. Giovanni's papal protector died a few weeks later. The death of Leo left Giovanni, close in line for the Medici inheritance, dangerously exposed. Indifferent to politics, he ignored the question. The soldiers never knew anything of the machinations at work to tighten a noose around their beloved commander.

Leo X was succeeded by his cousin Clement VII, the illegitimate son of Guiliano de' Medici, who had been killed in the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478. Clement's entire pontificate was directed toward obtaining the sovereignty of Florence and its territories in order to create the Duchy of Tuscany. Constantly scheming, Clement in 1525 found it expedient to strike an alliance with the French king and sent Giovanni and his Bande Nere to lay siege to Pavia. Ten days before the projected battle, Giovanni was shot in the leg. Once the broken leg was set, the soldier was brought to the safety of Piacenza. King Francis I visited the wounded commander in person and sat by his bedside. Like his mother, Giovanni had also garnered the admiration of the French. Ten days later, after his troops were crushed and the king was led off as a prisoner, he was heard to lament that had Giovanni been present, they would not have lost the day.

 

A
MONG THE MUFFLED
conversations in the hushed room, the author Pietro Aretino raised his voice to get the attention of the bereaved guests. Notorious for caustic words, Pietro softened only in the company of his dear friend Giovanni. Aretino had traveled for years with Giovanni, happy to record the exploits of a true hero. In him Aretino had found an antidote to his bitter view of humanity. Pietro had held the young soldier as he drew his last breaths and later penned his eulogy. From one who rarely had a generous comment about anyone, including God, his words about Giovanni are all the more moving: "He gave away to his soldiers more than he ever kept for himself. Fatigue and hardship he endured with the greatest patience. He was the first to mount and the last to dismount. He esteemed men according to their value, not according to their rank and wealth. He was always better than his word in actions, but in council he never traded on his great reputation ... In short, many may envy him, but none can imitate him."
¹

There in the dark chapel, amid the tales of valor and victory, a nagging question hung in the air. How could it happen that the invincible Giovanni de' Medici, the one man who could have restored peace to Italy, was lying there dead? Could it really be, as Machiavelli suggested, just a cruel trick of fortune, or were darker forces at work? A few eyes came to rest on the papal standard hung over the body in honor of the new incumbent, Pope Clement VII. The more pious offered a quick prayer for the pope, now deprived of his greatest protector; a few others, like Aretino, narrowed their eyes in contempt.

Miles away in Rome, in the opulent papal apartments where Raphael had painted the noble precepts that should inspire rulers, Pope Clement slept fitfully. Plotting for his own illegitimate son, Alexander, to become the first duke of Tuscany, he had to overcome many obstacles. The clever pope had first removed the last Medici of the branch descending from Cosimo the Elder, Ippolito de' Medici, the legitimate son of Giuliano, by naming him, very much against his will, a cardinal. Immediately thereafter, Pope Clement had dispatched him on a diplomatic mission to Hungary, out of the sight of all political players. His role as cardinal would bar him from ever becoming duke. Giovanni was the only obstacle between the dukedom and Alexander de' Medici.

From the beginning of Clement's pontificate, he had made use of Giovanni's talents, sending him from one dangerous situation to the next. Always relishing adventure, Giovanni delighted in the hazardous missions, but his wife, Maria, knew his value to the Medici line and quickly perceived that the pope's reliance on Giovanni actually masked a desire to place him in harm's way. Pope Clement cast Giovanni repeatedly into combat, hoping each time that he would not return.

In his all-consuming desire to obtain Tuscany, Pope Clement had made a devious diplomatic gambit, reconciling with Emperor Charles V after his flirtation with the king of France, pretending to have repudiated Gaulish wiles. But in 1526, Charles V discovered that the pope had again allied himself with the French king Francis I against Charles, and he decided to teach Clement a lesson in loyalty. He dispatched a contingent of sixteen thousand German mercenary soldiers to capture the pope and seize Rome. The Landsknechte swarmed over the Alps, eager to loot the Eternal City. By late October, the troops threatened to engulf Mantua, then wash over the Po River into papal territory. Francesco della Rovere, unable to withstand the mercenaries, had long abandoned his post in Milan. As winter approached, only Giovanni and his Bande Nere stood between the invaders and Rome.

Giovanni engaged the Landsknechte on the banks of the freezing Mincio River on November 21, 1526. In the fierce skirmishes Giovanni managed to defeat the German rear guard, but just as his mother had succumbed to the light mobile artillery at Ravaldino, so Giovanni lost to the falconet, and was hit in the leg on November 25, in the same place where he had been shot a year earlier.

Giovanni was carried to the palace of the marquis of Mantua, who, albeit having treacherously assisted the Landsknechte, immediately offered the best rooms in the palace and called his own doctor to tend the wounded man. This time the leg would not heal. Gangrene soon set in. Aretino took it upon himself to tell his friend that the leg would have to be amputated to save his life. Although it meant the end of his brilliant military career, Giovanni accepted the news with admirable forbearance.

To perform the operation, he would be administered the strongest narcotic available, and ten men were summoned to hold him down, to prevent him from thrashing in pain. Giovanni calmly told Aretino that if he did not choose to be subdued, not even twenty men would be able to contain him. Giovanni then took the candle himself, dismissed his soldiers, and held the light for the surgeon throughout the agonizing operation. He lost his leg, but he won fame as the bravest man in Italy.

For all his stoic suffering, his condition worsened; septicemia began to poison his blood. In his last painful hours, Giovanni, completely lucid, sent affectionate letters to his wife and found the strength to address his soldiers one last time. "Love me when I am dead," he asked of them. The battle-hardened warriors wept as he received last rites. Giovanni struggled to live long enough to see his son, whom he sent for, but he realized death would claim him before he could fulfill that last desire. Asking to be taken from the plush bed of the duke of Mantua and laid in his rough camp cot, Giovanni de' Medici died on November 30, 1526.

The dim skies of the Lombard winter and the heavy snows that had fallen during Giovanni's last days kept the room in semidarkness. The Landsknechte had escaped, leaving a trail of destruction, while Italy's savior lay lifeless in his grave. Aretino, who, like Maria Salviati, had perceived the pope's sinister intentions, commented that one "can hear already the growls of the pope, who will believe that he is better off in having lost such a man."
²

Pope Clement had gotten his wish, the death of the troublesome heir, but the cost would be staggering. The Landsknechte sacked Rome on May 6, 1527, sending the pope scurrying for Orvieto and claiming the lives of twenty-eight thousand Romans.

A pale ray of sunshine forced its way through the iron-gray clouds, casting a sliver of light into the room. It bathed a tall pale-faced child with chestnut hair cut short like that of the soldiers of the Bande Nere. Seven-year-old Cosimo de' Medici, the only son and heir of Giovanni de' Medici, stood dry-eyed by the window, looking at his father's body.

Cosimo had seen his father little in his short life, his most vivid memory being one brief visit when he was a mere toddler. Giovanni had galloped to the window of the Palazzo Salviati and ordered his nurse to throw the boy out of the window into his waiting arms. The nurse refused at first, but then, frightened by Giovanni's anger, obeyed. The soldier neatly caught Cosimo, delighted to see the child unruffled by the experience. Kissing his son with joy, Giovanni exclaimed, "You'll be a prince. It's your destiny."

Several thoughtful glances were cast at the quiet boy in the corner. What future awaited this child, the culmination of the two Medici lines? Few could guess the exalted destiny of the taciturn Cosimo on the day of his father's funeral. Pope Clement would succeed in putting his son Alexander on the throne of Florence, but the debauched duke would be so hated that he would be murdered in 1536 after assassinating his own cousin, Cardinal Ippolito. At the age of seventeen, young Cosimo would take his place. Caterina Sforza had left one last great legacy to the world in her grandson, the first Medici head to wear the crown of the grand duke of Tuscany and the beginning of a line that would become synonymous with the great city of Florence.

1.
THE EDUCATION OF AN AMAZON

1. Albeit a century old, Cecilia M. Ady's
A History of Milan Under the Sforza
remains the most comprehensive English-language study of the Sforza reign.

2. Recounted in Luke Syson and Dillian Gordon,
Pisanello: Painter to the Renaissance Court,
p. 40.

3. Ibid., p. 62.

4. Ibid., p. 64.

5. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris,
Ital.
1610 f. 22 copy.

6. Niccolò Machiavelli,
Florentine Histories,
p. 307.

2.
CHILDHOOD'S END

1. Gregory Lubkin,
A Renaissance Court,
pp. 106–9.

2. Machiavelli,
Florentine Histories,
p. 301.

3. Marquis of Mantua to Gabriella Gonzaga, January 6, 1473. Potenze Estere, Milan State Archives.

4.
Virtue and Beauty,
edited by David Alan, provides details concerning marriage customs as well as objects from the marriage ritual.

5. Lubkin,
A Renaissance Court,
attests to heavy-handed sexual humor in Galeazzo's court, and Philippe Aries, in
Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life,
chapter 5, discusses adult conversations conducted in front of children.

6.
Archivio Storico Lombardo. Yr XV fasc. III ed P. Ghinzoni.
Milan State Archives.

7. Roma to Giovanni Arcimboldi, "oratore ducale" in Rome, January 23, 1473. Potenze Estere, Milan State Archives.

8.
Ducal register
K. n.1 foglio 138t. Milan State Archives.

9. Caterina and Girolamo's marriage arrangements are published in Pier Desiderio Pasolini's
Caterina Sforza,
vol. 3, docs. 54, 59, and 60.

3.
THE COUNTESS-IN-WAITING

1. Paul and Lora Merkley,
Music and Patronage in the Sforza Court
, pp. 44–45.

2. Pietro Ghinzoni,
L'inquinto, Ossia una Tassa Odiosa del Secolo XV
, series 2, vol. 1, fasc. 3.

3. Cecilia Ady,
A History of Milan Under the Sforza,
p. 104.

4. Lubkin,
A Renaissance Court,
p. 200.

5. Ibid., p. 198.

6. Story of the death of Galeazzo, studied and documented by Eugenio Casanova,
L'Uccisione di Galeazzo Maria Sforza,
Archivio Storico Lombardo, 1899, and reprinted in Cecilia Ady,
A History of Milan Under the Sforza,
p. 113.

7. From Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, reprinted in Pasolini,
Caterina Sforza,
vol. 3, n. 70.

4.
THE TRIUMPHAL PARADE TO ROME

1. Donne Celebri Caterina to Chiara, April 27, 1477. Milan State Archives.

2. Staccate Bona to Bossi, April 26, 1477. Milan State Archives.

3. Bossi to Bona May 4, 1477, Milan State Archives, reprinted in Pasolini,
Caterina Sforza,
vol. 3, doc. 92.

4. Donne Celebri Caterina to Chiara, May 3, 1477. Milan State Archives.

5. Ibid.

6. Oratore of Milan to Ducal Court, May 11, 1477, Milan State Archives, reprinted in Pasolini,
Caterina Sforza,
vol. 3, docs. 93–94.

7. The events related to the arrival of Caterina in Rome and her encounters with both Girolamo and Pope Sixtus IV were meticulously described by the envoys of the Milanese court accompanying Caterina. The letter, several pages long, is dated May 28, 1477, and is in the Milan State Archives, reprinted in Pasolini,
Caterina Sforza,
vol. 3, doc. 105.

5.
COURTIERS AND CONSPIRACIES

1. Lionardo Bruni,
Opere
Letterarie,
p. 44.

2. Stefano Infessura,
I Diarii Romani,
Vatican Archives: Registri Garampi 1435–1505, BIIII L89, p. 35.

3. Gregorovius,
History of Rome in the Fifteenth Century,
vol. 7A, p. 243.

4. Registro Ducale N. 123 f. 186, Milan State Archives, reprinted in Pasolini,
Caterina Sforza,
vol. 3, doc. 116.

5. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 81.

6. Gino Capponi,
Confessioni di G.Battista da Montesecco, Relativa alla Congiura dei Pazzi,
in
Storia della reppublica Fiorentina,
vol. 5A, p. 547. The startling confession of Girolamo's personal bodyguard on the eve of the execution clearly implicates Girolamo, while leaving a very small amount of room to claim that Sixtus was unaware of the plot.

6.
THE GROWTH OF THE RIARIO DYNASTY

1. Luke Syson and Dora Thornton,
Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy,
p. 45.