various sites of interest, including the hot springs at Pozzuoli and the sulphur and salt baths at Bagnoli, before leaving Naples with a four-year-old mule, named Idrontina, which he was given as a present by the king, together with 100 gold ducats in gratitude for services rendered.
On July 12 Alexander VI, accompanied by several cardinals, including the nineteen-year-old Cesare, left Rome for Tivoli, where he intended to stay a few days in order to escape the stifling summer heat and to attend a meeting with Alfonso II at the nearby fortress of Vicovaro, a castle belonging to Virginio Orsini, one of the condottieri captains fighting with the Neapolitan army. They discussed at length the measures that would be needed for the defence of Naples against the French. A plan of action was agreed upon; but, before it could be put into operation, an immense French army, thirty thousand strong with forty powerful cannons, under the personal command of Charles VIII, crossed the Alps in early September and started its long march south.
In Rome Alexander VI’s open alliance with Naples and Spain made life very uncomfortable for the supporters of Milan and France, not least in the college. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere had fled to France in April; Cardinal Ascanio Sforza left at the end of June. With the plague raging, the celebrations for the anniversaries of Innocent VIII’s death and of Alexander VI’s accession were both cancelled, adding to the pall of dread that hung over the city, and which grew daily as news bulletins of Charles VIII’s slow but relentless approach were delivered. There had been a moment of hope soon after the French crossed the Alps when it was learned that Charles VIII had taken to his bed in Asti, suffering from smallpox; but the moment was brief, and the king soon recovered enough to continue on his way.
Guicciardini recorded many signs and portents of impending doom that were seen at about this time:
In Puglia one night three suns were seen in the sky, surrounded by clouds and accompanied by terrifying thunder and lightning. In the territory of Arezzo huge numbers of armed soldiers riding enormous steeds were seen for many days passing across the sky with a terrible clash of trumpets and drums. All over Italy holy images and statues were seen to sweat and everywhere monstrous babies and animals were born… whence the people were filled with unbelievable dread, frightened as they already were by the reputation of French power.
The French troops met with little opposition; it was said that they conquered Italy with the bits of chalk that the quartermasters used in order to mark the doors of the houses they occupied on their march south. Certainly the army was one of the most powerful ever assembled, and it was ‘provisioned by a large quantity of artillery,’ wrote Guicciardini, ‘of a type never before seen in Italy.’ The French had developed new weapons: ‘These were called cannon and they used iron cannonballs instead of stone, as before, and this new shot was considerably larger and heavier than that previously deployed.’ Not only were they more powerful than anything seen before; they were also more manoeuvrable; the massive cannons were transported to Italy by ship and unloaded in the harbour at Genoa, where they were loaded onto specially made gun carriages. ‘This artillery,’ concluded Guicciardini, ‘made Charles VIII’s army formidable.’
After outflanking the weak resistance of the Neapolitan forces in the Romagna and routing the Neapolitan fleet at Rapallo, they crossed the Apennines in October and seized the fortress of Sarzana, one of Florence’s key border defences. Alexander VI appointed the cardinal of Siena, Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, as legate to Charles VIII to negotiate, but Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who had joined the French camp, persuaded the king not to meet him.
On November 17 Charles VIII entered Florence in triumph, to the wild cheers of the fickle populace, for whom the arrival of the French army had been the catalyst that had enabled the expulsion of the detested Piero de’ Medici, who had arrogantly exercised his authority in the city since the death of his father, Lorenzo il Magnifico, two years earlier. After signing an alliance with Florence’s new republican government on November 26, Charles VIII and his troops continued their march south, sacking and pillaging the Tuscan countryside as they went.
A few days later in Rome, Alexander VI arrested those prominent supporters of the French who remained in the city, including Cardinal Ascanio Sforza and the illegitimate son of the great Cardinal d’Estouteville, imprisoning them in apartments on the upper floor of the Vatican Palace. Though the rooms were comfortable and the prisoners were allowed to attend Mass in the Sistine Chapel, they were heavily guarded. That same day Alexander VI informed the ambassadors of France, who had come to Rome to seek free passage for the French army through the Papal States, that their request was refused. Charles VIII ignored the pope and continued to march south; a month after arriving in Florence, the invading army captured Civitavecchia, an important port inside papal territory, while the Orsini surrendered their fortress at nearby Bracciano.
Near Viterbo the vanguard of the French army, under the command of Yves d’Alegre, came across two obviously well-to-do women. One of these turned out to be Giulia Farnese, Alexander VI’s beautiful mistress, who was returning to Rome from a visit to her husband on his country estate. The other was Adriana da Mila, her friend and the pope’s cousin, who had been entrusted by him with the care of his children. A messenger was sent to the king informing him of this unexpected encounter, and Charles VIII declared that the French did not fight against women; but Yves d’Alegre saw no reason why money should not be made out of the captives who had so unexpectedly fallen into his hands, and he accordingly demanded 3,000 ducats for their release.
Alexander VI astutely agreed immediately to pay this ransom, and the two women were sent on to Rome under an escort of four hundred soldiers. Ludovico Sforza was not pleased: ‘These ladies,’ he declared, ‘could have been used as a fine whip for compelling the Pope to do all that was required of him, for he cannot live without them. The French received a mere 3,000 ducats for them when he might well have paid 50,000 or even more to have them back.’
With the main body of the French drawing ever closer to Rome, the city grew increasingly fearful; houses and palaces of known supporters of France were ransacked. Alexander VI had been advised to escape from Rome while he could still do so; but, for the first time in his life, he seemed utterly irresolute. He had called in Neapolitan troops only to dismiss them; he had repeated his refusal to allow the French free passage through the Papal States only to rescind the order; on one occasion he fainted.
Finally the pope decided to stay in Rome and began to consider the ways in which he might secure an agreement with Charles VIII. First he set about ordering the defence of the city and summoned Burchard together with a number of other members of the German colony living in Rome to an audience, to ask for their help. He outlined the ‘insolent behaviour’ of the French king and his invasion of the Papal States; ‘he did not anticipate a siege by the French,’ he said, but would welcome any help that the German nation, ‘in whom he had great confidence,’ might be able to contribute to the defence of Rome. Burchard continued his account:
His Holiness suggested that we should appoint constables and officers… and arm them with weapons and issue all the requisite orders so that, when the time came, they would be able to defend themselves and the Pope would be able to use this militia within the city, although not outside the walls.
In the end, Burchard failed to persuade his compatriots to agree to the formation of this highly irregular militia; they felt bound, they said, to their promise to obey the captains of their neighbourhood watches, which was what usually happened in an emergency such as this. Nor was the commander of the papal troops, Virginio Orsini, cousin of the lovely Giulia’s husband, any more encouraging; he chose to offer no resistance to the French, who were, he considered, irresistible.
With characteristic style, Alexander VI announced that he would defend Castel Sant’Angelo with the troops at his disposal and, if attacked, would stand on its walls in full canonicals, carrying the Blessed Sacrament. He would not leave Rome, he said, to become a prisoner in Naples; he was determined to remain and attempt to come to terms with the French king. Work now started on a deep ditch to surround Castel Sant’Angelo, which involved the demolition of several houses. ‘On Thursday 18 December,’ wrote Burchard, ‘all the Pope’s possessions, including even his bed and daily credence-table, were assembled for removal from the Vatican Palace to Castel Sant’Angelo, the vestments from St Peter’s, all the money chests from the sacristy, the palace weapons and stores of food, and all the papal belongings were sent to the castle, whilst the cardinals also prepared to move.’
Below the walls of Castel Sant’Angelo, the city was now in an uproar as people fled into the country, having buried or otherwise hidden their valuables to save them from looters and pillaging soldiers. ‘The discontent of the people is at its height,’ wrote the Mantuan envoy Fioramonte Bagolo. ‘The looting is fearful, the murders innumerable; one hears moaning and weeping on every side and never, in the memory of man, has the Church been in such an evil plight.’ All those who could afford to do so were packing their valuables into carriages and leaving the city. Looking out through the windows of the Vatican, Alexander VI and his son Cesare watched the
