short distance home to the palace of Santa Maria in Portico just across the piazza of St Peter’s, accompanied by a gentleman of his household, Tomaso Albanese, and a groom. As they passed by the basilica, a number of men, apparently sleeping on the flight of great ceremonial steps, roused from their ‘slumbers,’ rose to their feet, and suddenly fell upon Alfonso, stabbing him with their daggers. They would have carried him off to their tethered horses had not his companions rushed to his aid and dragged him away to the safety of the Vatican.
Inside the palace, Lucrezia fainted at the sight of her wounded husband. By the light of the tapers and candles, it was soon clear to all that Alfonso’s injuries were serious; he had deep gashes to his head and his shoulder, ‘either one of which could prove mortal,’ as the Florentine ambassador reported. The Pope had him taken to one of his own rooms in the Borgia apartments, where his wounds were dressed. He recovered slowly, under the watchful eye of a doctor sent to him by the king of Naples and the careful nursing of Lucrezia and Sancia, his room guarded by soldiers and his food prepared by his loving wife, fearful of another attempt on his life.
It was generally supposed that the instigator of the attack was Cesare Borgia. The pope was inclined to agree: at least, he told the Venetian ambassador that if Cesare had, indeed, been responsible for the attack, Alfonso thoroughly deserved it. Alfonso himself clearly had no doubts as to who was responsible, and he was only too ready to avenge this vicious attack on his person. When he caught sight of Cesare one day in the gardens below his bedroom window, he picked up a crossbow and shot a bolt that only narrowly missed its target.
On August 18 Alfonso, still in bed but much recovered, together with his wife and his sister, was enjoying the company of his uncle and the Neapolitan ambassador, when a party of armed men, led by Miguel de Corella, Cesare’s trusted Spanish lieutenant and known by some as his ‘executioner,’ rushed into the room, claiming that they had orders to arrest the visitors. There had been a plot, Corella announced: Cesare Borgia’s life had been threatened. Lucrezia and Sancia protested — they themselves had not been warned of any such plot; the officer must have written authority before they could allow any member of their patient’s household to be taken away.
Possibly he had mistaken his orders, Corella replied; and he suggested that the two ladies should go to the pope and ask him to confirm that the envoy was to be arrested. So the two young women left for the pope’s apartments; and when they returned, they found the door of Alfonso’s room locked against them. There had been an accident, they were told; the duke had tripped and fallen; his wounds had reopened; regrettably he was dead. Burchard reported, succinctly, that he had been ‘strangled in his bed.’
Alfonso was buried that night in the Church of Santa Maria della Febbre; and it was given out that he had been the victim of a dreadful plot, details of which would be published later. Naturally, they never were. Though, within a short time, according to Ferdinand Gregorovius, the murder was no longer a mystery since Cesare, Duke of Valence, had openly declared that he had killed his brother-in-law because his own life had been threatened by Alfonso.
Lucrezia left Rome a few days later, accompanied by just six riders, bound for her castle at Nepi. This castle had been a favourite residence of Alexander VI while he was a cardinal, and it was he who had given the town its forbidding aspect when he built a new circuit of walls to fortify this strategic stronghold on the Via Cassia, some twenty-five miles north of Rome, that guarded one of the main approaches to the city. Once pope, he had given the town to Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in gratitude for Sforza’s support in the conclave, but after the cardinal’s flight from Rome the previous summer, he had rescinded the gift, bestowing it instead on his daughter. In February 1500 the fond and indulgent father had also spent 24,000 ducats on the town of Sermoneta, with its castles and land to the south of Rome, for his beloved Lucrezia to add to her ownership of Spoleto and Nepi.
Lucrezia spent four quiet months secluded at Nepi with her baby boy, Rodrigo. ‘The reason for this journey,’ explained Burchard, ‘was to find some consolation or distraction from the anguish and shock she has felt since the death of her husband, Alfonso.’ Her misery was evident at the bottom of the letters she wrote to her household in Rome, where she signed herself ‘La Infelicissima’ (most unhappy woman) and she spent large sums of money arranging for prayers to be said for the soul of her murdered husband and to assuage her own grief.
She had had cause to feel isolated in Rome. Her former friends were wary and, in the words of the Mantuan envoy, ‘neither her brother nor her father could forgive her for the love she had borne her husband.’ According to the fanciful account of the Venetian ambassador in Rome, Lucrezia had ‘drunk so deeply at the spring of sorrow’ upon the murder of her husband, that ‘in a single night she had become more like a woman three times her age, and it was clear that she would never recover her youthful beauty.’
One day in late August, shortly after Alfonso’s assassination, Baron de Trans arrived in Rome, once again acting as envoy for Louis XII with a message for Cesare. He stopped at an inn just outside the city walls and soon afterward, according to Burchard, ‘there came a certain horseman, masked and riding fast, who dismounted at the inn and, keeping on his mask, which he did not lower, embraced Monsieur de Trans and spoke with him. After a short while the masked man returned to the city. They say it was Duke Valentino.’
Now that Louis XII was secure in his possession of Milan, his attention had turned to his next objective — the capture of Naples — for which he needed the help of both Alexander VI and his son. De Trans had brought with him to Rome a letter from the French king asking the pope for political support for the planned conquest of Naples, unhindered passage for his armies through the Papal States, and recognition as the rightful king; from Cesare he required the duke’s undoubted military skills in the campaign. In return, Cesare was to be offered a large force of infantry and lancers, under the command once again of Yves d’Alegre, for the next stage of his conquest of the Romagna.
As the Mantuan envoy reported ominously, ‘The Pope intends to make the Duke Valentino a great man and King of Italy if he can.’ ‘I am not dreaming,’ he added, ‘my brains are not disordered, I will say no more.’ Cesare had already enlisted the help of various condottieri and was running out of money to pay them. His father had done what he could to help him, going so far as to divert not only some of the funds he had accumulated to finance a crusade against the Turks, but also much of the money received from pilgrims in Rome for the Jubilee. It was to augment these funds that Alexander VI decided to create a large number of cardinals, imposing a fee for each nomination.
Accordingly, on September 18, after the cardinals had returned from their summer retreat in their villas in the hills outside Rome, Alexander VI summoned them to a secret consistory to discuss the distribution of the new red hats. But not enough members of the sacred college turned up at the Vatican that morning; the cardinal of Lisbon wrote to apologize but he was ill; the cardinal of Siena also apologized but he was bedridden with gout. A week later the pope tried again; this time the consistory took place, but such was the opposition to his plan that no decision could be taken.
Meanwhile, the Turkish threat to Venice had provided Alexander VI with the lever he needed to enlist the aid of that city’s government to Cesare’s campaign in the Romagna. With Venetian colonies on the Dalmatian coast falling like ninepins to the mighty Turkish navy, two envoys had been dispatched to Rome in September to seek the pope’s help.
Alexander VI received them graciously and proceeded to admonish them for their past behaviour. ‘The government of Venice has until now acted ungratefully towards His Holiness,’ he said, according to the Florentine ambassador’s report of the conversation, and ‘if they wish to please His Holiness they must act differently in [the] future. They answered that they wished to do anything for His Holiness, and to embrace the Duke Valentino and consider him their good son, and to give him a
Alexander VI was given his wish; the government of Venice created Cesare an hereditary
Two days later Alexander VI tried a third time to persuade the college to agree to the creation of the new red hats; on this occasion fifteen cardinals arrived at the Vatican and did, finally, agree formally to the promotion of thirteen new colleagues. Guicciardini was to remark, some years later, that these cardinals were ‘selected not amongst the most worthy but amongst those who offered him [the pope] the highest price.’ Burchard listed their
