while he took Sancia off to one of the private rooms from which he returned after a while to tell Jofre and Colonna that she was ‘still worth the serious attention of a young man.’
The pope’s cheerful mood in hopes of a grandchild, however, were soon to end in disappointment and worry. In May Alfonso had left Ferrara on business, and Lucrezia had taken advantage of his absence to go to Belriguardo, one of the duke’s many villas in the countryside and where, she hoped, the fresh air and beautiful surroundings would improve her health. She had felt much better on her return to Ferrara, but the sultry summer heat in the city soon caused a relapse. By the middle of that hot July of 1502, she fell dangerously ill. Her husband was sent for; so were several doctors in addition to Francesco Castello, the court physician. The pope, gravely concerned, maintained that the illness had been caused by his daughter’s distress at being kept so short of money.
Meanwhile, the patient grew worse, suffering from paroxysms and fits of delirium. It was supposed, inevitably, that she had been poisoned; but it was soon clear that a virulent outbreak of the flux had gripped the entire court. Her condition grew worse, and it was widely feared she would die; her husband and her beloved brother hastened to her bedside and, miraculously, found her better, sitting up in bed. Days later she suffered another relapse; all August she lay close to death until finally, on September 5, she gave birth to a stillborn daughter.
Cesare arrived in Ferrara two days later to find her ill with puerperal fever and refusing to allow her doctors to bleed her. Cesare’s company seemed to rally her, and he induced her to give way to the doctors’ advice. ‘We bled Madonna on the right foot,’ one of the doctors reported. ‘It was extremely difficult to do, and we could not have done it had it not been for [Cesare] who held her foot, and made her laugh and cheered her greatly.’
Lucrezia recovered slowly from her ordeal, and when she was well enough to travel, she was carried in a litter to the care of the sisters of the convent of Corpus Domini. She was accompanied by her contrite husband, who, although he had made a vow to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin at Loreto, a place much venerated by those who experienced problems with conception and pregnancy, intending to walk the 170 miles on foot should God spare her life, he contented himself with travelling there by boat and then making one of those inspections of military establishments that he undertook so often.
— CHAPTER 22 — Castles and Condottieri
‘THE AMOUNT OF A POPE’S INCOME IS WHATEVER HE CHOOSES IT TO BE’
IN MARCH 1502, while Lucrezia was adjusting to life at the ducal court in Ferrara, an event occurred that demonstrated just how strong and resourceful both the pope and Cesare could be in moments of crisis. The two men — accompanied by six cardinals, one of whom was Lucrezia’s brother-in-law Ippolito d’Este, seven prelates, and a large number of courtiers, secretaries, and servants — had travelled by boat to Piombino, where they had reviewed the defences of this strategic port captured by Cesare’s troops the summer before. ‘Six triremes had been prepared,’ recorded Burchard, ‘using those prisoners incarcerated for petty crimes to man the oars’; others had been press-ganged ‘by violence or by trickery in the taverns of Rome,’ and the pope had also ‘requisitioned all barge owners and many fishermen.’
Having finished their tour of inspection in Piombino, the pope proposed to his companions to take a day sailing around the coast ‘to amuse themselves.’ Unfortunately, an unexpected storm blew up, as sometimes happens in the Tyrrhenian Sea, making it impossibly dangerous for them to reenter the harbour at Piombino and forcing them to spend the next few nights at sea. On the fourth day the storm had worsened, bringing huge breakers crashing over the bows of their boats, and Cesare, ‘fearing great danger,’ risked his own life by leaving the galley in a small boat to row ashore to get help.
Then, according to Burchard, who recounted what he had heard from the survivors:
The Pope stayed on the galley, unable to put into port. His companions, paralysed by fear, lay stretched out in the bottom of the boat; only His Holiness, seated on the poop, kept a resolute and brave stand. When the sea pounded the boat with anger, he cried ‘Jesus!’ and made the sign of the cross and told the sailors to get on with preparing the meal. But they replied that the crashing waves and the roaring wind prevented them from lighting a fire. Finally the sea grew calmer and it was possible to fry fish for the Pope to eat.
Back in Rome a few days later, the pope and Cesare turned their thoughts to the next stage of the expansion of the duchy of Romagna and to the raising of the large sums of money required to prosecute it. With the northern border of the duchy secured by the marriage of Lucrezia to Alfonso d’Este, Cesare set his sights on two small papal fiefs, Camerino and Senigallia; more covertly, father and son had plotted a far more ambitious scheme to seize the much larger fiefs of Urbino and Bologna and also to expand into Tuscany by fomenting rebellion in Arezzo and Pisa, two cities that much resented their subjugation to republican Florence.
With this campaign in mind, it was at about this time, in the summer of 1502, that Cesare appointed Leonardo da Vinci as his ‘Architect and General Engineer’ and, as such, instructed him to ‘survey the strongholds and fortresses’ of his territories. By this commission Leonardo was to be exempt from ‘all public toll for himself and his company’ and to be given free access to ‘see, measure and estimate all that he may wish.’
Leonardo, whose
By the beginning of June, Alexander VI and Cesare had laid their plans. By coincidence, a new ambassador arrived from Venice at about the same time; this was Antonio Giustinian, whose perceptive and illuminating dispatches were to keep the Venetian government as well informed about papal affairs as could be expected. His task, however, was hampered by Cesare, who, he reported, continued to clothe his intentions behind a curtain of secrecy and declined to give a date when he could spare time to see the envoy.
In one of his first dispatches, Giustinian reported that there were differences between Alexander VI and his son, especially regarding money. ‘Today the Pope has had some difficulties with the Duke, who requires another 20,000 ducats for his campaign, for which His Holiness has already paid a great deal,’ he wrote, before coming to the conclusion that ‘although the Pope is reluctant to give him the money, he will come round in the end, as he does with everything concerning his son.’
In the end Giustinian did not have to wait long for the nature of Cesare’s plans to be revealed. On June 5, within days of the envoy’s arrival, news came through of a riot against the unpopular Florentine government in Arezzo, outside which Cesare’s trusted condottiere Vitellozzo Vitelli and an army of three thousand men awaited orders; Vitelli entered the city two days later, where he was joined by another of Cesare’s captains, Gianpaolo Baglioni. Almost immediately, news also arrived of a successful uprising in Pisa, and the city offered its allegiance to Cesare. Four days later Burchard noted that ‘the corpse of Astorre Manfredi, Lord of Faenza,’ who had been overthrown by Cesare after a long siege the previous year and imprisoned in Castel Sant’Angelo, ‘has been fished out of the Tiber, drowned by a stone tied round his neck.’ The master of ceremonies lamented his death: ‘This young man, just 18 years old, was of such beauty and stature that it would not be possible to find his equal among a thousand of his contemporaries.’
Although both Alexander VI and Cesare vigorously denied any involvement in the taking of Arezzo, protesting instead that Vitelli had acted upon his own initiative, few in Rome believed them. And it was generally accepted that the murder of Manfredi was also committed on the orders of Cesare, who was anxious to avoid any trouble from the supporters of the popular Astorre while he was away from Rome with his army.
A few days later Cesare was at Spoleto with his army of six thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, and his condottieri captains, the Spaniards Ugo de Moncada and Miguel de Corella, and the Italians Paolo Orsini and his cousin Francesco, the Duke of Gravina; Oliverotto Euffreducci, Lord of Fermo; Gianpaolo Baglioni, Lord of
