which Burchard estimated at 80,000 ducats, not counting his clothes and jewels, passed into the hands of the pope, and thence into Cesare’s battle chest.
Having taken Urbino and Camerino, Cesare was now ready for the next step in his ruthless campaign. For this he needed the cooperation of Louis XII, who was, conveniently for Cesare, on his way from France in person to visit Milan, where he was expected on July 28. So, just four days after the surrender of Camerino, Cesare galloped out of his camp at Fermignano, together with three companions, ‘disguised as a Knight of St John of Jerusalem, with a cross on his coat,’ reported Burchard, and availing himself of the order’s chain-of-post horses along the road.
At Borgo San Donnino, Cesare and his companions feasted on a huge quantity of chickens and pigeons, so many indeed that ‘they shocked the locals,’ claimed Burchard, ‘covering themselves with shame.’ They stopped briefly in Ferrara, where Cesare visited his beloved Lucrezia, who was seriously ill, and rode on to Milan, where they arrived on August 5.
A witness reported to Isabella d’Este the manner of Cesare’s reception by Louis XII:
The King publicly embraced and welcomed him with great joy and led him into the castle where he had him installed in the chamber nearest his own, and the King himself ordered his supper, choosing diverse dishes… and he ordered that his guest should dress in the King’s own shirt and tunic, since Duke Valentino had brought no baggage animals with him, only horses. In short — he could not have done more for a son or a brother.
The pope was displeased by his son’s actions — about which he had been increasingly often kept in the dark — and, always inclined to be wary of France, was ‘highly troubled by this journey of his son’s to Milan,’ Giustinian had reported, ‘because I hear from a completely reliable source that he undertook the journey without any consultation or even informing His Holiness.’
For Cesare, however, the journey was to prove highly profitable; not only did he cement his friendship and understanding with Louis XII, but he also succeeded in intimidating his enemies who had clustered around the French court. Cesare’s reception by the king must have been galling for many of the other guests, notably for Giovanni Sforza and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, both of whom had been usurped by Cesare and were hoping for French aid to regain their dominions.
Among the most outspoken of Cesare’s enemies gathered at the French court was Isabella d’Este’s husband, Francesco Gonzaga, who had sworn that he would fight a duel with Cesare, ‘that bastard son of a priest’s,’ but now felt obliged to recant, and reported to a friend that he and Cesare had ‘embraced each other as good brothers,’ adding, ‘We have spent all this day dancing and feasting with His Majesty.’
Despite his anger at the arrogance with which Cesare flaunted his military strength, and especially with his encroachment into the territory of Florence, which remained an important ally of France, the king needed the support of Alexander VI, and of the pope’s son’s army, to defend his authority in Naples, where the relations between France and Spain, unusually cordial in recent years, had begun to return to their customary hostility. And so, Louis XII and Cesare came to an agreement whereby the king agreed to give the duke a free hand in Bologna while Cesare was to lend support to French ambitions in Naples.
Cesare spent nearly a month with the French court, travelling with the king first to Pavia, where they were entertained with a ritual duel between two feuding members of the Gonzaga family, who were then seated opposite each other at the lavish banquet that followed. They then rode on to Genoa, where a spectacular reception had been planned to welcome Louis XII, at a cost to the city of 12,000 ducats.
On September 2 Cesare left Genoa and five days later was in Ferrara to cheer the ailing Lucrezia, who was suffering from puerperal fever. He then rode south to Camerino to confer with his father, who was in the city to install as the new Duke of Camerino the four-and-a-half-year-old Juan, the boy widely supposed to have been the result of Lucrezia’s infamous affair with the papal valet Pedro Calderon. The pope and Cesare had much to discuss, not least the plan for seizing Bologna.
In fulfilment of his agreement with Cesare, Louis XII had sent an envoy to Giovanni Bentivoglio at Bologna, informing him that he would not oppose the wishes of Alexander VI, who now called Bentivoglio to Rome to answer charges of misgovernment.
Cesare’s captains, however, had become increasingly suspicious of their master’s intentions. If Giovanni Bentivoglio was about to lose his state, how safe were their own territories, which all lay on the edges of Cesare’s duchy, their security guaranteed, so they thought, by their service in the duke’s armies. Accordingly, Cardinal Orsini called a meeting at the castle of Magione, a short distance from Lake Trasimeno, which was attended by all the threatened rulers: Gianpaolo Baglioni of Perugia; Francesco Orsini, Duke of Gravina; Paolo Orsini of Palombara; Oliverotto Euffreducci of Fermo; even Vitellozzo Vitelli, Lord of Citta di Castello, who was suffering from an acutely painful attack of syphilis and had to be carried there on a stretcher. And those who could not come in person to Magione were represented: Giovanni Bentivoglio of Bologna sent his son, Ermes; Pandolfo Petrucci of Siena sent two courtiers; Guidobaldo da Montefeltro sent another; and so on.
Gianpaolo Baglioni warned those attending the conference that they all risked being ‘devoured one by one by the dragon’ if they did not act against Cesare. Yet so long as not only France but also Florence and Venice declined to help them, the majority of the members of the conference were reluctant to face up to the danger that confronted them. On October 7, however, there was an uprising against the Borgias in the fortress of San Leo in Urbino; and, with this encouragement, agreement was reached; it was settled that Cesare was to be attacked simultaneously by Giovanni Bentivoglio in the Romagna and by the members of the Orsini family, who were to encourage the revolt in Urbino.
When he heard of this threat, which seemed for a time to weaken his hold on his state, Cesare withdrew his forces to Imola and the security of the Romagna. When Machiavelli joined him there, to offer the support of Florence, he found the duke to be quite unperturbed, even indifferent. He accepted the loss of Urbino with apparent nonchalance and prepared for war with evident confidence in victory, raising troops and money, and appointing new condottieri captains, many of whom were Spanish, to replace the conspirators. He also spent such large sums on his intelligence services that Machiavelli thought that he ‘laid out as much on couriers and special messengers in two weeks as anyone else would have spent in two years.’
At first the military operations did not go well for Cesare; and toward the end of October, the duchy of Urbino fell to the conspirators, who, according to Burchard, after having assembled some five hundred cavalry and two thousand troops, restored the city of Urbino and all its territory to the illustrious Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, rightful Duke of Urbino.
But as more money came in and more troops were enlisted, the tide, as Machiavelli said, began to turn. His enemies were ‘tardy in pressing him’; they had failed to seize the moment, as he himself undoubtedly would have done, and, as they began to lose heart in opposing him, were eventually persuaded to come to terms with him.
As Machiavelli was later to write in
His former standing in Italy was restored, but he no longer trusted the French or the forces of others, and in order to avoid the risk of doing so, he resorted to stratagems. His powers of dissimulation were so impressive that even the Orsini, through Lord Paolo [of Palombara] reconciled themselves with him. The Duke used every device of diplomacy to reassure Paolo Orsini, giving him gifts of money, clothes and horses.
The general desire now to regain the good opinion of Cesare was, so Machiavelli said, reflected in the submissive letter addressed to him by Vitellozzo Vitelli, who excused himself for having joined the alliance against the duke and saying that if he ever had the opportunity to speak to him personally, he had no doubt he would be able to justify himself completely.
Receiving no reply to his letter, and denied a personal interview with Cesare, Vitelli could but guess what Cesare intended to do next. Machiavelli was also kept in the dark. ‘I have not tried to speak to the Duke, having nothing new to tell him,’ he reported to Florence, ‘and the same things would bore him; you must realise that he talks to nobody other than three or four of his ministers and various foreigners who are obliged to deal with him about important matters and he does not come out of his study until late at night; and so there is no opportunity to speak to him except when an audience has been appointed.
‘Besides,’ continued Machiavelli, ‘he is very secretive. I do not believe that what he is going to do is known to
