born, continued to urge Gonzaga to come to Ferrara to see her.
When Isabella’s informant Bernardino di Prosperi saw the baby, he also pronounced the heir to be handsome and lively. He was also full of praise for the cradle that Lucrezia had commissioned, a classically inspired structure, all gilded, with coverlets of cloth-of-gold and fine cambric sheets, which had been beautifully embroidered: ‘of such splendour,’ he thought, ‘that I do not have words to describe it.’
On April 12, just over a week after Ercole’s birth, Duke Alfonso departed once again on business, this time to France, leaving Lucrezia alone once more and hopeful that Francesco Gonzaga would pay her a visit. ‘You would be more dear to her than 25,000 ducats and more, if you were to come,’ Ercole Strozzi assured the marquis. Every day, he said, we talk of you. ‘I cannot describe the passion which has overwhelmed her,’ he wrote; ‘she is most anxious to hear why you have not answered her letters.’
No reply came to this letter. It may well have been that Francesco Gonzaga was concerned by what might happen to him if he were to go to Ferrara to see Lucrezia. He had recently been troubled by a man purporting to represent her who had arrived at Mantua with the suggestion that he might go to Ferrara to see her in secret. Gonzaga suspected a trap and paid no attention to this suggestion, whereupon the man offered him a miniature of Lucrezia that Gonzaga declined.
Meanwhile, still no word for Lucrezia came from Mantua. Strozzi’s letters on her behalf became almost desperate. ‘She loves you passionately, much more than you can imagine. If you knew this you would be much more ardent in your letters and much more anxious to come to see her wherever she was. Do at least give her some sign of loving her. She asks for nothing more… Do make every effort to come to her. In any case write to her and don’t appear so cold.’
Still Francesco Gonzaga did not respond; and it seemed that his caution was well justified. On June 5 Lucrezia had written to him with the news that the Spanish priest who had helped Cesare escape from prison and who had joined her household in Ferrara had been found ‘treacherously murdered’; that very night Ercole Strozzi also was killed. The chronicler Giovanni Maria Zerbinati reported the death of this ‘most distinguished poet,’ who, he said, ‘was found dead outside the church of San Francesco, in the middle of the street by the picture of the Virgin that is on the pilaster attached to the wall of the church’; the body was found to have received ‘twenty-two stab wounds and his throat was cut and no one knows who killed him,’ though many in Ferrara and Mantua had their suspicions that Cardinal Ippolito, or even Duke Alfonso, had a hand in the crime.
Lucrezia now had to find a new messenger for her letters to Gonzaga; and she found one in Ercole Strozzi’s brother. ‘Lorenzo Strozzi is coming to Mantua,’ she wrote to Gonzaga. ‘He is as devoted a servant as was Ercole, his brother.’
But Gonzaga had no intention of going to see Lucrezia. He wrote to say that he was ill, too ill to travel. She pleaded with him; he was still too ill. In that case, she said, she would come to look after him; and she was on the point of joining him when her husband and Cardinal Ippolito heard of her intentions and took her back to Ferrara.
As had been the case with Pietro Bembo, their ardour cooled to affection and the two remained on friendly terms, corresponding regularly for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, Lucrezia mournfully resumed her life in Ferrara, once again the dutiful wife and consort, and now, with age, less the happy, lively, young woman she had once been, who had rejoiced in wearing those extravagant hats she had designed for herself and her ladies to attend Mass in the cathedral.
On April 26, 1509, news arrived in Ferrara that Duke Alfonso had been given the post of captain-general of the church by Julius II, much to the fury of his brother-in-law Francesco Gonzaga, but to the joy of his subjects, who greeted the announcement with the customary peals of bells, thunder of artillery, and flashing fireworks. This appointment was particularly important in the light of the fact that the pope had recently arranged an alliance to curb the growing power of Venice, declaring that he would join forces with anyone in order to reduce the city once more ‘to a little fishing village’ — and, indeed, he had been joined by most of the ruling heads of Europe: Emperor Maximilian, Louis XII of France, Ferdinand of Spain, and most of the Italian powers, including both Mantua and Ferrara.
Duke Alfonso was to be absent from Ferrara for a considerable part of the next three years, first leading Julius II’s armies against Venice, which was resoundingly defeated in May 1509 at the Battle of Agnadello; when Julius II abruptly changed sides the following year, to ally himself with Venice and to launch an attack on the French forces in Italy, in order to drive the ‘barbarians’ back beyond the Alps, Alfonso remained loyal to Louis XII, and the pope used this as the excuse he needed to excommunicate the duke and deprive him of his fief before moving north, leading his armies in person, to attack the duchy of Ferrara.
‘Having been unable to separate the Duke of Ferrara from his loyalty to the French King,’ wrote Guicciardini, ‘the Pope had made every effort to occupy the duchy, pretending that he had done so on account of a dispute over the taxes and tolls on salt.’ For Alfonso, the autumn of 1510 was exceptionally busy as he strengthened his fortifications, something about which he knew a great deal. Nevertheless, Modena soon fell to the papal forces, and they now marched on to lay siege to Alfonso’s strategic fortress of Mirandola, which had been garrisoned with the help of French soldiers.
Julius II had already proved himself a formidable opponent on the battlefield when, in 1506, having dismembered Cesare’s empire, he had turned his attention to Bologna, conquering the city and removing Giovanni Bentivoglio from power. He returned to Rome in triumph. The Venetian envoy thought that never had any emperor or victorious general received so remarkable a welcome. A few thoughtful men, however, regretted that the Vicar of Christ should resemble more the Lion of Judah than the Lamb of God. The Dutch scholar Erasmus, himself ordained a priest, wrote ironically of Julius II’s entry into Bologna as though in the pope’s own words: ‘Ah, would to God you had seen me borne aloft into Bologna! The horses and chariots, the marching battalions, the galloping commanders, the flaming torches, the pretty page boys, the pomp of bishops and glory of cardinals… and I borne aloft, head and author of all!’ His satirical attack on Julius II was vicious: ‘Your name suits you perfectly,’ he wrote, likening the pope to Julius Caesar. ‘You unjustly seized tyrannical power, despising and ignoring the gods, and plunging your country into war’; the only difference Erasmus could see was that Julius II was of common stock.
In January 1511 Julius II arrived at Mirandola to oversee in person the siege of the castle; he took up lodgings, according to Guicciardini, ‘in a farmer’s hovel where he was within range of the enemy artillery.’ He went about the camp in the bitter cold and driving snow, his armour concealed by a white cloak, his head in a sheepskin hood, cursing his enemies, moving his quarters when they were hit by cannonballs, and shouting orders to his captains, his energy and enthusiasm ‘not chilled in the slightest degree,’ added the historian, ‘by the bitter cold which his troops were scarcely able to endure.’
Inspired by his restless energy, his men breached the walls of Mirandola, their task much eased by the icy cold that had caused the water in the moat to freeze deep enough to bear the weight of the papal troops. With no chance of relief, the castle surrendered. This fresh victory encouraged other cities to join the pope. Spain came to his aid against the French, who were Duke Alfonso’s principal allies, while both Parma and Piacenza, abandoned by the French, declared themselves willing to join the Papal States. Julius II annexed them immediately, announcing that he hated the Spanish quite as much as the French, and that he would not rest until they had been driven out of the peninsula too.
Ferrara, however, was to prove a harder proposition for the bellicose pope. On November 28, 1510, the French army arrived at Ferrara to help the defence of the city. Two days later, the duke, in the presence of the French captains, had addressed the ‘courtiers, citizens and artisans’ who had gathered early in the evening in the town hall to hear their duke speak. The chronicler Zerbinati takes up the story:
He told the people how he was expecting the Pope’s army to arrive soon and asked the people to remain as faithful to him as they always had been to the house of Este, and he promised the people that he would not abandon them, as he had been abandoned by everyone except by the French, and that if they stayed faithful to him he was sure of victory because the city was strong, that they would fortify it and that we were well supplied with artillery and with food and with a large population; then he repeated that if the people kept their trust in him then he had no doubts at all… Messer Antonio Costabili replied wisely that his people had always been most faithful to the house of Este, and for the future and for the present they would always be so, and that he was not to worry about this because the people were ready and prepared to fight against his enemies and everyone started to shout: Duke Alfonso! Duke Alfonso! And so His Lordship and the French captains left the room well
