`By 'God, Sforza' has terrible eyes,' the constable, Alberico da Barbiano, said.
`It is a sight defect,' Ladislas answered. `Anyway, we are in hilly country and they will come at us around the Pontine marshes towards Terracina. They will camp near Ceprano, on the bank of the Garigliano, which will be swollen with the spring foods. The river washes the base of the mountain, below a village called Roccasecca which has a citadel. That is where my headquarters will be. We'll fight on the inner side of the river. Sforza will press the attack, but Orsini will be exhorting the troops to avoid a battle and eventually, because his money is running out, the duke will listen to Sforza.' Roccasecca was strategically placed between Rome and Naples, near Cassino. Whichever side won here would win the other's capital city.
At vespers, when the 15,000 Neapolitan soldiers were eating their evening meal, the Duke of Anjou led his army across the river and fell upon the enemy. Louis de Logny led the van; the Marquise de Controne and the Seneschal of Eu led the troops which came in at the -flanks. They made a total surprise amid the pitched tents and the gold and silver plate laid out in banquet; for Ladislas, who was frightstruck.
Hastily, his bodyguard fell into the ruse which had saved him more than once. Six men were dressed and armed identically in the costume and weapons of the king, a breastplate under each royal blue coat worked with golden lilies, and a golden helmet. The king placed Count Arrigo Cipriani in charge of this unit to ensure displays of his honour and bravery, and sent them out into different parts of the fray while he changed with frantic haste into the dress of a slatternly camp follower.
A desperate hand-to-hand struggle went on for more than an hour before the Neapolitans lost heart and fled. The slaughter of horse and foot was great. Pope Gregory's legate to Naples was captured. So were the Counts of Carrara, Cipriani, Arpino, Celano, Loreto and others; in all, ten counts, many other nobles and hundreds of other men were taken prisoner and held for ransom.
By the time the dust had settled, Ladislas had made it to the castle of Roccasecca, which stood on a height above its village. He was powerless. The Duke of Anjou and the papacy of John XXIII had won a great battle. French and Italian troops were pillaging. Much gold and silver plate was captured and the soldiers were rich from the 30,000 horses they took. The battle standards of Ladislas and Gregory were sent to Pope John in Rome. Cossa rejoiced. The war was finished. Louis, Duke of Anjou, would now be King of Naples. Cossa ordered a great procession to assemble and make its way across the city and back again; he himself, the sacred college, prelates, deacons and prebendaries took part, dragging the enemy standards through the mud of the streets of Rome while the people shouted, `Long live the sovereign pontiff! Long live the King of the Sicilies!'
Even as His Holiness distributed his blessings of peace upon the multitude, while rejoicings were at their fullest, news came that Ladislas and a greater part of his troops had escaped the army of the Duke of Anjou and that the great victory had been totally reversed… Cossa went insane with rage as he was forced to mount a horse in mid-procession to rush back to the Vatican and the fortress of Sant Angelo.
It was pathetic. Had the ducal troops followed up their victory at Roccasecca, they could have captured Ladislas and overrun his kingdom. The war would have been over. Sforza had been in the first wave, then had returned to repair his army while Paolo Orsini came up with fresh troops. Orsini refused to call his men away from the pillaging to pursue the Neapolitans. Orsini, general contractor for the day labourers called condottieri, did not wish to see either Ladislas or the duke so well off that they could do, without his contracting services.
Nonetheless, through the blood of Cossa's rage, it was the responsibility of the Duke of Anjou to weigh the merits of his generals and to see that the victory was properly consolidated. The duke had thrown away his only chance. He paid for it with the crown of Naples. Cossa was ruined. He would be the first homeless, pope, he told me sardonically. He would have to flee Rome when. Ladislas regrouped and arrived at the city's gates – no matter how convincingly he pretended that the advance could be forestalled. He would be an outcast from Rome. Carlo Malatesta occupied Bologna.
Take it from me, the disappointment was simply terrible for him because it was so undeserved. His father was an old man. His father and his entire family would not only be disgraced but would now be held hostage by Ladislas. Cossa reminded himself again and again that he could have been operating the family business in the Bay of Naples, clearing a steady 50,000 florins a year and letting all these. round-assed churchmen do the striving. His father had been right only up to a point. There was a profitable career to be made in the Church -providing one had the sense not to rise above the rank of cardinal. Cosimo and the marchesa had lifted him into this ridiculous job of pope, and he had had nothing but trouble from the day he had accepted it.
I was no great advocate of Cosimo and the marchesa; but I didn't agree with him this time. At the right moment, I thought, Cossa should put them away and keep them away. But this was an emergency. It was no time for anything but plotting our own survival. `Your father's business has to go out of style,' I told him. `Sooner, not later, it will have to be finished because it interferes with other people's business. Who is going to allow his merchandise to be stolen from him on a regular basis? The banks alone will stop it. And don't believe it's better to be a cardinal. You are at the very top of your profession when, you are pope. You are higher than that because there is only one of you in the world – under ordinary circumstances. Think of how many kings and princes and chancellors and dukes there are. Furthermore, they represent only people. A pope represents the actual Christian God on earth. How can you beat that? Listen, Cossa – every business has its good seasons and its bad seasons. You happen to have started off as pope in a bad season. But, and this has actually been proved; a bad beginning means a good ending.'
He said to me, `I always feel considerably depressed after listening to you, Franco Ellera. You are a bottomless cesspit of advice.'
I didn't pretend to become offended. I knew he was almost unmanned by the frustration of being pope and of being denied by custom the right to lead his own troops and fight his own wars, free from the excuses of fools such as the Duke of Anjou. I sensed that he was in deep despair because he hated with the force of a great explosion the fact that people who had claimed to be his friends had betrayed and tricked him into accepting the papacy. The only hope he could, hold onto was his conviction that, at the right time, he would avenge the murder of Catherine Visconti, With his Neapolitan fatalism, Cossa didn't feel sorry for himself at any time, but he was beginning to feel, sorry for the rest of the people on earth because the way he felt they had brought all this upon themselves with their ridiculous superstitions about some God who was always hidden, from them: `I can feel no mercy for people who allowed, even implored, the men who had been popes before me dunderheads like Gregory, thieves like Boniface, or murderous tyrants like Robert of Geneva to accept the crown of Peter. How could people possibly have believed that the procession of grasping cardinals and bishops through earlier centuries were the custodians of some sacred fire, the knowledge of which was denied to the very people who paid for those prelates' luxuries?' He thought of Catherine Visconti and all he had lost, making him cherish the marchesa the more because she was what he had left. He sat concentrating purely upon the moment when he would have Catherine's son within his reach and he would demonstrate to him the motions of honest murder, not filthy poison, as he strangled that son and personally, as pope, saw him cast into hell.
When he had rested, eaten well and changed into a crisp clean uniform, the Duke of Anjou appealed to Cossa for more money to renew the campaign.
'Give you money?' the holy pontiff shouted. `I would more quickly arm and provision the feeble-minded and aged of Rome and send them out to take Naples. You are useless, you silly cunt! Do you have a glimmering of how useless you are? You can thank, God that your parents were royal and that you were born French because, if you were one of my generals, I would hang you.'
`Take care lest you offend me, Holiness,' the duke spattered.
`Offend you? I piss on you!'
The duke stood haughtily with long, thin, wall-eyed dignity. `I shall overlook this tantrum,-' he said coldly, `because you are my pope… But I will point out to you that an Italian general, from one of your best families, is the cause of this disaster.'
`Orsini? Orsini? Everyone but you knows Orsini is no general. He is a businessman. He hasn't worked fore me in nine years. Don't blame a simple labour broker such as Orsini. If you yourself had pursued Ladislas and captured him the last time you wrecked your own chances, or the time before that, or the time again before that, Ladislas would have told you that Paolo Orsini is an employment agent who seeks to banish the use of all weapons in the conduct of wars because they damage his merchandise. Louis, hear me! I am trembling on the crumbling edge of
