hanging you, so – please, Louis get out of my sight!'
On 3 August 1411, I conducted the Duke of Anjou to his galleys at Ripa Grande. No Roman noble was in his escort. He embarked for Ostia, thence sailed to Provence. He reached Paris on 3 January the following year and never again attempted to recover the crown of Naples.
In the time he had remaining before Ladislas's army arrived, Cossa prepared Rome and the Vatican for the revenge which Ladislas would take. He constructed a walled-in passage from his palace to the fortress of Sant Angelo, while he raised money by forcing loans from nobles and wealthy citizens. He raised the tax on wine from 50 to 100 per cent a; hogshead. He levied a tax on shoeing-smiths, horse marshals, potters and artificers. He altered the value of the currency by issuing more of it than ever before agonizing that the marchesa should hasten to his side to tell him what he must do.
Before all else, he ordered Palo to kill Paolo Orsini in his bed, but the dog had fled the city and was, even then, probably ruining somebody else's war. Cossa also pondered on how best to bind Sforza Attendolo to his service. He owed Sforza 14,000 florins, so he devised a method of payment which would be, profitable to himself and pleasing to Sforza. He made the peasant soldier Lord of Cotignola, raising the man's native town to the dignity of a countship. Sforza declined the `payment'. He 'resigned' his command. Owing no further military allegiance to the pope, he marched off to Naples with his horse and foot. Ladislas gained the best general of his time.
Cossa almost had a stroke over this defection. He had Sforza's effigy suspended from gallows on all the gates and bridges of Rome by the right foot. In the effigy's hand was a scroll on which was written
I AM. THE PEASANT, SFORZA OF COTIGNOLA,
A TRAITOR WHO CONTRARY TO HONOUR,.
HAVE TWELVE TIMES BETRAYED MY CHURCH.
MY PROMISES, MY AGREEMENTS, MY CONTRACTS,
HAVE I BROKEN.
40
Ladislas's advance troops, despite the man's immediate excommunication and the crusade which Cossa had preached against him, were occupying the monastery of St Agnes directly outside the walls of Rome. Cossa had no commander he could trust, no marchesa to advise him, and he wondered grimly if Ladislas would dare put him in prison. Cossa's situation was not only desperate politically and militarily – Ladislas's army besieging Rome, Carlo Malatesta closing off the north of Italy, Naples lost, Sforza deserted, Bologna in revolt, and famine in Rome but his father, leading the enormous
Cossa family, that forest of grasping hands, was waiting for him three rooms away.
'Don't fathers know that they may only be revered when they are far away?' Cossa cried. `And he has brought the whole, fucking family with him’
He sat glumly and allowed me to wind a flannel strip around his throat to suggest to his family that his voice had failed. If he could not talk, then he could agree to less.
'You will be the spokesman but you will say nothing, you understand?' he told me. He often spoke to other cardinals as brusquely, so I took no offence. I sought to comfort him.
'I understand, Cossa. But this is your own family. Can it, hurt if you say a couple of words to them?'
`Please! No advice!'
He breathed unevenly for a moment or two but, regained control. `And don't let my father frighten you. You are a prince of the Church. Has the small throne been set, up in there?'
`There is even a nice cushion on it.'
Cossa stood up. He motioned to me to precede him to the door of the chamber. We went into the corridor, where I motioned to four deacons, dressed severely in black and white, and six of the palace guard, commanded by the greying Captain Munger, in full uniform. The guard led the procession. I wore my scarlet robes. His Holiness wore a white alb. The four deacons closed the rear. The procession moved solemnly about fifty feet down the hall, where its outriders flung open the double doors on the left side. The swaying snake glided into the room. Cossa went to the throne at the far wall and seated himself, a soldier and a deacon on either side of him. I stood where I could command the best view of the room.
Cossa postponed his first look at what he expected to be an ocean of Cossas, but when he looked up only his father and his Uncle Tomas were standing there next to a stranger.
`Where is the rest of the family?' Cossa asked blankly in a perfectly sound voice.
`First, the blessing, Baldassare,' his father said, `then the business.'
Cossa glanced at me with bewilderment. I gave him a small benign. shrug. Cossa blessed the two old men and the stranger, then chairs were brought in and they sat down directly in front of him.
`Send everyone out of the room except Franco Ellera,' the Duke of Santa Gata rasped. The pope signalled and the deacons and the soldiers left.
'Poppa, where is the rest of the family?' Cossa said with some disappointment,
`What you see of your family is in Rome,' his father said. 'The rest of your family is being held in prison in Naples, and all our possessions and fortunes are forfeit unless you come to an agreement with this noble lord,' he nodded towards the stranger. 'What's wrong with your throat?'
'My throat? Ah. Oh, yes. I am almost recovered. Who are you?' he asked the stranger.
The man managed to bow, while seated. `I am ambassador-procurator of His Royal Highness Ladislas, King of the Two Sicilies, who wishes to extend peace to Rome.'
'Peace?'
`Yes, Holiness.'
`Did the swine King of Naples need to expose my father to the pain of such a journey at his age?'
`Your father has exhausted a cook, a courtesan, a cask of wine and me,' the ambassador said.
`Where is the rest of my family?'
`Safe and living in comfort at Ladislas's expense. They have at least a week before the first of them will be killed. But, of course, no one need come to any harm if we can, conclude a treaty of peace.'
Cossa called a consistory of cardinals to discuss the treaty. It was proposed through me to the Neapolitan ambassador that the King of Naples should acknowledge Pope John XXIII ass the only pope in Christendom. To Cossa's surprise, this was received well-because a possible ally, the King of France, had advised Ladislas to abandon Pope Gregory, and because Sigismund, whom, Ladislas feared, had. endorsed Cossa.
Returning to Naples, Ladislas assembled a hand-picked council, of prelates and nobles, then declared that, because of their advice, he had hitherto been mistaken in believing that Pope Gregory XII had been canonically elected; therefore, he forever renounced him and proclaimed the ascendancy of Pope John XXIII with the, obedience of all Neapolitan dominions. He volunteered to release all Cossa's relatives and all officers held captive in his realm.
‘You see?' I told Cossa. `What did I tell you? Every business has its good seasons and its bad seasons.'
Cossa, on his side, renounced Louis of Anjou, recognized Ladislas as King of the Two Sicilies, and appointed him to be, Grand Gonfalonier of the Holy Roman Church. He was also forced to pledge to pay Ladislas 120,000 gold florins and had to give as security for the payment the towns of Ascoli, Viterbo, Perugia and Benevento.
Ladislas, in his part, offered to repay all the arrears in papal revenues which were overdue from the kingdom of Naples and agreed to induce Gregory to renounce his claims to the papacy within three months. If he refused, Ladislas volunteered to send him off as a prisoner to Provence
In the finale haggling, forty-one days after the first treaty meeting, it was agreed through the Neapolitan ambassador that Ladislas would keep a hundred lances for the service of the Church in exchange for his appointment as the legate to the March of Ancona and the payment of 50,000 florins: a somewhat one-sided arrangement, Cossa thought bitterly.
The treaty was finally signed: a sad, if not utterly disreputable, alliance built with the cement of perfidy and
