thousand men from the northern provinces for his personal protection in the vulnerable Vatican.
So many of his troops, under treaty obligation, were engaged with Louis of France in checking the Spaniards in Naples that Cesare could do nothing but chafe in his bed and wait for reverse after reverse of his forces, weakened as they were, in Romagna and Camerino.
Meanwhile, in the Vatican, the Sacred College assembled to ask for Holy Inspiration in the election of a new Pope. Whatever divine guidance was expected, due regard was paid by the various factions to letters from Venice and France in which? through the medium of the ambassadors? the cardinals of each of those nationalities were ordered to vote for the favored of the particular power.
Three candidates? any of which would have been hostile to Cesare? appeared, however, in almost equal strength and a compromise had temporarily to be made in the election of someone entirely different? weak and doddering Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini? while the factions canvassed and manipulated to improve their positions vis-a-vis one another.
So a feeble, illness-tormented octogenarian became Pius III.
The new Pope was with Cesare, not against him, indicated his displeasure to Venice and issued briefs to the reinstated tyrants commanding their obedience to the Holy See. The Venetians also received a command from France that they desist in their activities under pain of Louis' displeasure. It was the least he could do now that the Borgian power was broken and while he still needed Cesare's troops in Naples and clear passage through Rome.
Cesare, at last able to rise from his bed and buckle on his sword, found Rome so dangerous, with emissaries from the tyrants and even from Venice hidden in the city with orders to kill him, that he had to pass from the Vatican to the Castle of San' Angelo by the way of a secret underground passage connecting them.
There he summoned his captains, planned to withdraw some of his men from the banners of the King of France and prepared to attempt the arduous task of reestablishing his power and his dukedoms.
Even while plans were under way, a further blow shattered the Duke's hopes. Pius III, for whom excitement of succeeding to high office had, perhaps, proved too much, died suddenly overnight. And with his death came a fresh wave of attacks in the north. It seemed that even the voice of France? tied up as the French were in Naples? had little weight in checking the violence which lost Cesare city after city of his old territories.
The strongest candidate for the Papacy was a life-long enemy of the Borgias, Cardinal della Rovere. This was the man whom Roderigo Borgia had defeated in the Conclave of 1492 and kept out of the coveted throne for 12 years. This was the man who for a number of years had nursed his hatred under a mask of friendship and flattery toward the Pope and Cesare Borgia.
Cardinal della Rovere's election was certain but for one thing, the possible non-support of the Spanish cardinals with whom Cesare wielded considerable influence. A bargain was struck: for the votes of these Spanish cardinals, della Rovere would confirm Cesare in his office of Gonfalonier and Captain-General and support and preserve his title to Romagna,
Cesare felt the ground of his influence with the Spanish cardinals and then agreed to these terms. The election of the longest-standing enemy of the House of Borgia was ensured. For once, and fatally, Cesare's political brain had allowed him to go astray.
Giuliano della Rovere took the name of Julius II at his election and a few days later issued briefs to the Romagna towns that Cesare was to be obeyed. But insurrection and invasion continued in the north and Cesare prepared to go himself into the Romagna and raise a fresh army from loyal subjects in the once liberated cities.
The new Pope asked that Tuscany and the enemy city of Florence should grant Cesare a safe conduct through the territory he would have to cross, but intimated in private dispatches that he quite understood the disturbances in the north were against Cesare Borgia and not against the Church. With this indication of the turn of events were likely to take, no safe conduct was forthcoming.
Out of patience, Cesare asked for the escort of the Pontifical navy by sea to Genoa from which point he would travel into the Romagna via Ferrara. The Pope acquiesced and Cesare set out.
While Cesare was still at sea, news came that the Venetians had captured Faenza and were massing powerful armies in the Duke's lands. Pope Julius came out into the open at last and sent a message to Cesare suggesting that he surrendered the pontifical fiefs into the Pope's hands in an effort to bring law and order into the Romagna.
Cesare, smelling a rat at last, refused and was immediately arrested by the captain of the navy on the Pope's orders.
Julius broke his agreement blatantly and appointed a bishop as new governor of Cesare's old territories. As it was against Cesare that the enemy was moving, he speciously held the only way to bring peace was for the territories to come directly into his own hands under the Church.
Cesare was brought back to Rome and virtually held a prisoner in the Vatican while the war in the north, in spite of the Pope's argument, continued.
While, Cesare, stripped of his titles, property and power, was being treated with an outward show of friendliness in the Vatican, news came of the resounding victory of Gonzalo de Cordoba in Naples. French power was smashed south of Rome. Ferdinand and Isabella, became monarchs of Naples. Spanish influence with the Pope rose like a sudden heat wave.
Not wishing to make a wrong move which could endanger his position, Julius allowed Cesare to depart by sea to the north where he was to enter France. It amounted virtually to deportation.
But, not far out from Ostia, Cesare, with his few loyal men, had his ship turned about and made full sail for Naples to seek asylum in the Spanish camp where he was assured of a friendly welcome.
There, he found other members of the Borgia family, rallying around Gonzalo de Cordoba in an attempt to escape the antagonism of the Pope, and he was made very welcome by the Great Captain with whose troops he had fought in the original quelling of Naples.
Encouraged by the success in the south, Spain was, in fact, considering an invasion of Tuscany? which was allied to France? and then Milan. It was confidently hoped to drive all French power and influence out of the peninsula which for so long had been dominated by a Spanish-born Pope; Cesare was such an obvious choice to lead an expedition into country that he knew well and which bordered areas where he still had friends, that he was chosen a few days after his arrival to lead the Spanish troops north.
This choice gave Cesare fresh hope for his dreams. With the peninsula subjugated to Spain he saw himself in the role of pro-consul, wielding a complete power, divorced from the distant Spanish Crown. But it was not to be.
Nothing could go right for the Borgias after so many years of everything dropping into their laps.
A few days before he was due to depart at the head of a sizeable army, Cesare was arrested by the order of Gonzalo de Cordoba himself.
In the wings of action, diplomatic exchanges had been passing from Julius to the Spanish monarchs and back. The Pope in these exchanges had complained bitterly and with skill of Cesare's refusal to hand the Romagna to the Church in spite, he alleged, of the desires of the local populace, and of the Borgia's designs on an all-powerful state which he would try to expand against Spanish and French influence, coveting for himself the lordship of all territory south of the Alps.
So successfully did he plead his cause? which, indeed, was not without a basis of fact in its latter hypotheses? that Ferdinand and Isabella took fright. They had heard distant echoes of the determination and ability to succeed with his projected plans of Cesare Borgia and they had no desire to risk a future colony by placing its formation in the hands of a ruthless man who would use their power for his own ends.
Word was sent to Gonzalo de Cordoba and? reluctantly? he complied with the order from his monarchs. Cesare was held in close confinement.
In vain did his friends and his sister Lucrezia write to the new Gonfalonier of the Church to exert his influence with the Pope in securing Cesare's release; the very ardor of their pleas seemed to frighten Julius into renewing his persecution of Cesare's name.
All his former officers were rounded up? some of them fortifying towns they still held in his name and giving bitter resistance? and brought to Rome where they were tortured in an effort to make them sign statements as to the selfish aims of their former chief.
