The great convulsions impending over Italy require another general glance at the new combinations which the politics of Southern Europe had assumed. Charles VIII. died of apoplexy on the 7th of April, 1498, and was succeeded by his second cousin, Louis XII., first of the Orleans branch of Valois. Though a prince of narrow views and somewhat feeble character, he became the instrument of unprecedented misfortunes to Italy. In him were centred the Angevine claims upon Naples which his predecessor had asserted; and likewise such pretensions upon the Milanese as vested in the heir of line of the Visconti, through his grandmother Valentina, sister of the last Duke. Upon these grounds he at once assumed the style of King of Naples and Jerusalem, and Duke of Milan, and avowed his intention of rendering the latter at least of these titles effectual. Federigo of Aragon and Ludovico Sforza trembled at the impending danger; but, with unaccountable blindness, the other powers strove who should be foremost to offer their alliance to the invader. The Venetians hailed the certain punishment of a tyrannical usurper, who had aided in thwarting them in their recent attempts to maintain the independence of Pisa. They and the princes of Romagna and La Marca remembered how little their several interests had suffered from the expedition of Charles. Florence conceived that the return of the French was the surest guarantee of their democratic independence against the re-establishment of the Medici. The Pope, as usual, had in view ulterior and private ends. His late indignation against his son, the Cardinal, had, with unaccountable revulsion, been succeeded by an increased fondness. The latter reminded him that the years passed since his elevation to the tiara had brought no fulfilment of those schemes of aggrandisement which their mutual ambition had nourished. His recent domestic catastrophe perhaps warned the father how much might be dared by a disappointed son. Every consideration urged upon both the necessity of a great effort to obtain for Cesare a sovereign principality; and conscious that this scheme would have the best chance of success at a moment of general confusion, they resolved to effect it through the instrumentality of a new French invasion, if no readier means offered for their purpose.
Louis XII. had set his mind upon divorcing his queen, Jeanne, the daughter of Louis XI., in order to marry Anne of Bretagne, widow of his predecessor, for which purpose papal dispensations were required, and for these he was a suppliant. The Borgia seized the golden moment to pledge him to their views. Cesare had been created a Cardinal in 1494, by means of suborned oaths, that he was the lawful son of a Roman citizen, for illegitimacy was a bar to that dignity. On the pretext that ecclesiastical orders had been unwillingly conferred upon him, his father, on the 17th of September, annulled them in full consistory, and accepted a renunciation of his cardinal's hat. Next day he appeared in a rich military costume of the latest French fashion, and forthwith took shipping for Marseilles, on a special embassy to the French court, where he arrived about the 18th of October. The following letter of recommendation which he bore is preserved in the Bibliothèque du Roi, and being to all intents a private missive, written and addressed by the Pope's own hand, possesses a very different interest from ordinary papal brieves.
"To our well-beloved son in Christ, the most Christian King of the French;
"I.H.S. Maria.
"Pope Alexander VI., with his own hand.
"Health and the apostolic benediction to our most dear son in Christ. Anxious in all respects to accomplish your and our own desires, we destine to your Majesty our heart, that is, our favourite son, Duke Valentino, who is prized by us beyond aught else, as a signal and most estimable token of our affection towards your Highness, to whom no further commendation of him is required; and we only ask that you will so treat him, who is thus commissioned to your royal person, as that all may, for our satisfaction, perceive that in his mission he has been in every respect most acceptable to your Majesty. Given at St. Peter's, Rome, the 28th of September." [1498.][269]
This mission was ostensibly to present Louis with his divorce; but the Duke, in fact, carried also a dispensation for his union with Queen Anne, which had been secretly granted, and which he thus held, ready to deliver it as soon as he should gain the royal consent to certain conditions for his own aggrandisement, the prize then in distant perspective being nothing less than the sceptre of Naples.[270]
Relieved from a character and garb but ill-adapted to his temperament and habits, Cesare Borgia at once assumed the bearing and pomp of sovereignty to which his gradually extending ambition now aspired. All Rome had been busied in preparing his outfit, which is stated by Sanuto at 100,000 ducats; and the magnificence of his following may be estimated from the assertion that his chargers were shod with silver, or, as some say, with gold. An account of his presentation at the French court will be found in the [Appendix X.], with details of splendour befitting lavish tastes. His reception was suited to such pretensions, and Louis, well appreciating his disposition, prefaced all negotiation by presenting him with a dukedom, a pension of 20,000 francs, and a similar sum in name of yearly pay for himself and a hundred lances. As he had been styled Cardinal Valentino, from Valencia in Spain, he now became Duke Valentino, from Valence in Dauphiny.
But the intrigues of the Borgia had not entirely abandoned the hope of an alliance for Cesare with a princess of Naples, notwithstanding the cold reception which such a proposal had met with on his recent legation at her father's court. Carlotta, daughter of Federigo, by his first wife, a princess of Savoy, was resident in France, and they hoped to sell the Pope's sanction to the French King's designs upon Milan, for the influence of Louis in favour of her marriage to the Duke Valentino, with the sovereignty of Tarento as her dowry. This project was, however, finally abandoned, on receiving from the lady a scornful refusal to soil her hand by uniting it with an apostate priest, the son of a priest, a blood-thirsty fratricide, as base in character as in birth. This result was not a little pleasing to Louis, who, with a view to his ulterior designs upon Naples, was much more content that the Duke should be the insulted suitor than the son-in-law of Federigo. Meanwhile the finesse of Cesare had nearly overreached itself. Keeping back the dispensation until he had effected his own objects, he endeavoured to attach conditions to its delivery; but Louis, informed by the Bishop of Cette, who was Nuncio at his court, that it had already issued on the 20th of October, and that its non-publication could not prevent its validity, prepared to celebrate his marriage without delay. The Duke hastened to remedy his mistake with a good grace, by delivering the dispensation, and presenting a cardinal's hat to George d'Amboise, the French King's favourite minister; but with a vengeance that knew no pity, he had poison administered to the tell-tale Bishop.