As he was manœuvering his troop they were discovered by a considerable body of soldiers coming down the road leading to Logroño who, they thought, were reinforcements sent by the Duke of Najera. At sight of Beaumont’s men a shout went up. The alarm was given in the besiegers’ quarters surrounding the castle. Instantly all was confusion. Caesar hastily donned his armour, sprang to his horse, and without waiting to give any orders dashed out of the gate and down the Solana road.
“When I was a boy,” says the chronicler Moret, “I heard old men eighty years of age, who had it from contemporaries who saw him, say that just as he dashed through the gate, cursing and swearing, his horse stumbled and fell.” Believing that his men were at his heels, the Borgia spurred straight on toward the rebels, and, coming up to the rearguard, with his own hand he slew three of the enemy; oblivious of the fact that he was alone, he spurred on, cursing the rebels the while. Suddenly he was discovered by Beaumont, who ordered some of his men to advance to meet him.
Among those who did so were Luis Garcia de Agredo and Pedro de Allo, who succeeded in drawing him on into a deep ravine, where his followers, who were far behind, were unable to see him. There, hidden from the sight of his own people and also from that of Beaumont’s men, he engaged in a terrible hand-to-hand fight with his adversaries.
Valentino fought for his life, but, wounded in the armpit just as he was about to deliver a blow, he was unhorsed, and finally, covered with wounds, was forced to the ground and killed.
His brilliant armour having attracted the attention of his assailants, they removed it. Entirely unaware who their victim was, they even took his weapons and his charger and its accoutrements.
Fearing they might be surprised, they hastily departed, leaving the body naked on the field of battle. When the Count of Lerin saw the costly armour he was incensed because, instead of taking him alive, they had killed a man evidently of high rank, and he ordered some of his followers to fetch the body to his camp at Mendavia. They started for the ravine, but turned back when they heard the shouts of the men of Navarre who, in the early dawn, were searching for the body of their dead chieftain.
Before retreating, however, Beaumont’s men succeeded in capturing an unfortunate equerry whom they had found in manifest grief wandering about the scene of the conflict. Taken to Beaumont, he was shown the brilliant armour and asked to whom it belonged, and “Juanico burst into tears, exclaiming that he had girded it on his master, Caesar Borgia of France, Duke of Romagna, that very morning, and that he had followed him when he dashed through the gate, but had lost him from sight owing to the swiftness of the Duke’s horse.”
In the meantime the King of Navarre was advancing. After the first surprise his forces rallied and deployed before the hill upon which Viana is situated. Beaumont, seeing he was in danger of being cut off from Mendavia, retired with his men, leaving the unhappy squire, who immediately hastened back to the ravine, where he was found by D’Albret and his followers standing over the bleeding body of his master. The King had the corpse taken to Viana, where it was placed in a tomb before the great altar in the parochial church of Santa Maria of Viana, and in the course of the same year—1507—a magnificent monument was erected to Caesar’s memory, and upon it was chiselled the following epitaph:—
“Aqui yace en poca tierra
Al que toda le temia;
En que la paz y la guerra
En la su mano tenia.
Oh! tu que vas a buscar
Cosas dignas de loar!
Si tu loas lo mas digno,
Aqui pare tu camino;
No cures de mas andar.”
Early in the eighteenth century Father Aleson, then in Viana, found nothing left of the monument but two stones which had been inserted in the base of the main altar. In the “Antequedades de Navarra” Yanguez Miranda says the destruction of the sepulchre was, according to oral tradition, which he gathered from some of the inhabitants of Viana, due to the order of a fanatical bishop who felt that the church was desecrated by the presence of Caesar’s ashes.