Caesar Borgia: A Study of the Renaissance

by John Leslie Garner

While the French troops were overrunning the Patrimonium Petri a body of their cavalry under Monsignor Yves d’Allegre captured Madonna Adriana Orsini, Giulia Bella, the Pope’s mistress, and her sister Girolama, and great was the consternation of his Holiness; his anxiety to secure the return of the ladies set all Italy to laughing and gave the sonneteers an opportunity to display their wit, of which they were not slow to avail themselves. The captain who made the precious capture wanted to hold them for a vast ransom, “because the Holy Father would give his very eyes to have them back”; but Charles surrendered them for a comparatively insignificant sum, doubtless not valuing them as highly as did Christ’s Vicar.

The Neapolitan troops retreated before Charles, who entered Rome the last day of the year 1494; and Burchard describes in detail the manner of his reception and how the populace greeted him with shouts of “Francia, Francia! Colonna, Colonna! Vincola, Vincola!” Evidently they preferred France, Colonna, and Della Rovere to Borgia.

All the great prelates then in Rome promptly paid their respects to the King, the youthful Cardinal of Valencia among the number. While the French were in the city they committed all sorts of outrages, robberies, and murders. It was at this time that Vannozza’s house was plundered, and on January 10, 1495, the Pope for his greater security removed to the Castle of St. Angelo, accompanied by several cardinals, including Valencia.

The following day the Holy Father and Philibert De Bressa, Charles’s representative, concluded an agreement by which the Pope was to crown the French monarch King of Naples and was to abstain from harming the cardinals Della Rovere, Gurk, Savelli, and Colonna. It was also arranged that the Pope’s son Caesar should accompany the King of France as his hostage.

January 28th, after taking leave of the Pope with many expressions of friendship, Charles departed. At the place appointed for Caesar to join him the youthful cardinal presented himself with six magnificent chargers, and they rode forth, Caesar on the King’s left. Two days later news was brought the Pope that the Cardinal of Valencia, disguised as a stable-boy, had fled from the King’s camp at Velletri.

When Caesar joined the King he had nineteen large chests, which were supposed to contain his personal effects; two of the trunks were brought back to Rome; the remaining seventeen were opened by the King’s order after the flight of his hostage, and were found to contain nothing—“at least, so I was informed,” adds Burchard, “but I do not believe this.”

On his return to Rome Caesar spent the first night at the house of Antonio Flores, Auditor of the Ruota—perhaps to give the paternal anger time to cool. The following day the Pope sent his secretary, the Bishop of Nepi and Sutri, to the King to disclaim all responsibility for Caesar’s disregard of the agreement.

February 1st the city of Rome sent three envoys, Hieronymus Portius, the Pope’s intimate, Coronato Planca, senior Consistorial Auditor, and Jacopo Sinibaldi, Master of the Seals, to the King to recommend the city to his care and to beg him not to be angry on account of the cardinal’s flight.

At the time it was generally believed in Rome that his Holiness had connived at Caesar’s conduct, but his right to give his son to Charles as a hostage was also questioned. Caesar was then only nineteen, and his flight was clear proof of his powers of dissimulation and of his determination. Charles finally concluded to ignore the matter, and in the course of a few days the young cardinal again appeared about the Vatican.

About the time that Caesar took his unceremonious departure the Spanish ambassadors arrived in Charles’s camp to renew the protests of the House of Aragon, which was determined to assert its own rights to the Neapolitan throne, and while at Velletri Don Antonio de Fonseca had threatened Charles with war. These protests, which were the beginning of the famous League of the Conservation, furnish a more reasonable explanation of Caesar’s flight from the French camp than does the theory of an earlier agreement between himself and his father.