This “cutting-to-pieces” form of death is one very dear to the imagination of Capello, and bears some witness to his sensation-mongering proclivities.
Coming to matters more public, and upon which his evidence is more acceptable, he writes on the 20th that some servants of the prince’s have been arrested, and that, upon being put to the question, they confessed to the prince’s intent to kill the Duke of Valentinois, adding that a servant of the duke’s was implicated. On the 23rd Capello circumstantially confirms this matter of Alfonso’s attempt upon Cesare’s life, and states that this has been confessed by the master of Alfonso’s household, “the brother of his mother, Madonna Drusa.”
That is the sum of Capello’s reports to the Senate, as recorded by Sanuto. The rest, the full, lurid, richly-coloured, sensational story, is contained in his “relation” of September 20. He prefaces the narrative by informing the Senate that the Pope is on very bad terms with Naples, and proceeds to relate the case of Alfonso of Aragon as follows:
“He was wounded at the third hour of night near the palace of the Duke of Valentinois, his brotherin-law, and the prince ran to the Pope, saying that he had been wounded and that he knew by whom; and his wife Lucrezia, the Pope’s daughter, who was in the room, fell into anguish. He was ill for thirty-three days, and his wife and sister, who is the wife of the Prince of Squillace, another son of the Pope’s, were with him and cooked for him in a saucepan for fear of his being poisoned, as the Duke of Valentinois so hated him. And the Pope had him guarded by sixteen men for fear that the duke should kill him. And when the Pope went to visit him Valentinois did not accompany him, save on one occasion, when he said that what had not been done at breakfast might be done at supper.... On August 17 he [Valentinois] entered the room where the prince was already risen from his bed, and, driving out the wife and sister, called in his man, named Michieli, and had the prince strangled; and that night he was buried.”
Now the following points must arise to shake the student’s confidence
in this narrative, and in Capello as an authority upon any of the other
matters that he relates:
(i) “He was wounded near the palace of the Duke of Valentinois.” This
looks exceedingly like an attempt to pile up evidence against Cesare,
and shows a disposition to resort to the invention of it. Whatever may
not have been known about Alfonso’s death, it was known by everybody
that he was wounded on the steps of St. Peter’s, and Capello himself,
in his dispatches, had said so at the time. A suspicion that Capello’s
whole relation is to serve the purpose of heaping odium upon Cesare at
once arises and receives confirmation when we consider that, as we have
already said, it is in this same relation that the fiction about Pedro
Caldes finds place and that the guilt of the murder of the Duke of
Gandia is definitely fixed upon Cesare.
(ii) “He ran to the Pope [‘Corse dal Papa’] saying that he had been
wounded, and that he knew by whom.” A man with a wound in his head
which endangered his life for over a week would hardly be conscious on
receiving it, nor is it to be supposed that, had he been conscious, his
assailants would have departed. It cannot be doubted that they left him
for dead. He was carried into the palace, and we know, from Burchard,
that the Cardinal of Capua gave him absolution in articulo mortis, which
abundantly shows his condition. It is unthinkable that he should have
been able to “run to the Pope,” doubtful that he should have been able
to speak; and, if he did, who was it reported his words to the Venetian
ambassador? Capello wisely refrains from saying.
(iii) Lucrezia and Sancia attempt to protect him from poison by
cooking his food in his room. This is quite incredible. Even admitting
the readiness to do so on the part of these princesses, where was the
need, considering the presence of the doctor—admitted by Capello—sent
from Naples and his hunchback assistant?
(iv) “The Pope had him guarded by sixteen men for fear the duke should
kill him.” Yet when, according to Capello, the duke comes on his
murderous errand, attended only by Michieli (who has been generally
assumed by writers to have been Don Michele da Corella, one of Cesare’s
captains), where were these sixteen guards? Capello mentions the
dismissal only of Lucrezia and Sancia.
(v) “Valentinois...said that what had not been done at breakfast might
be done at supper.” It will be observed that Capello never once
considers it necessary to give his authorities for anything that he
states. It becomes, perhaps, more particularly noteworthy than usual in
the case of this reported speech of Cesare’s. He omits to say to whom
Cesare addressed those sinister words, and who reported them to him.
The statement is hardly one to be accepted without that very necessary
mention of authorities, nor can we conceive Capello omitting them had he
possessed them.
It will be seen that it is scarcely necessary to go outside of Capello’s own relation for the purpose of traversing the statements contained in it, so far as the death of Alfonso of Aragon is concerned.
It is, however, still to be considered that, if Alfonso knew who had attempted his life—as Capello states that he told the Pope—and knew that he was in hourly danger of death from Valentinois, it may surely be taken for granted that he would have imparted the information to the Neapolitan doctor sent him by his uncle, who must have had his confidence.
We know that, after the prince’s death, the physician and his hunchback assistant were arrested, but subsequently released. They returned to Naples, and in Naples, if not elsewhere, the truth must have been known—definite and authentic facts from the lips of eye-witnesses, not mere matters of rumour, as was the case in Rome. It is to Neapolitan writings, then, that we must turn for the truth of this affair; and yet from Naples all that we find is a rumour—the echo of the Roman rumour—“They say,” writes the Venetian ambassador at the Court of King Federigo, “that he was killed by the Pope’s son.”
A more mischievous document than Capello’s Relazione can seldom have found its way into the pages of history; it is the prime source of several of the unsubstantiated accusations against Cesare Borgia upon which subsequent writers have drawn—accepting without criticism—and from which they have formed their conclusions as to the duke’s character. Even in our own times we find the learned Gregorovius following Capello’s relation step by step, and dealing out this matter of the murder of the Duke of Biselli in his own paraphrases, as so much substantiated, unquestionable fact. We find in his Lucrezia Borgia the following statement: “The affair was no longer a mystery. Cesare himself publicly declared that he had killed the duke because his life had been attempted by the latter.”
To say that Cesare “publicly declared that he had killed the duke” is to say a very daring thing, and is dangerously to improve upon Capello. If it is true that Cesare made this public declaration how does it happen that no one but Capello heard him? for in all other documents there is no more than offered us a rumour of how Alfonso died. Surely it is to be supposed that, had Cesare made any such declaration, the letters from the ambassadors would have rung with it. Yet they will offer you nothing but statements of what is being rumoured!