Nor does Gregorovius confine himself to that in his sedulous following of Capello’s Relation. He serves up out of Capello the lying story of the murder of Pedro Caldes. “What,” he says of Cesare, to support his view that Cesare murdered Alfonso of Aragon, “could be beyond this terrible man who had poignarded the Spaniard Pedro Caldes...under the Pope’s very cloak, so that his blood spurted up into the Pope’s face?” This in his History of Rome. In his Lucrezia Borgia he almost improves upon it when he says that “The Venetian ambassador, Paolo Capello, reports how Cesare Borgia stabbed the chamberlain Perotto, etc., but Burchard makes no mention of the fact.” Of the fact of the stabbing, Burchard certainly makes no mention; but he does mention that the man was accidentally drowned, as has been considered. It is again—and more flagrantly than ever—a case of proving Cesare guilty of a crime of which there is no conclusive evidence by charging him with another, which—in this instance—there is actually evidence that he did not commit.
But this is by the way.
Burchard’s entries in his diary relating to the assault upon Alfonso of Aragon can no more escape the criticism of the thoughtful than can Capello’s relation. His forty horsemen, for instance, need explaining. Apart from the fact that this employment of forty horsemen would be an altogether amazing and incredible way to set about the murder of a single man, it is to be considered that such a troop, drawn up in the square before St. Peter’s, must of necessity have attracted some attention. It was the first hour of the night, remember—according to Burchard—that is to say, at dusk. Presumably, too, those horsemen were waiting when the prince arrived. How then, did he—and why was he allowed—to pass them, only to be assailed in ascending the steps? Burchard, presumably, did not himself see these horsemen; certainly he cannot have seen them escorting the murderers to the Pertusa Gate. Therefore he must have had the matter reported to him. Naturally enough, had the horsemen existed, they must have been seen. How, then, does it happen that Capello did not hear of them? nor the Florentine ambassador, who says that the murderers were four, nor any one else apparently?
To turn for a moment to the Florentine ambassador’s letters upon the subject, we find in this other Capello—Francesco Capello was his name—accounts which differ alike from Paolo Capello’s and from Burchard’ stories. But he is careful to say that he is simply repeating the rumours that are abroad, and cites several different versions that are current, adding that the truth of the affair is not known to anybody. His conclusions, however, particularly those given in cipher, point to Cesare Borgia as the perpetrator of the deed, and hint at some such motive of retaliation for an attempt upon his own life as that which is given by the ambassador of Venice.
There is much mystery in the matter, despite Gregorovius’s assertion to the contrary—mystery which mere assertion will not dissipate. This conclusion, however, it is fair to draw: if, on Capello’s evidence, we are to accept it that Cesare Borgia is responsible for the death of Alfonso of Aragon, then, on the same evidence, we must accept the motive as well as the deed. We must accept as equally exact his thrice-repeated statement in letters to the Senate that the prince had planned Cesare’s death by posting crossbow-men to shoot him.(1)
1 It is extremely significant that Capello’s Relazione contains no
mention of Alfonso’s plot against Cesare’s life, a matter which, as we
have seen, had figured so repeatedly in that ambassador’s dispatches
from Rome at the time of the event. This omission is yet another proof
of the malicious spirit by which the “relation” was inspired. The
suppression of anything that might justify a deed attributed to Cesare
reveals how much defamation and detraction were the aims of this
Venetian.
Either we must accept all, or we must reject all, that Capello tells us. If we reject all, then we are left utterly without information as to how Alfonso of Aragon died. If we accept all, then we find that it was as a measure of retaliation that Cesare compassed the death of his brother-in-law, which made it not a murder, but a private execution—justifiable under the circumstances of the provocation received and as the adjustment of these affairs was understood in the Cinquecento.
CHAPTER VI. RIMINI AND PESARO
In the autumn of 1500, fretting to take the field again, Cesare was occupied in raising and equipping an army—an occupation which received an added stimulus when, towards the end of August, Louis de Villeneuve, the French ambassador, arrived in Rome with the articles of agreement setting forth the terms upon which Louis XII was prepared further to assist Cesare in the resumption of his campaign. In these it was stipulated that, in return for such assistance, Cesare should engage himself, on his side, to aid the King of France in the conquest of Naples when the time for that expedition should be ripe. Further, Loius XII was induced to make representations to Venice to the end that the Republic should remove her protection from the Manfredi of Faenza and the Malatesta of Rimini.