The Life of Cesare Borgia

friends or credit, and he had to pay the price of the sly, f

t to the throne of Milan, and the intent and might to enforce it, be the right legal or not. It was in vain now that Lodovico turned to the powers of Italy for assistance, in vai

he fall of Milan was a matter of days; of resistance there was practically none. Town after town threw up its gates

than an armed progress. He was at Lyons with the King, and he did not

rrat and Ferrara, and the Marquis of Mantua. But the place of honour went to Cesare Borgia, who rode at the king's side, a brilliant and arresting figure. This was the occasion on which Baldassare Castiglione-who was

ia of France," and quarters on his shield the golden li

in the middle of September. There the latter announced to the Council of Ten that the Pope's Holiness aimed at the recovery to the Church of those Romagna tyrannies which originally were fiefs of the Holy Se

VIII had broken up the States of the Church that they might endow their children and their nephews. The nepotism of such as these never had any result but to impoverish the Holy See; whilst, on the other hand, the nepotism of Alexander-this Pope who is held up to obloquy as the archetype of the nepotist-had a tendency rather to enrich it. It was not to the States of the Church, not by easy ways of plundering the territories of the Holy See,

ch his predecessors had so grievously dissipated, had ever been Alexander's aim; Louis XII af

m was to be given the labour of cleani

milarly aimed at founding dynasties in Romagna for their families, but, lacking the talents and political acuteness of Alexander and a son of the mettle and capacity of Cesare Borgia, the feeble trail of their ambition is apt to escape attention. It is also to be remembered that, whatever Alexander's ulterior motive, the immediate results of the campaign with which

, Forli, Camerino and Faenza, with other feudatories of the Holy See (including the duchy of Urbino) had never paid the yearly tribute d

pretext to indulge his rapacity; but surely it bears the impress of a real grievance, and, however b

y to throw into a state of wild dismay these Romagna tyrants whose acquaintance we shall make at closer quarters presently in the course of f

ot go to thwart the Borgias in their purpose, to save his tyranny from falling into the power of this family which he hates most rabidly, and of which he

rsel cast thus into her lap, and yet to know that the consumption of it might beget a woeful indigestion. Venice shook her head regretfully. She could not afford

ino, and Siena for their common safety-a proposal which came to nothing, probably because Ferrara and Siena, not being threatened by the

nt of his tributes, and to this end the Republic sent an embassy to Rome with the money

of Forli, the other a musician, were so devoted to the Countess Sforza-Riario, the grim termagant who ruled the fiefs of her murdered husband, Girolamo Riario, as to have undertaken an enterprise from which they cannot have hoped to emerge with their lives. It imported

these messengers actually made a confession-upon which the story rests-admitting that they had been sent by the countess to slay the Pope, in the hope that thus Forli might be saved to the Riarii. At first we conclude that those wretched men, examined to the accompaniment of tor

ngular fact that a thorough investigation of this case of the Countess Sforza-Riario's poisoned letter reveals it to be neither wild nor impossible but simply diabolical. The explanation of the matter is to be found in Andrea Bernardi's Chronicles of Forli. He tells us exactly how the thing was contrived, with a precision of detail which we could wish to see emu

veva fate tocare et te

ea Bernardi (Cr

Pace, and Cardinal Raffaele Riario fled precipitately from Rome, justly

rt of Louis, conqueror of Milan, had been obtained, and in this Card

rgia in forwarding Cesare's aims, as we have seen, was completed now by an alliance which bound the t

mands with Louis XII for the purpose of furthering the Duke of Valentinois' wishes. So well does he keep this promise that we see him utterly abandoning his cousins the Riarii, who were likely to be crushed under the hoofs of the now charging bull, and devot

emy of Alexander's, and who, because earlier he had covered the Pope with obloquy and insul

terests will be better served. This is the man, remember, who dubbed Alexander a Jew and a Moor; this the man who agitated at the Courts of France and Spain for Alexander's deposition from the Pontificate on the score of the simony of his election; this the man whose vituperations of the Holy Father are

eat he coveted, so he had sought to make his peace with the Holy See. The death of Charles VIII, and the succession of a king who had need of the Pope's friendship and w

hat stubbornly honest conscience of his which made him denounce Alexander as no Christian and no Pope? Stifled by

jon. Further troops were being assembled for him at Cesena-the one fief of Romagna that remained faithful to the Church-by Achille Tiberti and Ercole Bentivogli, and to these were to be added th

as ruler of the Milanese. Two days later Cesare's army took the road, and he himself went with his horse by way of Piacenza, whilst the foot

nticeship more gradual and arduous than to the trade of arms. Yet Cesare Borgia served none. Like Minerva, springing full-grown and armed into existence, so Cesare sprang to generalship in the hour that saw him made a soldier. This was the first army in which he had ev