The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
after the approved pattern of his age, crafty, cruel, perfidious, but intelligent and well understanding how to make the most of himself and his kingdom. While he lived, the prestige of his authority and experience, combined with the youth of the King of France, may have assisted to delay the execution of French designs upon Naples. Upon his death they were carried forward with such warmth that, as early as February 3, Alexander, whose alliance with Naples remained unimpaired, thought it necessary to censure them in a letter to the French King. A bull assigned by most historians to this date, encouraging Charles to come to Naples in the capacity of a crusader, really belongs to the following year. Whether in obedience to the interests of the hour, or from enlightened policy, Alexander’s conduct at this time contrasted favourably with that of other leading men of Italy. Ludovico Sforza, playing with the fire that was to consume him, invited the French King to pass the Alps. The Florentine people favoured Charles VIII, although their unpopular ruler Piero de’ Medici seemed on the side of Naples. Venice pretended to espouse Sforza’s cause, but could in no way be relied upon. Cardinal della Rovere, whose old feud with the Pope had broken out anew, fled to France where, striving to incense Charles against the Pope, he unchained the tempest against which he was afterwards to contend when too late. Alexander alone, from whatever motive, acted for a time as became a patriotic Italian sovereign. Had he possessed any moral authority, he might have played a greater part. But papal dignity had been decaying since the days of Dante, and Alexander himself had impaired it still further. When his tone seemed the most confident, he secretly trembled at the weapons which he had himself put into his enemies’ hands by the scandals of his life, and the simony of his election.
Nothing in Charles VIII, either in the outer or in the inner man, appeared to betoken the Providential instrument as which he stands forth in history. His ugly and diminutive person bore so little resemblance to his parents that many deemed him a supposititious child; his mind was narrow and uninformed; he was equally destitute of political and of military capacity. He knew, however, how to make himself beloved, si bon, deposes the shrewd and observant Commines, qu’il n’est point possible de voir meiUeure creature. His intentions were good; while unconsciously misled by the noble if perilous passion for glory, he was yet fully convinced that Naples was his of right, for he had inherited the ancient pretensions of the House of Anjou. He went to war rather in the spirit of a knight-errant than in that of a conqueror, much less of a statesman. Neither he nor his counsellors dreamed that he was about to bring the political organisation of Italy down like a house of cards, and to launch France on the false path in which she was to persist for centuries without earning in the end anything but humiliation and defeat. He had already yielded Artois and Franche Comte to Maximilian of Austria for his son, under the terms of the treaty of Arras, and ceded Roussillon and Cerdagne to Ferdinand of Aragon, in order to remove every obstacle to his expedition, which he designed to be the first stage of a Crusade, headed by himself, against the Turks. He had bought the imperial rights of the Paleologi, and aimed at reviving the Byzantine Empire in his own person. With this anticipation he was determined to demand from Alexander VI the custody of the Sultan’s brother Jem; whether he distinctly contemplated the deposition of the Pope is very doubtful.
Alexander VI might have secured himself by siding with France; it is to his credit that he remained faithful to his Neapolitan alliance and to the interests of Italy. A joint plan of operations was agreed upon among the Italian States; but the French, though so ill provided with money that Charles was obliged to pawn his jewels, carried everything before them by land and sea. Their land expedition was memorable as the first in which an army bound on a long march had taken with it a train of artillery. Their maritime superiority gave into their hands Ostia, so lately recovered from Cardinal della Rovere; the Colonna revolted at the gates of Rome; and Neapolitan troops, which ought to have moved northward, had to remain in order to protect the Pope. The terrified Head of Christendom sought the aid of the Turk, and employed Charles’s design of setting up the captive Jem against Bayazid as an instrument for recovering the arrears of the pension paid by the Sultan in consideration of his brother’s safe custody. The discovery of the negotiation involved him in obloquy; yet other Popes have preferred heretical allies to orthodox adversaries. The genuineness of his instructions to his envoy seems certain; that of Bayazid’s letters urging Jem’s removal by poison is very questionable: at all events the proposal, if ever made, was not entertained by Alexander.
The French meanwhile advanced rapidly. They had entered Turin on September 5; by November 8 they had reached Lucca almost without fighting. Italy was supposed to possess the most scientific generals of the age, but her soldiers were mercenaries who fought for booty as well as pay, and who thought it folly to slay an enemy who might be good for a rich ransom. An Italian battle had consequently become almost as bloodless as a review. The barbarity of the French, who actually strove to smite their antagonists hip and thigh, inspired the Italian warriors with nearly as much disgust as dismay: for the first time, perhaps, in history, armies fled although and because they despised the enemy. “The French,” said Alexander, “have conquered Italy con gesso,”—in allusion to the proceedings of the quartermaster, who simply chalks off the chambers and stables he thinks fit to appropriate. The political disorganisation was worse than the military, and evinced even more clearly the condition to which centuries of selfish intrigue had reduced Italy. Except the King of Naples, who could not abandon Alexander’s cause without deserting his own, no Italian prince gave any material aid to the Pope. Piero de’ Medici, the feeble and unpopular successor of the great Lorenzo, professed to be the ally of Rome and Naples. But ere the French had appeared before Florence, he made his submission in the hope of preserving his rule, which was nevertheless overthrown by a popular movement a fortnight afterwards (November 9). The Florentines acted partly under the inspiration of the Dominican Savonarola, who could hardly but perceive the fulfilment of his own prophecies in Charles’s expedition, and might plead the precedent of Dante for the ruinous error of inviting a deliverer from beyond the Alps.
Alexander showed as much resolution as could be expected, mustering troops, fortifying Rome, arresting Cardinals of doubtful fidelity, and appealing to the rest to accompany him in case of his being compelled to withdraw. But here lay the essential weakness of his position: he could not withdraw. Some authority must exist at Rome to negotiate with Charles VIII upon his entry, now plainly inevitable. If the King did not find the lawful Pope in possession, he might set up another. The need of a reformation of the Church in capite et membris had never appeared more urgent, and although the irregularities of Alexander’s life might be exaggerated by his enemies, they still afforded ground for doubting whether the caput at least was not beyond cure; while his election might be plausibly represented as invalid. If, on the other hand, Charles found Alexander in Rome, he might not only depose him but seize his person. The more violent the alarm into which Alexander was thrown-and so intense it was that a convention with the King of Naples providing for his removal to Gaeta was drawn up and approved, though never signed-the more credit he deserves for his perception that to await Charles would be the lesser peril of the two, and for his resolution in acting upon it. The lesson, that for his own security the Pope must be a powerful temporal sovereign, was no doubt fully impressed upon him: the still more important lesson, that spiritual authority cannot exist without allegiance to the moral code, was less easy of inculcation.
It soon appeared that the Pope’s policy was the right one for his present emergency. Charles VIII entered Rome on December 31, and Alexander shut himself up in the Castle of St Angelo. He seemed at the King’s mercy, but Charles preferred an accommodation. Men said that Alexander had bribed the French ministers; probably he had, but, corrupt or incorrupt, they could scarcely have advised Charles otherwise. The Pope could not be formally deposed except through the instrumentality of a General Council, which could not easily be convoked, and which, if convoked, would in all probability refuse to take action. Spain might be expected to take the side of the Spanish Pope, and there seemed no good reason for anticipating that other nations would take part with France. The imputations on Alexander’s morality were not regarded very seriously in so lax an age: and if, as a matter of fact, he had bought the papacy, the transaction could only be proved by the evidence of the sellers. If, on the other hand, Charles simply imprisoned the Pope without displacing him, he threw Christendom into anarchy, and incurred universal reprobation. To attempt the regeneration of the Church would imperil other projects nearer to Charles’s heart, and would be as wide a departure from the original purposes of his