The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
investigation, being grounded upon the alleged impotence of the husband. It is indeed noticeable that Lucrezia, who bore children to both her subsequent husbands, bore none to Giovanni Sforza. The transaction also serves to discredit in some measure the charges brought against the Borgia of secret poisoning, which would have been more easily and conveniently employed than the disagreeable and scandalous method of a legal process.
While Alexander seemed at the summit of success, the wrath or warning of Heaven descended upon him. On the morning of June 15, 1497, the Duke of Gandia was missed from his palace; soon afterwards his body, gashed with frightful wounds, was taken from the Tiber. Returning the night before from a banquet at the house of his mother, Vanozza, in the company of his brother the Cardinal and other guests, he had separated himself from the party to ride with a masked person who had several times been observed in his company; and he was never again seen alive. After many had been named as the probable assassins, the popular voice at length proclaimed Cesare Borgia, who certainly profited by the deed; and most people thought this enough. History cannot convict on such a ground alone, and must rank this picturesque crime among her unsolved problems. After the first paroxysms of grief had subsided, Alexander made a public confession of penitence, which was probably at the time quite sincere. With all his dissimulation, he was a man of vehement emotions. A commission of Cardinals was appointed to deliberate upon ecclesiastical reforms; but by the time when they reported, Alexander’s contrition had vanished. Their proposals, indeed, admirable in the abstract, were such as the Church was with difficulty induced to adopt at the Council of Trent, after having been scourged by the Reformation for half a century. Nothing could be more commendable than the prohibition of the sale of spiritual offices; but it urgently raised the question how, in that case, was the Pope’s government to be carried on?
The Duke of Gandia’s death is chiefly important on account of the character of his successor. There is nothing to prove the murdered prince anything but an ordinary patrician of his age; Cesare Borgia, however, was the complement of his father. Alexander, an indefatigable man of business, could never have wasted his time in inactivity: yet it is conceivable that, had he been without near relations, he might have applied himself to developing the papal estate as he found it, and attempted no ambitious conquests, beyond what was necessary for his own security. But Cesare seemed driven on by an indwelling demon,—insatiable, implacable, uncontrollable. Experience itself could never have given him his father’s wisdom and prudence, but his devouring energy was even more intense. From the time of his assumption of a leading part in affairs the papal policy becomes distinctly one of conquest. The profession of care for the general weal of Italy which had marked the first years of Alexander’s pontificate disappeared, and any foreign alliance was welcome which seemed to insure another principality for Cesare Borgia. How far this implied a permanent modification in the Pope’s views, and how far it was a temporary plan to be discarded in its turn, is an interesting and a difficult question. But certain it is that from this time dates that deliberate creation of a strong Temporal Power as an auxiliary of the Spiritual which the present chapter has to record. Alexander and Cesare might, or might not, intend that the petty principalities of the Romagna successively subverted by Cesare should eventually become an independent kingdom under his government: the only right he could claim to them was by assignment from the Pope; and the only condition on which the Pope could grant this was Cesare’s obligation to continue his vassal, and act as his lieutenant. It was a great gain to the Holy See to replace a number of unruly liegemen by a single capable deputy; but even this was but a transition stage in the process which must eventually bring these dependencies under the direct sway of Rome, and constitute by their aggregation the considerable political entity which has until recently existed as the Temporal Power.
Thirst for family aggrandisement was not the sole motive which impelled Alexander to ally himself with the foreigner. The task of maintaining order at his own doors had been too hard for him. During the earlier half of 1498 the Roman territory was distracted by the feuds of the Colonna and Orsini, who pursued their strife in total disregard of the authority of the Pope. It was necessary to enlist support from some quarter; nor did Alexander turn to France until he had tried an Italian sovereign. Lucrezia Borgia, emancipated from her real or nominal husband, espoused Alfonso di Biseglia, an illegitimate scion of the House of Naples: but Alexander’s ambition went much further, and he demanded the hand of the King’s daughter for Cesare, then a Cardinal, but soon to be released from his Orders, which were, in fact, only sub-diaconal. This would have placed him in the direct line of the Neapolitan succession, and have effectually estranged the Pope from France and Spain. Every consideration of sentiment disinclined the King from a step recommended by every consideration of policy; sentiment triumphed, and Naples was lost. Determined to secure an illustrious alliance for his son, Alexander now turned to France, where an event had occurred fraught with mischief to Italy. In April, 1498, Charles VIII died suddenly from the effects of an accident. His only son had died before him, and he was succeeded by Louis XII, Duke of Orleans, a distant cousin, who thought more of his own family claims on Milan than of the title which he had inherited to Naples. It happened also that he was in particular need of the good offices of the Pope, who alone could free him from a marriage forced upon him in his youth, which as he declared had never been consummated by him. This assertion was probably true, and Alexander could afford to act with fairness by referring the question to a commission, which decided in Louis XII’s favour. Cesare Borgia, released from his Orders, travelled to France at the head of a brilliant retinue, bringing with him to the King a decree of divorce from his former marriage and a dispensation to contract a new one with his predecessor’s widow. He received in return the duchy of Valentinois in Dauphiny. Alexander, who still clung to the Naples marriage-project, expected the French King to use his influence to promote it, and the disappointment of his hopes seemed at one time likely to carry him back to the side of Spain. At last, however (May, 1499), tidings came that Louis had found Cesare another royal bride in the person of Charlotte d’Albret, a princess of the House of Navarre, and Alexander was now fully committed to the French policy, which aimed at nothing less than the subjugation of the duchy of Milan. Venice was to be bribed by a share of the spoil, and Alexander was to be aided in subduing the petty despots who, nominally his vassals, tyrannised over the B-omagna and all but besieged the Pope himself in Rome. The undertaking would have been laudable, had not its chief motive been the exaltation of Cesare Borgia.
The fate of Ludovico Sforza was soon decided. Unable to resist the combination of France and Venice, he fled into the Tyrol. Personally he could inspire little sympathy; he had gained his sovereignty by usurpation, coupled, as was very widely believed on evidence which has however failed to convince history, with secret murder; and he had been the first to invite the French into Italy. It was nevertheless shocking and of most inauspicious augury to see an Italian prince dispossessed by the foreigner, with the active aid of one of his own allies and the connivance of another, and deserted by all the rest, who had not like Alexander the excuse of deriving substantial advantage from their perfidy. The French occupied Milan in October, 1499; in December Cesare Borgia, at the head of troops raised by his father and Gascon soldiers and Swiss mercenaries lent by France, commenced the operations which were to result in the constitution of the States of the Church as a European Power.
Theoretically, the Pope was already supreme over the territories of which, three centuries later, the French Revolution was to find him in possession: practically, his authority was a mere shadow. With law and reason on their side, the Popes had rarely been able to reduce their rebellious vassals. Thrice had this apparently been accomplished,—by Cardinal Albornoz as the legate of Innocent VI in the middle of the fourteenth century; by Boniface IX in the very midst of the Great Schism; and by Martin V after its termination. All Martin’s gains had been lost under Eugenius IV; and Sixtus IV, with all his unscrupulous energy, had achieved nothing beyond carving out a principality for his own family. Alexander’s projects went much further; he wished to crush all the vassal States, and build out of them a kingdom for his son,—with what ulterior aim is one of the problems of history. He must have known that no alienation of the papal title in Cesare’s favour could be valid, or would be respected by his successors. He may-so rapidly was he filling the Sacred College with Spanish Cardinals - have looked forward to a successor who would consent to a partnership with Cesare, receiving military support on the one hand, and according spiritual countenance on the other. He may have looked still higher, and regarded the conquest of the Romagna