Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (16 page)

There is no doubt that Lucrezia was as eager as her father and brother to achieve this marriage. To be the Duchess of an important state like Ferrara was certainly the highest position she could have aspired to – far beyond a mere Countess of Pesaro, or Duchess of tiny Bisceglie. Like Alexander and Cesare she was ambitious, clever and a realist. Rome had become oppressive to her, her surroundings a constant reminder of things she would rather forget. This was her chance to establish herself for life, to be no longer the pawn in Alexander and Cesare’s high games. Like Cesare, she was aware that her chances of making such a marriage depended on the life of her father and the twists of international politics.

While Lucrezia was probably still in Nepi, the Pope had made it known to Ercole d’Este that he proposed a marriage between Lucrezia and Alfonso. Ercole was appalled: not only were the Borgias a family of upstart foreigners, pushing to marry the illegitimate daughter of a pope into his illustrious family, but Lucrezia’s reputation was of the worst kind. It was the Ferrarese envoy who had first reported to Ercole the birth of an illegitimate child in March 1498, and the Duke was well aware of the circumstances of her divorce from Giovanni Sforza and, indeed, of the murder of Alfonso Bisceglie. At just twenty, she was a woman with a shocking past. Ercole twisted and turned in his efforts to avoid the Borgia embrace.

Perhaps still unaware of the secret treaty between Ferdinand of Aragon and Louis XII, the horrified Ercole pressed for a French marriage for Alfonso. In December his envoy at the French court, the aged Bartolommeo de’Cavalleri, reported in his crabbed hand a discussion with the King who expressed a desire to have Don Alfonso at court where he would find him a suitable bride. Cavalleri suggested to Ercole that there were two good prospects for Alfonso, the daughter of the recently deceased Count of Foix, who later married Ferdinand of Aragon, and Marguerite d’Angoulême, sister to the heir to the French throne, the future Francis I.
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In February 1501 Alexander made another attempt to press Lucrezia’s suit. Ercole, not wishing to offend the Pope, had responded to the initial request by saying that the matter was out of his hands, that it was the responsibility of the King of France. Ercole began to press Cavalleri to prove the truth of what he had told Alexander: ‘. . . because we do not want His Majesty to govern himself according to the desire of the Pope, we would consider it a singular grace that he should show himself having already deliberated and decided for another matrimony’. He instructed Cavalleri to strain every nerve to ensure that the King would not compel him to give his son to Lucrezia: ‘for to speak clearly to His Majesty we will never consent to giving Madonna Lucretia to Don Alfonso: nor will Don Alfonso ever be induced to take her’.
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Ten days later he reiterated his sentiments to Cavalleri, telling him the Pope had sent the Bishop of Elna, his nephew and apostolic commissioner at Cesare’s camp, to him to urge the marriage. The King of France, he argued, should not seek to gratify the Pope in this because the Pope had more need of him (for troops and money for Cesare) than Louis of the Pope. He urged Cavalleri to do all he could so that the King would act ‘to liberate us from this threat and peril’.
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Louis, in fact, was no keener on the marriage of Alfonso and Lucrezia than was Ercole. In trickery, if not in skill, he was Alexander’s equal and in principle he saw no advantage to himself in strengthening the Borgias’ position which might give them an advantage in negotiations with himself. In March he told Cavalleri that he thought Ercole would be unwise to consider the Borgia marriage since the Pope could die any day, and promised to give Alfonso any bride he chose.
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Through April and early May the King kept Ercole’s hopes of an advantageous French marriage alive, while the Borgias piled contrary pressure on the unfortunate Duke of Ferrara. Giovanni Ferrari, Cardinal of Modena, was deployed by Alexander to write Ercole letters stressing the advantages of the Borgia marriage because of the protection offered by the friendship of the Duke Valentino in Romagna as well as the friendship of the Pope.
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Alexander also sent his most trusted confidential agent, Francesco Troche, to the French court to ask Louis to press Ercole to accept the marriage with Lucrezia; as a result the powerful Cardinal de Rohan, who owed his cardinal’s hat to Cesare, told Cavalleri that he should write to his master encouraging him to entertain the Borgia engagement.
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Cesare for his part kept up the pressure on Duke and King, sending envoys to put the case for Lucrezia.

Ercole, still hoping that, if he could not have his first choice, Mlle de Foix, who was apparently now promised to the King of Hungary, Mlle d’Angoulême was still on offer, was overwhelmed to receive Cavalleri’s letter of 26 May which did not reach him until 9 June. The news that the King now supported the Pope’s wishes threw him into paroxysms of rage and panic which he expressed in a three-page letter to his envoy, repeating all his previous arguments plaintively: ‘And moreover having always affirmed to the messengers of the pontiff that this matter of ours was in the hand of the most Christian King, trusting as we have said above: and now His Majesty writing to me according to the desire of the Pope: we are reduced to such perplexity that we do not know how to act: because since the beginning we have never been in favour of making this relationship with the pontiff. It does not seem to me to be apt to tell him absolutely that we do not wish it: because such a hostile response would make him most inimical towards us . . .’ Ercole ended with a pathetic appeal for help to be transmitted to the King ‘given that it matters most greatly to us . . .’ In an anguished two-page postscript, he blamed Cavalleri for not preventing this, insisting he tell the King to inform the Pope that negotiations for a French marriage had gone too far and that the parties of the other part would not consent to their being broken off; therefore the marriage between Lucrezia and Alfonso was impossible. ‘And this must be done immediately because we think that the Pope will not hesitate to send us the Royal Letters and to insist that we conclude the matter . . .’ Cavalleri must act on the King so that the Pope ‘will not become more inimical towards us than he is already . . .’
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In vain: on 13 June, a few days after this letter was written, Cesare was in Rome, conferring with his father as to how to push Ercole further. As evidence of his usefulness to the King of France, he was on his way with the French Marshal d’Aubigny to execute a brief, brutal and successful campaign to expel the royal house of Naples. The result of the Borgias’ conference was immediately evident in Ferrara, where Ercole was subjected to a personal bombardment by representatives of the King, the Pope and Cesare, as he reported to Cavalleri: ‘Yesterday the Archdeacon of Châlons, procurator of the King at Rome, arrived in Ferrara, sent by M. de Agrimont, the royal ambassador and Don Remolins first chamberlain of Duke Valentino and with him a messer Agostino, the papal commissary in [Cesare’s] camp sent to Bologna by Duke Valentino, who presented us [Ercole] with letters from the King to the Duke Valentino and from M. de Agrimont, exhorting us to conclude the marriage [with Lucrezia] . . .’
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Ercole was outraged that these messengers should appear before him in disguise –
‘travestiti’
– as he complained to Cavalleri. Despite the pressure he was still determined not to give in over the Borgia marriage but equally he wanted Louis XII to take the responsibility for his refusal. He suggested a stratagem by which the King should write inviting Alfonso to the French court, upon which Ercole would immediately send him to find out the King’s true mind on the matter. ‘In this way time can be taken over this affair: the Pope will be kept in hope, knowing that Don Alfonso will have been called to France to discuss it. And His Majesty will be able to make use of the Pope, if at present he has need of him . . . and by this means perhaps God will inspire His Majesty to exercise some good and sound remedy to liberate us entirely from this difficulty in which we find ourselves.’ The King must understand that if he would not do this ‘the Pope will immediately become our enemy and always by every means will seek to ruin us and do us every evil he can . . .’ In a postscript he insisted on a French marriage for Alfonso, if not to either of the ladies suggested, then to another. Anyone, in short, but Lucrezia Borgia. And in a second alarmed letter of the same day he urged, ‘His Majesty should not reveal this to the Pope or to his own people . . . so great is the danger we run if the Pope understood what our disposition was . . . we are in very grave fear . . .’

Again, Ercole’s pathetic pleas were to no avail. On 22 June, Cavalleri sent a letter to Ercole more or less indicating that the game was up: Louis XII absolutely refused to write anything on Ercole’s behalf, although he had written four lines in his own hand endorsing the Pope’s messenger. The King riposted that Duke Ercole was old and wise and knew more while asleep than he [Louis] did while awake. His cynical advice was that if Ercole was really not minded to make this match, he should make such demands that the Pope himself would not want to go ahead with it. As a sweetener, Louis’s envoy to the Borgias, Louis de Villeneuve, Baron de Trans, told Cavalleri that to encourage Ercole to make this marriage he was to get 200,000 ducats and absolution from the papal census, an estate for his second son, Ferrante, plus benefices for Cardinal Ippolito and support for Ercole’s desire to regain his lost lands of the Polesine di Rovigo. The King, as if to underscore the difficulty of dealing with Alexander, pointed out that the Pope was asking 50,000 scudi in return for the investiture of the Kingdom of Naples for Louis, plus an income of 18,000 scudi for Cesare and a state for his ‘nephews’—presumably Giovanni Borgia and Rodrigo Bisceglie. Furthermore, he said, he himself might die any day and his successor might have no interest in Italy, and the money Ercole was now being offered by the Pope would provide for his future security and that of his state. To Cavalleri, these seemed, as he wrote to Ercole, ‘wise words’ which he hastened to transmit.
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Ercole had by now realized that further resistance was impossible: his resigned response to Cavalleri’s letter of the 22nd was that in view of Louis’s need of the Pope, and in order to do his Christian Majesty a service, he was prepared to agree to the marriage.
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Meanwhile Louis, involved in outrageously greedy negotiations with the Pope over the investiture of Naples, urged Cavalleri to advise Ercole to draw out the business with the Pope for as long as he could. On 7 July, Cavalleri reported that the Pope had told the King that he had given the Bull of Investiture to Cardinal Sanseverino and that in return Louis and the King of Spain had to pay 150,000 ducats within the space of three months. In order to keep up the pressure on the Pope, Louis repeated his advice to Ercole to prolong the marriage negotiations, even holding out the original prospect of Mlles de Foix and d’Angoulême for Alfonso. He excused his letter supporting the Pope in his pressure for the conclusion of Lucrezia’s marriage because of his present need of the Pope’s goodwill. If Don Alfonso came to France, Cavalleri added, he hoped ‘everything would go well’.
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But the time for tergiversation was over: by early July, Ercole had lain down his arms and accepted his – and Alfonso’s—fate. Cavalleri informed Louis that in the Duke’s view ‘the practical overcame the honourable’, a sentiment which the King applauded, although he still held out the bait of a French bride should the Borgia marriage not come about. Louis added that if Alfonso did marry Lucrezia, he would understand that Alfonso was doing it unwillingly. Haggling and trickery continued on all three sides: Ercole reacted angrily to the accusation that he had made ‘impertinent demands’ on the Pope. He ordered Cavalleri to bring the negotiations to a conclusion on the agreement of 100,000 ducats of dowry, leaving the fulfilment of the other proposals to the Pope. He added, with some justification, that had it not been for his wish to serve the King, the matter could have been resolved three months earlier.
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Later that month Cesare’s man, Remolins, one of the chief negotiators, returned from Ferrara with a portrait of Alfonso to be presented to Lucrezia.
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The Mantuan envoy Cattaneo had already noted on 11 August that Lucrezia appeared to have abandoned her mourning (even though it was less than a year since the murder of Alfonso Bisceglie): ‘Up to now Donna Lucretia, according to Spanish usage has eaten from earthenware and maiolica. Now she has begun to eat from silver as if almost no longer a widow.’
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Early in August, Ercole wrote a note to the person who perhaps most influenced him in his decision and whose enmity he greatly feared – Cesare Borgia: ‘Your Lordship will have heard that we have come to the conclusion of the marriage between the Illustrious Madonna Lucretia, your Excellency’s sister, and the Illustrious Don Alfonso, our firstborn . . .’ This had been done, he said, because of the reverence he had for the Pope and the virtues of Lucrezia but ‘far more still from the love and affection we bear Your Excellency . . .’
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The Borgias now knew that they had won. The marriage contract was drawn up in the Vatican on 26 August, with Alexander writing out the terms in his own hand.
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The nuptial contract was concluded, and the marriage
ad verba presente,
took place in the Palazzo Belfiore on 1 September 1501. On 5 September Ercole wrote to Cavalleri to inform the King of the terms concluded for Lucrezia’s dowry: 100,000 ducats in cash, plus the castles and lands of Cento and La Pieve with an annual income amounting to some 3,000 ducats. While Cento and La Pieve could not immediately be handed over since they were part of the diocese of Bologna, Cesare had pledged his castles in the territory of Faenza until the deal could be concluded. Any shortfall in income, meanwhile, would be supplemented by the Pope – no wonder Alexander commented that the Duke of Ferrara ‘bargained like a tradesman’. Beyond this the Pope would reduce the census which Ercole paid the Pope for Ferrara and his lands in Romagna from 4,500 ducats to 100 ducats a year. Mentally rubbing his hands together, Ercole told Cavalleri that he estimated the total value of the deal at 400,000 ducats.