The Borgias (16 page)

That same day, Louis de Villeneuve, Baron de Trans, arrived at the gates of Rome, bringing with him Louis XII’s letter appointing Cesare as Duke of Valence and an invitation for this new French aristocrat to visit his court. ‘He came in the name of the King of France,’ reported Burchard, ‘to escort the most reverend Cardinal of Valencia to that country.’ To the pedantic master of ceremonies, Cesare was still a cardinal, despite having announced his resignation, because his decision had not, that day, been ratified by the college.

Rather than agree to this most unusual arrangement, several cardinals had avoided voting by absenting themselves from the consistory on August 17, making the excuse that cases of plague in Rome rendered it prudent for them to leave the city for the healthier air of the countryside. But the pope called another consistory six days later, writing to all the cardinals who were in the neighbourhood,
so the Venetian envoy reported, ‘telling them that they must come to Rome because matters concerning the welfare of the Church and Christianity were to be discussed. So the dissident cardinals yielded,’ clearly with some reluctance, ‘and Cesare Borgia could now take off his [cardinal’s] hat and make himself a soldier and get himself a wife.’ The twenty-three-year-old cardinal of Valencia had become the Duke of Valence, from which he derived his nickname, il Valentino. He was now free to marry and profess himself openly as a soldier.

Cesare’s behaviour had long been inappropriate for a prince of the church. He rarely wore his plain clerical garb, preferring instead the elaborate outfits of a courtier or even, on occasion, fancy dress. ‘Monsignor of Valencia exercises the practice of arms every day,’ wrote Cristoforo Poggio to Mantua on January 19, 1498, observing that he ‘seems resolved to be a gallant soldier.’ Nor were his religious observances such as those expected of a member of the sacred college: ‘Cardinal Valentino attended the solemn mass in the papal chapel,’ wrote Burchard on April 21, the Saturday after Easter, lamenting his conspicuous absence during the ceremonies held during Holy Week, ‘but he has not previously been seen there since Passion Sunday.’

Now that he was a duke rather than a cardinal, Cesare took pleasure in demonstrating his skills, martial and equestrian, before astonished spectators. The day after announcing his resignation from the sacred college, so the Mantuan ambassador Gian Lucido Cattaneo reported, he did so in Cardinal Ascanio’s hunting park before an audience that included Lucrezia and Sancia: ‘Armed as a janissary, with another fourteen men, he gave many proofs of strength
in killing eight bulls,’ and, added Cattaneo, ‘in a few days I hope to see him fully armed on the piazza.’

Indeed, Cesare needed to hone his athletic skills to impress the French court, where he would soon be a guest, and spent much of his time practising ‘the exercise of arms, horses and leaping.’ He sometimes overreached himself; one day in the Belvedere, for instance, when practising leaps across the backs of horses and mules, he tried, in one bound, ‘to mount a mule rather taller than the rest,’ Cattaneo reported, ‘and when he was in the air the mule took fright and kicked him in the ribs and on the back of the head, and he lay unconscious for more than an hour.’

Cattaneo was, however, not so impressed with the new duke’s appearance. ‘He is well enough in countenance at present,’ he reported, somewhat grudgingly, ‘but his face is blotched beneath the skin as is usual with the great pox.’ These marks were the customary signs of secondary syphilis, and Cattaneo believed that Cesare was apprehensive about going to France to marry the Neapolitan princess Carlotta of Aragon, lest that scarred face of his, ‘spoiled by the French disease,’ would induce his intended bride to refuse him.

This was not Cesare’s only concern; there were reports that the king of Spain was ‘extremely displeased’ about the Borgia alliance with France. Cattaneo reported that the pope had assured one cardinal that Louis XII was most anxious to have Cesare in his service and the cardinal had replied that ‘it is true Valence is a dexterous man,’ but he warned the pope, ‘Beware, Holy Father, that you do not aim so high that if you or he fall, you will break too many bones.’ Many Italians also feared this alliance between the pope and a king who openly professed his claim to both Milan and Naples; it
promised another invasion of the ruthlessmen of the north and, as Cattaneo dramatically put it, ‘the ruin of Italy.’

Such warnings did not deter Alexander VI, who was determined to do all that he could to further his son’s career. He raised 200,000 ducats to cover the expenses of Cesare’s trip to France to ensure that his appearance at the French court was as dramatically imposing as possible. This huge sum came partly, so it was believed, from impositions on the Jews in Rome and partly from the sale of goods confiscated by the pope from his Spanish majordomo, a converted Jew who had been appointed as bishop of Calahorra and had been charged by Alexander VI with heresy.

Cesare spent most of this money on ‘jewels, stuffs, cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver, silks and other luxurious goods, much of them imported at considerable expense from Venice.’ For his use on the journey to France, he commissioned a commode for his personal use, ‘covered with gold brocade outside and scarlet inside, with silver vessels within the silver urinals.’ It was said that even the shoes of Cesare’s horses were inlaid with silver and loosened so that they fell off to be picked up by the most nimble-footed among the cheering crowds.

So it was that, on October 1, 1498, Cesare left Rome for Civitavecchia, where two French galleys were waiting to take him to Marseilles. ‘We are sending you our heart,’ Alexander VI had written to Louis XII in a letter that Cesare was taking with him to France, ‘that is to say our beloved son.’ The pope watched the departure of his ‘beloved son,’ standing at the window of the Vatican until the cavalcade was out of sight.

Cesare was, as usual, gorgeously dressed, wearing a black velvet mantle over his shoulder, a white brocade tunic, a black velvet cap,
sparkling with rubies, and boots sewn with gold chains and pearl droplets. Riding a bay horse caparisoned in red and gold, the French royal colours, he was accompanied by the French envoy Baron de Trans and by an ostentatiously large retinue: the members of his household, not forgetting his diligent physician, Gaspar Torella; a richly dressed crowd of young noblemen, Spanish and Roman; scores of pages, grooms, and guards; fifty mules and twelve carts piled high with baggage. Carefully secreted in his luggage was the cardinal’s hat for Georges d’Amboise, the archbishop of Rouen, and the dispensation, signed by the pope, that would allow Louis XII to remarry, providing, of course, the divorce commission pronounced in the king’s favour. The new duke was finally on his way to find his own bride.

‘T
HE MOST CONTENTED MAN IN THE WORLD
’

C
ESARE’S RECEPTION AT
M
ARSEILLES
was suitably boisterous. Welcomed by the roar of cannons, the royal guests were met by four hundred archers who marched forward to escort the visitors to the quarters reserved for them. They spent almost a week in the city, enjoying the entertainments on offer, feasting at several banquets, and being shown such sights as the place had to offer.

Leaving Marseilles at the end of October, Cesare and his entourage started the long journey north to the French court, which was currently in residence in Chinon, some twenty-five miles southwest of Tours, where the divorce commission was still deliberating Louis XII’s divorce. At Avignon they were the guests of the papal legate – this was none other than Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who would, as Pope Julius II, later cause such terrible trouble for Cesare. For now, outwardly at least, they were on
amicable terms, particularly since Alexander VI was relying on the cardinal to assist with negotiations at the French court in return for the pope’s help in restoring the della Rovere family to their former position of influence in Rome.

As a demonstration of this alliance, uneasy though it was, between Alexander VI and Giuliano, the legate had ridden two miles out of Avignon to meet Cesare and escort him into the city. ‘Avignon never witnessed such an enthusiastic welcome,’ wrote a witness of the scene. ‘Nor in the city had there ever been a more splendid procession.’ He was greeted with fountains gushing wine, presented with valuable pieces of silver plate, and ‘fêted by ladies and beautiful girls in whom the said Cesare takes much pleasure, knowing well how to dance and entertain them, the dances being morrisses, mummeries and other frivolities.’

Unfortunately, Cesare was in no mood to enjoy the festivities. Once again he was suffering from a recurrence of his venereal disease. So, indeed, was Giuliano: ‘Della Rovere has fallen sick again of that illness of his,’ one informant told Ludovico Sforza. ‘Now the flowers [as the syphilitic rashes were euphemistically known] are starting to bloom again; if God does not help him, he will never be quite healthy. Also they say publicly of Cesare that he too has the malady of St Lazarus in his face and, moreover, he is in a discontented frame of mind.’

From Avignon Cesare travelled up the Rhône valley to Valence, the capital of his duchy, and then on to Lyons, where he arrived on November 7. From Lyons he dawdled, taking every opportunity to delay his arrival at the French court until the divorce commission had declared its verdict. Crowds gathered in every town to watch him pass by; as the son of a pope, he was an object of considerable
curiosity. His entourage was led by a parade of sumpter mules, each bearing the Borgia crest and followed by two more mules carrying huge chests, the contents of which became a lively subject of debate among the crowds of onlookers. After these came the gentlemen of Cesare’s household, their horses caparisoned with immense cockades and silver bridles, followed by twenty pages dressed in red velvet and cloth-of-gold, by young noblemen of Rome and Spain, and by his personal bodyguard of Spanish mercenaries. Cesare himself rode past imperiously, pearls and precious stones decorating his black velvet costume, his hat, and even his boots.

He did not create a good impression on his route north to Chinon. He was said to be aloof and arrogant, all too ready to take offence and to give it. To the French, his ostentatious retinue appeared absurdly pretentious for a twenty-three-year-old youth who was not only illegitimate but was also unable to claim one drop of royal blood. His impassive manner was viewed as haughty; on occasion he was even insolent, as when, at a reception at Valence, Louis XII’s representative came forward with the collar of the Order of St Michael and would have placed it around his neck, but Cesare pushed it away, saying that it was for the king himself to bestow.

Finally, on December 17, the cardinal of Luxembourg announced that the divorce commission had found in Louis XII’s favour, freeing him from what he himself described as this ‘cripple, afflicted with scrofula, repellent in person and mind.’ The divorced wife, by her own admission not a beauty, had remained dignified throughout the proceedings; she retired to a convent, founded her own order of nuns, and was canonized in 1950.

The following day Cesare made his formal entry into Chinon, crossing the bridge over the Vienne with the great medieval castle, stronghold of the Plantagenet kingdom in France, looming mightily over the town. He was accompanied by Georges d’Amboise, whose red hat was in the duke’s baggage, along with the papal dispensation that would allow Louis XII to marry Anne of Brittany. A man who was there gave a description of the occasion: