Morning Star

MISCELLANY.

THE BORGIA FAMILY,
OR POPERY IN ITS DAY OF POWER.

At the period when Columbus was setting sail from Europe to discover a new world for the crown of Spain (1492), and the rudeness of the middle ages in England was softening down before the wise arrangements of Henry VII., some of the most extraordinary transactions of which history gives an account were commencing in Italy. The first occurrence, and that on which all the others were founded, was the elevation of Roderic Lenzuolo Borgia, Archbishop of Valentia and a cardinal, to the papal throne, under the title of Alexander VI.—a dignity to which he was preferred, as it appears, by dint of sheer dissimulation and simony. Alexander sought not this honorable and onerous post solely for his own advantage. He had a family for whom he was desirous of providing: for the ensuing twelve or thirteen years, therefore the manœuvres of this family, father and children— the Borgia family, as they are called in history—occupied the attention of all Europe, and were a general scandal to Christendom. The younger Borgias consisted of three sons, Francesco, Cæsar, and Guiffry, and a daughter named Lucretia, all of whom were still in youth when their father became pope. Of Francesco and Guiffry history does not say much; Cæsar was the great man of the family, and of him we shall have occasion chiefly to speak. Cæsar received the news of his father's election at the University of Pisa. He had sometimes indulged in reveries of such prosperous ambition; nevertheless, their fulfilment was unexpected, and his joy almost extravagant. He was then a youth of about two or three and twenty, adroit in all manly, and particularly martial exercises: riding unsaddled horses of the highest spirit: and able to sever a bull's head from his body by a single stroke of his sword. His disposition was haughty, jealous and dissembling. As to his personal appearance, even contemporaneous authors have transmitted to us the most contradictory descriptions. This arises from the circumstance, that at certain periods of the year, particularly in spring, his face was covered with blotches, which made him for the time an object of horror & disgust; while during the rest of the year he appeared the thoughtful cavalier, with black flowing hair, pale complexion, and auburn beard, such as he is represented in the beautiful portrait painted of him by Raphael. Historians, chroniclers and painters, all are agreed upon the intense expression of his eyes, describing them as emitting an incessant lustre, and investing him with the character of something infernal, or unearthly. Such was this man of ambition, who had taken for his motto, "Aut Cæsar, aut nihil—Cæsar, or nothing."

At the expiration of a year when Alexander had attained the proper degree of power, he began to develope the outlines of his colossal design to establish a wide political influence. There were two modes of affecting this—by alliances and conquests. Lucretia, though beautiful, one of the vilest of women, seconded her father's views. A marriage which she had formed while in comparative obscurity with a noble Aragonese of no political influence, was now dissolved, and in a short time she was allied to the sovereign of Pesaro, from whom an accession of strength to the family was anticipated. We may as well here state, that the hopes formed on this point were not realized; that a fresh divorce in a year or two afterwards again set Lucretia free, and that she was then united to Don Alphonso d'Arragon, Duke de Biscegli and Prince de Salerno. Alexander's eldest son, Francesco, was created by the King of Spain Duke of Gandia; Cæsar, who had been reared for the church, was first raised to the dignity of Archbishop of Valentia, and afterwards to that of cardinal: Guiffry was married to Donna Sancia, and by her obtained the principality Squillace; steps in the ladder of Alexander's ambition, which, with his intrigues carried on during two abortive attempts of Charles VIII., King of France, to possess Naples, greatly increased his power. In 1497, his various aggrandizements had placed all Italy, from Venice to the confines of Calabria, within his grasp. There is however, no peace for the wicked. Cæsar envied the exaltation of his brother Francesco, and longed to possess himself of his territorial and other dignities. What occurred may be related in the words of Alexander Dumas, of whose narrative the present paper is partly an abridgement.* Cæsar, who resided in a palace at Rome, had in his pay a party of sbirri, a species of half soldier half attendant, ready for any enterprize. At the head of these men was Michelotto, a faithful tool of his unprincipled master. One day Michelotto was sent for, and attended at the appointed hour.

"Cæsar awaited his arrival, carelessly leaning against a large projecting chimney-piece, clothed no longer in the Cardinal's robe and hat, but in a doublet of black velvet, the slashes of which displayed a satin vest of the same color. One of his hands played mechanically with his gloves, whilst the other rested upon a poisoned dagger, never absent from his side. Michelotto at one glance saw the coming shadow of a deed of evil. Cæsar motioned him to close the door; he was obeyed; then after a short interval, during which the eyes of Borgia seemed as if they would scan every thought and feeling of the reckless bravo who stood uncovered before him, 'Michelotto,' he said, with a voice of which a slight accent of raillery betrayed the only sign of emotion, 'what think you; does this costume become me?' Habituated as the bravo was to the circumlocutions with which his master most frequently prefaced his designs, this question was so unexpected, that for a moment he was silent, then answered, 'Admirably, and thanks to it; your excellency has now the appearance as well as the heart of a true soldier.' 'I am well pleased that this is your opinion,' replied Cæsar; 'and now can you tell me why, instead of this dress, which I can only wear at night, I am forced to disguise myself by day beneath the robes and hat of a cardinal, and to spend my life in riding from church to church, consistory to consistory, instead of leading to the field of battle some noble army, in which you should hold the rank of captain, in lieu of being, as you are, the poor chief of a band of miserable sbirri?' 'Yes my lord,' replied Michelotto, who had guessed from his first words the intentions of Cæsar; 'yes, he who is the cause of this is Francesco, Duke of Gandia and of Benevento, your elder brother.' 'Know you,' resumed Cæsar, giving to this answer no further sign of approbation than a slight movement of his head, whilst a ghastly smile lingered upon his features: 'know you who has the wealth and not the genius, who has the casque and not the head, who has the sword and not the hand?' 'Again the Duke of Gandia;' said Michelotto. 'Know you, moreover the man who is ever in the way of my ambition, my power, and my love?'" 'Still the Duke of Gandia.' 'And what think you of it?' demanded Cæsar. 'I think that he must die,' cooly replied the bravo. 'And your opinion is mine, Michelotto,' said Cæsar advancing towards him, and grasping his hand; 'and my sole regret is not to have thought so before, for had I last year borne but a sword instead of a crozier, I should now be the possessor of some rich domain. The pope wishes to advance the greatness of his house: it is well; but he mistakes the means. It is I he should create a duke; it is my brother he should nominate to the cardinal. Had he done this, one thing is most certain, I should have united to the authority of his power the intrepidity of a heart resolute to make that authority and power more effective. He whose ambition would ruin a state or a kingdom, must trample under foot the obstacles in his path. He must too steep his hands in his own blood. He should follow the example left him by all great founders of empires, from Romulus to Bajazet, who became kings by fratricide. And well have you said, Michelotto, what their position was is mine, and I am resolved never to recoil before it. You now know for what purpose you have been summoned. Was I right? can I depend on you?' Michelotto, who saw his own advantage in the crime, was indifferent to the rest; he answered, therefore, he was entirely at Cæsar's disposal; he had only to intimate the time, place, and mode of execution. Cæsar replied as to the time it must be soon, as he himself was about to depart for Naples; as to the place and mode of execution, these would necessarily depend upon their opportunities, but that in the meantime both must watch, and seize the first favorable occasion." Here we must drop the curtain. The unfortunate Duke of Gandia was waylaid in going home from a family party, stabbed by the villains employed by his brother, and his body thrown into the Tiber.

"This blow," proceeds Dumas "deeply affected Alexander. Ignorant at first whom to suspect, he had given the most rigorous orders to discover the assassins. But slowly the hideous truth revealed itself before him. He saw that the blow which had thus stricken his house proceeded from his house. His despair became frenzy. He ran like one frantic through the Vatican, and entering the consistory, his clothes torn, his hair dishevelled and covered with ashes, he confessed with broken sobs all the crimes and disorders of his past life, acknowledging the blow inflicted on his own blood by his own blood to be the just retribution of God; then retiring into one of the darkest and most secret recesses of his palace, he shut himself up, determined, as he said, to starve himself to death. And, in fact, for more than sixty hours he denied himself all food and rest, replying, to those who sought to divert him from his purpose, with tears and groans, or the howlings of a wild beast." From this hapless condition he was in a few days restored, and re-appeared in public, calm if not resigned. Cæsar having retired to Naples till the violence of his father's grief was subdued, now appeared again before him; and as he was a necessary instrument, no mention was made of his brother's untimely death; instead of being punished, he was promoted in favor. Absolved from his clerical functions, he laid aside the appearance and character of priest, adopted a French dress, and was followed by almost a royal retinue.

The scenes now enacted in Rome were paralleled only in the days of Nero and Heliogabalus. Vice reigned triumphant; murders were of daily occurrence in the streets: no one was safe from robbery; neither house nor palace was a defence; justice and law were fled. And now, by the just retribution of Heaven, Alexander and Cæsar began to covet the fortunes of those men who had raised them to their present state. The first essay made in this new mode of coining money was upon the Archbishop of Cosenza. Alexander having received 600,000 ducats for signing a document, relieving the last heiress to the throne of Portugal from her obligations as a nun, the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, protested against the decree as prejudicial to their interests; and Alexander, to shift the odium from himself, accused Cosenza, his secretary, of having forged his signature. Cosenza was forthwith put into confinement, and was waited upon by Cæsar, whose object was to bring him to reason, that is, to the avowal of a falsehood. Cæsar explained to the unfortunate captive what was required; only that he should say he had forged the signature—a sham punishment and rich reward was to be the consequence. "The archbishop was well aware of the characters of the men with whom he had to deal; he knew they shrunk from no measures to obtain their ends. He knew they possessed a powder which had the taste and smell of sugar, of which it was impossible to ascertain the admixture in aliments, which caused death, slow or quick, according as they desired, and without the slightest taste of its presence. He knew the secret of the poisoned key, which the pope kept by him; and that when his holiness wished to rid himself of some one of his familiars, he desired him to open a certain wardrobe, but as the lock of this was difficult to turn, force was requisite before the bolt yielded, by which a small point in the handle of the key left a slight scratch upon the hand, which was mortal. He knew, also, that Cæsar wore a ring, composed of two lions' heads, the stone of which he turned inwards when he wished to press the hand of a friend. It was then the lions' teeth became those of a viper; and the friend died cursing the villainy of Borgia. Partly influenced by his fears, partly by the hope of recompense, the archbishop yielded, and Cæsar returned to the Vatican, possessed of the precious paper by which the archbishop of Cosenza acknowledged he alone was guilty of the dispensation granted to the royal nun. Two days after by aid of the proofs which the archbishop had himself supplied, the pope, in presence of the governor of Rome, the auditor of the apostolic chamber, and other judicial officers, pronounced his sentence, which condemned him to the loss of all his possessions, the degradation from all ecclesiastical orders and the delivery over of his body to the civil power. Soon after, the civil magistrate arrived at the prison to fulfill his mission, accompanied by a register, two attendants, and four guards. The sentence was read; the attendants stripped the prisoner of his episcopal robes, and clothed him in a robe of coarse cloth, drawers of the same material, and heavy shoes. The guards then put him into one of the deepest dungeons of the castle of St. Angelo, where he found for furniture a crucifix of wood, a table, a chair, and a bed; for recreation, a lamp, Bible, and breviary; and for nourishment, two pounds of bread, and a small cask of water, which were to be renewed, as well as the oil for the lamp, every three days. At the expiration of a year, the archbishop died of despair, after having gnawed his own arms in his agony. The same day that he was thus consigned to his living tomb, Cæsar, who had so well managed this transaction, received from his father the whole of the estates of the archbishop."

The next affair in which the Borgias were concerned was one less tragical. Louis XII. who had just ascended the throne of France, was desirous of divorcing his wife Joan, daughter of Louis XI; and Alexander promised to effect this desirable object, provided the king would use his influence with his sister, Donna Carlotta, to effect her marriage with his son Cæsar, now a layman, prepared for matrimony. The arrangement was immediately entered into, and as a preliminary, Louis created Cæsar Duke of Valentinois, and gave him a pension of 20,000 francs. The splendor of Cæsar's embassy to win the affections of Carlotta exceeded all that we can have any idea of in this sober age. His retinue was composed of a large number of horses and mules, richly caparisoned in silks, and cloth of gold and silver; knights in the most elegant costumes; and Cæsar himself mounted on a noble courser, was dressed in a rich robe of red satin and gold brocade, embroidered with pearls and precious stones. But that which bestowed on the cavalcade the appearance of exhaustless luxury was, that the mules and horses were shod with shoes of gold. Nevertheless, all this parade was thrown away. Carlotta spurned the offers of the wooer with contempt. To his solicitations she spiritedly replied, "that she would never marry a man who was not only a priest, but the son of a priest; not only an assassin, but the assassin of his brother: not only a man infamous by birth, but still more infamous by his principles and actions."

Cæsar, thus discarded, was fortunate in finding another princess who accepted him; this was Mademoiselle d'Albret, daughter of the king of Navarre: and the marriage was celebrated with more than ordinary pomp. The historian now turns to the war, carried on in Romagna, in which the career of Cæsar Borgia was one of conquest and atrocity. The different strong-holds fell, one after the other, before him, and he returned to Rome in the style of an ancient emperor, surrounded with trophies of victory. But although Romagna was conquered, it was only in appearance. A large force was required to preserve peace; and both to insure tranquillity and his own popularity, Cæsar fell upon what Machiavelli has described as a master-stroke of talent. This consisted in appointing severe military governors, with orders to put all complainers to death; and when as many turbulent spirits were thus cleared off as seemed desirable, Cæsar made his appearance, and with much affectation of pity, stopped the carnage by a summary execution of the offending governor. In this way, turbulent citizens and commanders were equally disposed of, while the Duke's clemency was a theme of universal praise.

While the Duke of Valentinois was engaged in completing the conquest of the Romagna, and bringing it, by his proceedings, into that desert condition in which it is till this day found, a new scheme of family aggrandizement was planned and carried into execution. This was the project of relieving Lucretia from her third husband, Don Alphonso d'Arragon, now of little political importance, and marrying her to a rising great man of the day, the duke of Ferrara. To get rid of Alphonso, however, with any degree of decency, was somewhat difficult. The plan finally determined upon was to invite him to a splendid bull-fight, in which, by putting him forward as a swordsman, he might run a good chance of being gored to death. The feat accordingly took place, but Alphonso, who was a man of great prowess and courage, proving himself in every instance the victor, no other means of riddance was left but that of private assassination. One morning the unfortunate prince was found strangled in his bed; and shortly afterwards the beautiful Lucretia became Duchess of Ferrara.

We have no space, if we had the inclination, to pursue the family through their fearful career of public rapine and private crime, but must come at once to the circumstances which wound up their fate. We adopt the words of a clever writer who has graphically pictured the financial policy and closing scene of the Borgias. "The Borgia system of finance was at once simple and expedite; the mind had not to toil in weighing the advantages of direct and indirect taxation; to trouble itself about high and low tariff; without a single maxim of political economy, the papal coffers could be filled to repletion. The great instrument in this financial policy was a certain poison, the secret of which remained in the Borgia family, and which it is said, existed in two forms, the solid and the liquid. The art of making the first is unluckily lost. But the recipe of the second is on record, probably preserved by some Mrs. Glass, of the art. Give a boar a strong dose of arsenic, and at the moment when the poison begins to act, hang up the animal by the hind feet; he will now be convulsed, and an abundance of foam will run from his throat. This foam, collected in a silver plate, and decanted in a bottle hermetically sealed, will form the liquid poison.' Thus armed with two kinds of venom, the Borgias had all their own way, as far as the removal of obnoxious personages was concerned; and an unlucky wight had only to render himself an object of suspicion, when a genteel invitation to supper finished his mortal career. But to return to the financial scheme. Pope Alexander, with his poisons, had a constant power of creating vacancies among his cardinals, and it was in filling up these that he found such a splendid source of profit. In the first place, the priest nominated to the office of cardinal left his former charges vacant, and these reverted to the pope who sold them. This was item the first. Item the second being the round sum which the happy priest paid for the cardinalate. Enough was not yet gained. An advantage was taken of the law according to which no cardinal could bequeath his property, and the pope had only to pick out the richest of the college, and treat him with a Borgia supper, when the third sum found its way into the treasury. Thus did the great financier, whose head is offered as a study in every treatise on phrenology, make three distinct gains out of one single operation. Nevertheless, simple as the plan was in a financial point of view, it required care in the execution: and one fatal day, when the pope had fixed upon Cardinal Casanova, Melchoir Copis, and Adrian de Corneto, as the guests who were to enrich the public purse, and pay the expenses of private orgies, the 'home-brewed' was taken by mistake, by Alexander and his worthy son. The aged sinner, laden with every crime that even a depraved imagination could create, was soon lodged in his grave [1503]; but Cæsar had a tremendous constitution; and the infernal composition which had destroyed numbers, though it impaired his energies, was not mortal. Never did limpet stick more tightly to a rock than this valuable member of society clung to the world. It is said that 'a bath of blood' was adopted, that Cæsar might still exist. A bull according to this record, was suspended by its legs to four posts; a large gash was cut in its belly, from which its entrails were taken while it was yet living; and into the cavity thus left the patient stepped to bathe!

But though Cæsar lived, his fortunes were shattered, as well as his constitution. The papal influence had sustained him, and that gone, nothing could save him from the precipice. No sooner was the breath out of Alexander's body, than the hatred against the family broke out everywhere with the greatest violence. Not a Borgia ventured to show his face but one, and that one was recognized by Fabio Orsino, who well remembering the affair of Sipigaglia, stabbed him, and exhibited his savage exultation by washing his hands and mouth in his blood. Cæsar was mighty in his downfall: he could still give away a popedom; he still bound close to him his old ally Louis, by promising to aid him in conquering Naples: but the king of Spain at once weakened his force, by declaring guilty of high treason every one of his subjects who should aid the duke. Alexander's successor, Pius III., was a mere creature in the hands of Cæsar; but the Orsini, who were industrious in the pursuit of vengeance, removed him after a reign of 26 days, by telling a physician to put a poisoned plaster on a wound in his leg. Again did Cæsar, by his weight in the college of cardinals, give away the popedom; and it was by his will that Julian della Rovere, the ancient enemy of the Borgias, became Pope Julius II. But his career was over. First a prisoner in Italy, he became a prisoner in Spain; being entrapped by the 'great Captain,' Gonzalvo of Cordova, and having escaped from confinement, he was killed [1507] in a miserable skirmish in Navarre, where he had espoused the arms of the king against a rebellious vassal. Such was the obscure end of the celebrated Cæsar Borgia."

According to Dumas, Lucretia, the duchess of Ferrara, escaped the vengeance due to her vices. She died full of years and honors, adored by her subjects as a queen, and addressed by Ariosto as a goddess.