THE marriage which Cæsar had. contracted at Blois, under the auspices of the King of France, on the 11th of May 1499, was the pledge of an alliance which had important consequences for the Holy See and the Most Christian King. It was the prelude to the second descent of the French into Italy and the conquest of Romagna by the son of the Pope. From this time forward the Cardinal of Valencia exists no longer-he has made way for the Duke of Romagna.

The Borgia family was the ruin of all that came in contact with it. The new Duchess of Valentinois, Charlotte d'Albret, daughter of Alain d'Albret, Count of Dreux and Duke of Guienne, the sister of Jean d'Albret, who had become King of Navarre by his marriage with Catherine of Foix, was to be sacrificed without mercy, almost as she left the church. Her father, Alain, had shown some repugnance to the marriage. He knew well that the King of Naples had previously rejected the proposals of the Holy See, declaring that he would never marry his daughter to a priest, son of a priest," and he felt the same scruples as that monarch had entertained. He had insisted on seeing and touching the original document in which the Papal decision was given on the question of the secularisation of the Cardinal of Valencia. Even when he had satisfied himself on this point, King Alain had shown unyielding obstinacy on the question of the dowry, and insisted on an endless succession of guar

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antees. He finally yielded, however, to the personal representations of the King of France and of Anne of Brittany, whose own interests were at stake; for should Cæsar's marriage not take place, and the Pope consequently refuse the dispensation necessary for her own marriage with Louis XII., she would be no longer the queen of France, but only the king's mistress.

Cæsar arrived in France, and Charlotte, "the fairest maiden in the kingdom," met him for the first time at Chinon, in April

1499.

On the 11th of May following he led her to the altar at Blois, and a few months afterwards he took an eternal farewell of her. The young princess had a moment of happiness in the arms of the man of whom the historian Gregorovius could say, "like Tiberius in the days of old, he was the handsomest man of his time." Her illusion only lasted a short while, but there remained to her a living memorial of those happy days. In the spring of 1500 she brought into the world a daughter, Loyse, who never knew her father. The Duchess of Valentinois left the brilliant court of France where she had been brought up, and lived the life of a recluse with Joan of France, the repudiated queen it was in the palace of Bourges-a palace resembling a cloister-that she heard in succession of the triumphs of the Duke of Romagna, of his captivity, his escape, and his death. She died like a saint at the age of twentyfive. Her daughter, Loyse Borgia, married, in 1517, Louis II. de la

In the autumn of 1499 Cæsar Borgia, without caring for the new ties he had formed, or once looking back, threw himself into a fresh enterprise, and crossed the Alps with the French army. The treaty, signed by the Vatican and the Court of France, stipulated for a reciprocity of military services between the two Powers. If the Holy See, of which Cæsar was the direct representative in the ranks of the French army, assisted Louis XII. to retake the Milanese territory, and shut its eyes to the proceedings of the King of France with regard to the Neapolitan kingdom, then Louis XII., in return, was to supply the Pope with the means of reducing to subjection the lords of the cities of Romagna who had gained their liberty.

The Duke of Valentinois had but a small part to play in the Milanese campaign. It is easy to see that Louis XII. had more need of the neutrality of the Holy See than of its active support. Besides, the king did not himself take part in the campaign, the conduct of which was entrusted to his generals, D'Aubigny, Ligny, and Trivulzio, but contented himself with awaiting the result at Lyons. The French entered Milan on the

reached it on the 6th of October. Baldassar Castiglione, the celebrated author of the 'Cortigiano,' who had come to Milan with his master, the Marquis of Mantua, to assist at the reception of the king, shows us the Duke of Valentinois displaying at the monarch's side that ostentation and luxury which had once already given offence to the French nobility on the occasion of his entry into Chinon. Lodovico, "il Moro," having once been driven out of his dukedom of Milan, and possession taken of it, the king was anxious to return to his kingdom, but Cæsar insisted on the execution of the treaty before his departure, and declared his purpose in distinct terms, though he concealed his schemes of conquest under the cloak of a simple reduction of the barons of Romagna to dependence on the Holy See. The King of France, who cared little for the fate of the lordships of the Adriatic, loyally fulfilled his engagements, and gave the Duke of Valentinois three companies of lances under one of his most skilful captains, Yves d'Allègre, and four thousand mercenaries-Swiss, Gascons, and Burgundians, under the leadership of the Bailiff of Dijon. With the Pontifical troops and the levies raised for the occasion, these auxiliary forces made up an army of 16,000 men ready to commence operations in Romagna.

Alexander VI. on his side had not been inactive. He had taken advantage of the previous invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. to destroy the power of the Roman barons, whose feudal fortresses overawed Latium and held the whole of the Roman Campagna in subjection, and whose officers and dependants, with whole armies at their orders,

held the Vatican in check. The second expedition of the French into the Milanese territory now allowed him to complete his work. By craft, violence, or treachery, Alexander had succeeded in drawing the wealthiest barons to Rome: these he had ruined, banished, or put out of the way by murder or imprisonment, while, to cover his acts of spoliation with a show of legality, he had procured a decree of the Apostolic Chamber confiscating the possessions of the Colonna, the Orsini, the Gaetani, the Savelli, and the Magenza families, as rebels against the Holy See. Carrying dissimulation and falsehood to the extreme, Lucrezia Borgia had become the purchaser of the greater part of these possessions in a public auction, of which she never paid the expenses. Her little son, Rodriguez, though only two years old, already bore the title of Duke of Sermoneta (which still belongs to the head of the Gaetani family), and had received twenty-two cities as an appanage to the title. Gioffre, Sancha, and the other children of the Pope had shared these spoils among them; and a mysterious personage, hardly out of his cradle yet, Giovanni Borgia, the Pope's son by his new mistress, Giulia Farnese (acknowledged at a later period by the Pontiff, but at first registered as the son of Cæsar), received out of this grand measure of spoliation thirty-six towns, taken indifferently from the possessions of the different barons.

Such was the work which Cæsar found completed on his return from France and from the short Milan campaign, when, on the 18th of November 1499, he came secretly to the Vatican to receive his father's final instructions before undertaking his own expedition against the barons of Romagna.

Continuing the same policy and the same fiction of judicial action —it was one of the characteristics of Alexander VI. to cover his most monstrous acts with a cloak of legality-the Pope, before formally committing the direction of the military operations to his son, at a special meeting of the Consistory, in the name of his apostolic authority, declared the "Vicars of the Holy See" who ruled at Rimini, Faenza, Imola, Forli, Cesena, Pesaro, Camerino, and Urbino, deposed from their fiefs, and passed a decree charging them with not having paid the tribute due to the Holy See for a number of years. In vain did these princes, who had been practically hereditary for more than a century, and had not sought investiture either at the hands of the Pope or at those of the Emperor,-in vain did they, in face of the danger which threatened them, offer to recognise the supremacy of the Pontiff and to pay the arrears of tribute; Cæsar had commission to enter their states, and either to receive their voluntary cession or to incorporate them by force in the domain of the Church. The army was ready, and it only remained to find the necessary resources to provide for its pay. Considering this enterprise as a work of piety, the Apostolic Chamber borrowed five thousand ducats of gold for the purpose from the municipality of Milan.

The general plan of the young leader, who was by this means to conquer a principality for himself, is not at first sight obvious, and historians have seen ground for doubting whether there really was any one grand conception kept in view throughout the detached operations, undertaken as occasion served, which resulted in three campaigns, from 1499 to 1503. Still, if we follow carefully Cæsar's

progress on the map of Italy, bearing in mind the obstacles he had to avoid (for in proportion as he becomes more formidable, and, by extending the limits of his domain, gives some indication of the goal at which he is aiming, he begins to arouse the suspicions of the neighbouring Powers), we comprehend how he was "eating the artichoke leaf by leaf,” as he said in jest, and never acted at random, but always opportunely. Starting in the beginning of the winter of 1499, he at first advanced rapidly towards the north. His intention being to strike a blow at the neighbours of Giovanni Bentivoglio, Lord of Bologna, he was careful to reassure that potentate as to any fears he might have on his own account, reserving to himself the liberty of turning on him at a later period. He then took energetic measures against Imola and Forli, and turning back from thence, made his way, sword in hand, to the very heart of Italy, adding town to town and province to province, and dethroning in succession the last Sforza, the Malatesta, the Manfredi, and the Montefeltre. Once master of the Adriatic coast from Rimini to Sinigaglia, and in possession of the Duchy of Urbino, of Camerino, and Cagli, he assured his communication with Rome through Spoleto, of which Lucrezia Borgia was regent, and pursuing his work by way of Umbria, Sienna, and Perugia, by Pisa, which called him in of her own accord, and by the Principality of Piombino, from which he expelled the rulers, he barred the approach to Rome to the Tuscans, and established a strategic line of communication between the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. He then formed his united conquests into a single state, selected Cesena as provisional capital, received the investiture from

his father, and assumed the ducal crown. Next year he threw aside the mask and attacked Bologna, a city of greater size and importance than Cesena, and drawing closer the circle with which he had surrounded the Tuscans, at last ventured to threaten Florence itself, until his progress was checked by nothing less than a formal command from the King of France, who, having let loose this plague upon Italy, found it extremely difficult to arrest it again.

Was Cæsar merely going straight before him, led by the insatiable ambition which lays hands upon all within its reach, or was he aiming at a distinct end, at the realisation of a vast conception? Granting that he had no dreams of reconstituting the kingdom of Central Italy himself, Florence at least felt herself threatened. As long ago as his first campaign, when, after making himself master of Imola and Forli, he was still besieging Cesena preparatory to his entry into Pesaro and his progress to Rome by way of Urbino, the Florentine Republic had sent Soderini on a mission to him, to find out his intentions and his terms. The following year, with increased anxiety, as she felt herself approached more closely through the taking of Arezzo, which had fallen into the hands of Cæsar's troops, she sent him Machiavelli, the most clear-sighted of her secretaries. The spectacle of these two champions face to face is one unique in history. From the day when he arrived in the camp, Machiavelli, who had recognised in the Duke of Valentinois a terrible adversary, felt that it was of vital interest to the State that he should not lose sight of him for a moment. As a point of fact, he never left his side up to the day when he saw him hunted down like a wild beast,

vanquished by destiny, fettered beyond all power of doing harm to

any one.

Of course we may refuse to accept the verdict of the secretary of the Florentine Republic. Gre gorovius, the celebrated author of the History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages,' goes so far as to say that it is a reproach to the memory of the founder of political science that he made a bloodblood stained adventurer like Cæsar the "Italian Messiah ". "-the precursor, in a word, of Italian unity. Again, P. Villari, in his fine work 'N. Machiavelli e suoi tempi,' says that the Florentine secretary, though he was an eye-witness of the actual deeds of Valentinois, made of him an imaginary personage, to whom he attributed the great ideas by which he himself was animated. Still we have a right to point out that in history purpose is controlled by action. A great number of the heroic deeds and of the portentous decisions which have determined the lofty destiny of empires have not been the consequence of long premeditation: they have often been the result of the passions and desires of mankind, or simply that of the need of action natural to a vigorous mind. Undoubtedly the immediate object of Alexander VI. was the aggrandisement of his children, and the increase of their territory; he cared only for the power of the Church insomuch as it augmented that of his own family, but the deeds accomplished by father and son contributed none the less to reconstitute the temporal dominion of the Church, a work which, after its completion by Julius II., was destined to continue for more than three centuries, from 1510 to 1860.

The ambitious Cæsar himself was turning aside the current for his own particular advantage.

When Julius II. assumed the triple crown, the officers who held the fortresses of Romagna with one accord refused to give them up to the Church, considering them as the lawful conquest and personal property of their leader. Machiavelli looked only at the results; this is the justification of the opinion which he expresses concerning Valentinois in his book, 'Il Principe,' in the 'Legazione,' the 'Descrizione dei fatti di Romagna,' and the 'Decennale.' He was present when these things were done; he calculated the effect of the events he witnessed. From his observation of Cæsar at work, he noted the strength of his will and the resources of his mind, his strategic talents, and his administrative faculty; and as within certain limits the acts of Valentinois tended towards a distinct goal, an ideal not unlike that at which he himself aimed, the Florentine secretary was not the man to be squeamish about ways and means. What did it matter to him whose hand struck at the despots of the petty principalities of Italy? What cared he about the personal ambition of the man who, after overthrowing them, busied himself at once with the organisation of their states, gave them laws, kept them under stern discipline, and ended by winning the affections of the people? Once the idea of union was accepted, a prince of more blameless private life would succeed Cæsar, and there was always so much progress made towards the realisation of the great conception. The Sforza had fallen; the princes of the houses of Este and Mantua were not equal to such a task; Lorenzo di Medici was no soldier. Impatient to reach his end, Machiavelli cast his eyes around in vain; nowhere could