CHAP. V.]

AMBITION AND CRIMES OF BORGIA.

243

but was at length taken by assault, and Catharine sent prisoner to the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome. By the spring of 1501 all the small principalities of Romagna and its neighbourhood had been reduced; Cæsar Borgia entered Rome in triumph, under the mingled banners of France and the Pope, and twelve new Cardinals were created in order that he might be declared Duke of Romagna and Gonfalonier of the Church. Thus was the French flag prostituted in order to promote the designs of the Pope and his insatiable bastard son. Louis even notified to all the Italian Powers that he should regard any opposition to the conquests of Cæsar Borgia as an injury done to himself; a policy disapproved by all the French council except D'Amboise, to whom Borgia held out the hope of the tiara.

During these proceedings the Pope's family displayed all their characteristic crimes and wickedness. After the capture of Faenza, Astorre Manfredi, its youthful, handsome, and amiable Lord, was murdered, after having been first subjected to the most unnatural and disgusting treatment by Borgia. The Duke of Biseglia, Lucretia's third husband, was stabbed on the steps of St. Peter's (June, 1500,) by a band of assassins hired by her brother, who were safely escorted out of the city, and all pursuit after them forbidden. The Duke, whose wound was not mortal, was conveyed to a chamber in the Pope's palace, where he was tended by his sister and by his wife. The Pope placed a guard to defend his son-in-law against his son, a precaution which Cæsar Borgia derided. "What is not done at noon," he said, "may be done at night." He was as good as his word. Before Biseglia had recovered from his wounds, Cæsar burst into his chamber, drove out his wife and sister, and caused him to be strangled.1 Borgia's motives for this murder have been variously ascribed to his incestuous passion for his sister and to his hatred of the House of Aragon. Some modern writers have supposed that the crime was perpetrated in order to make room for Lucretia's fourth marriage with Alfonso d'Este, future Duke of Ferrara; a supposition little probable, and founded apparently on a mistake of dates, as this marriage did not take place till towards the end of 1501, stead of a few weeks after the murder. It was accomplished by bringing the influence of France to bear on the House of Este;

Ranke's Popes, vol. i. p. 50; Cf. Michelet, Renaissance, p. 101.

2 Gibbon, Ant. of Brunswick, Misc. Works, vol. iii. p. 450 (ed. 1814). Cf. Schlosser, Weltgeschichte, B. xi. S. 161;

3

Michelet, Renaissance, p. 123.

in

3 See Muratori, Ann. vol. ix. anno 1500; vol. x. anno 1502. Cf. Roscoe, Leo X. vol i.

244

FRANCE AND SPAIN DIVIDE NAPLES.

[CHAP. V. Alfonso was persuaded that it would secure him from the ambition and the arms of Cæsar Borgia. Lucretia became the idol of the poets and literary men who swarmed in the Court of Ferrara, and especially of Cardinal Bembo. Cæsar Borgia, strong in the support of France, was now aiming to establish a Kingdom in central Italy. His projects were aided by the Florentines, who, however, soon became themselves the objects of his attacks, and were compelled to purchase his goodwill by giving him command of a division of their army, with a pension of 3,600 ducats.

In the spring of 1501 the French army was ready to pursue its march to Naples. King Frederick, alarmed at the gathering storm, had some months before renewed the propositions formerly made by his father Ferdinand I. to Charles VIII.; namely, to acknowledge himself a feudatory of France, to pay an annual tribute, and to pledge several maritime towns as security for the fulfilment of these conditions. Louis, however, would not hear of these liberal offers, although Ferdinand the Catholic undertook to guarantee the payment of the tribute proffered by Frederick, and strongly remonstrated against the contemplated expedition of the French King. Ferdinand, finding that he could not divert Louis from his project, proposed to him to divide Naples between them, and a partition was arranged by a treaty concluded between the two monarchs at Granada, November 11th, 1500. Naples, the Terra di Lavoro, and the Abruzzi were assigned to Louis, with the title of King of Naples and Jerusalem; while Ferdinand was to have Calabria and Apulia with the title of Duke. The duplicity of Ferdinand towards his kinsman Frederick in this transaction is very remarkable. For months after the signing of the treaty he left the King of Naples in expectation of receiving succours from him; and it was not till the eleventh hour (April, 1501,) that he announced to Frederick his inability to help him in case of a French invasion. The contemplated confiscation of his dominions was of course still kept in the background, and meanwhile the forces of Ferdinand, under Gonsalvo de Cordova, were admitted into the Neapolitan fortresses. Frederick opened to them without suspicion his ports and towns, and thus became the instrument of his own ruin. He had in vain looked around for assistance. He had paid the Emperor Maximilian 40,000 ducats to make a diversion in his favour by attacking Milan, but Maximilian was detached from the Neapolitan alliance by a counter

1 Dumont, t. iii. pt. ii. p. 444.

2 Prescott, Ferd. and Isabel. vol. iii. p. 20, note.

CHAP. V.]

FRENCH EXPEDITION TO NAPLES.

245 bribe, and consented to prolong the truce with France. Frederick had then had recourse to Sultan Bajazet II., with as little effect; and this application only served to throw odium on his cause. The recent capture of Modon by the Turks (August, 1500), and the massacre of its Bishop and Christian population, had excited a feeling of great indignation in Europe. Frederick's application to Bajazet was alleged against him in the treaty of Granada; and Ferdinand and Louis took credit to themselves for the desire of rescuing Europe from that peril by partitioning his dominions. Thus religion was as usual the pretext for spoliation and robbery. Nor did Ferdinand's hypocrisy stop there. He made the atrocities at Modon a pretence for getting up a crusade, which served to conceal his preparations for a very different purpose. The armament under command of Gonsalvo de Cordova, the "Great Captain," as he was called after his Italian campaign,' did indeed help the Venetians to reduce St. George in Cephalonia; but it returned to the ports of Sicily early in 1501, where it was in readiness to execute the secret designs of the Spanish King. Gonsalvo, the faithful servant of a perfidious master, the ready tool of all his schemes, acted his part well in this surprise of friendship. Alexander VI. had been induced to proclaim the crusade with a view to fill his own coffers. He drove a brisk trade in indulgences, which he now extended to the dead; for he was the first Pope who claimed the power of extricating souls from Purgatory. To carry out the farce, Louis XII. signed a treaty of alliance against the Turks with Wladislaus King of Hungary and Bohemia, and with John Albert King of Poland, brother of that Prince.

The French army, which did not exceed 13,000 men, began its march towards Naples about the end of May, 1501, under command of Stuart d'Aubigny, with Cæsar Borgia for his lieutenant. When it arrived before Rome, June 25th, the French and Spanish ambassadors acquainted the Pope with the treaty of Granada, and the contemplated partition of Naples, in which the suzerainty of this Kingdom was guaranteed to the Holy See; a communication which Alexander received with more surprise than displeasure, and he proceeded at once to invest the Kings of France and Aragon with the provinces which they respectively claimed." Attacked in front by the French, in the rear by Gonsalvo,

The title of Gran Capitan was among the Spaniards nothing more than the usual appellation of the generalissimo; but it became a permanent surname of Gonsalvo on account of his exploits.

2 The bull of June 25, 1501, dividing the Kingdom of Naples between Louis and Ferdinand and Isabella is in. the Supplt. to Dumont, Corps Dipl. t. ii. pt. i.

p. 1.

246

FREDERICK II. RETIRES INTO FRANCE.

[CHAP. V. Frederick did not venture to take the field. He cantoned his troops in Naples, Aversa, and Capua, of which the last alone made any attempt at defence. It was surprised by the French while in the act of treating for a capitulation (July 24th), and was subjected to the most revolting cruelty; 7,000 of the male inhabitants were massacred in the streets; the women were outraged; and forty of the handsomest reserved for Cæsar Borgia's harem at Rome; where they were in readiness to amuse the Court at the extraordinary and disgusting fête given at the fourth marriage of Lucretia. Rather than expose his subjects to the horrors of a useless war, Frederick entered into negotiations with D'Aubigny, with the view of surrendering himself to Louis XII., whom he naturally preferred to his traitorous kinsman, Ferdinand; and in October, 1501, he sailed for France with the small squadron which remained to him. In return for his abandonment of the provinces assigned to the French King, he was invested with the County of Maine and a life pension of 30,000 ducats, on condition that he should not attempt to quit France; a guard was set over him to enforce the latter proviso, and this excellent Prince died in exile in 1504.

Meanwhile Gonsalvo de Cordova was proceeding with the reduction of Calabria and Apulia. At the commencement of the war Frederick had sent his son Don Ferrante to Taranto, of which place Don Giovanni di Ghevara, Count of Potenza, the young Prince's governor, was commandant. After a long siege, Taranto was reduced to capitulate by a stratagem of Gonsalvo's. A lake which lay at the back of the town seeming to render it inaccessible, it had been left unfortified in that quarter, and Gonsalvo, by transporting twenty of his smaller ships over a tongue of land into the lake, had the place at his mercy. The conduct of Gonsalvo towards the young Prince illustrates both the political morality of those times and the convenient religion by which it was supported. The Great Captain had taken an oath upon the Holy Sacrament that the young Prince should be permitted to retire whithersoever he pleased; but Don Ferrante had scarcely left Taranto when he was arrested and sent to Spain. Gonsalvo was released from his oath by a casuistical confessor, on the ground that, as he had sworn for Ferdinand, who was absent and ignorant of the matter, that Sovereign was not bound by it! Thus the devout superstition of the Spaniards could be rendered as flexible in cases of conscience as the atheism of the Italians. The Spaniards

1 Vita di Gonsalvo, p. 90 (ed. Firenze, 1552).

CHAP. V.]

LOUIS AND FERDINAND QUARREL.

247

entered Taranto, March 1st, 1502; the other towns of southern Italy were soon reduced, and the Neapolitan branch of the House of Aragon fell for ever, after reigning sixty-five years.

In the autumn of 1501, Louis had entered into negotiations with the Emperor, in order to obtain formal investiture of the Duchy of Milan. With this view, Louis's daughter Claude, then only two years of age, was betrothed to Charles, grandson of Maximilian, the infant child of the Archduke Philip and Joanna of Spain. A treaty was subsequently signed at Trent, October 13th, 1501, by Maximilian and the Cardinal d'Amboise, to which the Spanish Sovereigns and the Archduke Philip were also parties. By this instrument Louis engaged, in return for the investiture of Milan, to recognize the pretensions of the House of Austria to Hungary and Bohemia, and to second Maximilian in an expedition which he contemplated against the Turks. It was at this conference that schemes against Venice began to be agitated, which ultimately produced the League of Cambray.

The treaty between Louis and Ferdinand for the partition of Naples was so loosely drawn, that it seemed purposely intended to produce the quarrels which ensued. The ancient division of the realm into four provinces, though superseded by a more modern one, had been followed in the treaty; disputes arose as to the possession of the Principato and Capitanata; Gonsalvo occupied the former with his troops; and some negotiations which ensued on the subject having failed, Louis instructed the Duke of Nemours to drive them out. In the course of 1502 the Spaniards were deprived of everything, except Barletta and a few towns near Bari. It was in the combats round this place that Bayard, by his deeds of courage and generosity, won his reputation as the model of chivalry and became the idol of the French soldiery. While France was thus winning Naples with her arms, she was preparing the loss of it by her negotiations. Towards the end.

of 1501, the Austrian Archduke Philip and his consort Joanna, passing through France on their way to Spain, in order to receive the homage of the Spanish States as their future Sovereigns, were magnificently entertained by Louis XII., and experienced such a reception from that monarch as quite won Philip's heart, and made him forget all the former injuries inflicted by the French Court upon his father. Philip and Joanna reached Toledo in the spring of 1502, where they received the homage of the Cortes of Castile; and a few months after Ferdinand also persuaded the punctilious States of Aragon to swear fealty to Joanna, which