Machiavelli, Volume I | Page 8

He played his part
to the full in the unspeakable scandals of the Vatican, but already 'he
spoke little and people feared him.' Ere long the splendours of the
Papacy seemed too remote and uncertain for his fierce ambition, and,
indeed, through his father, he already wielded both the temporal and the
spiritual arms of Peter. To the subtlety of the Italian his Spanish blood
had lent a certain stern resolution, and as with Julius and Sulla the lust
for sloth and sensuality were quickened by the lust for sway. He
unfrocked himself with pleasure. He commenced politician, soldier,
and despot. And for the five years preceding Alexander's death he may
almost be looked upon as a power in Europe. Invested Duke of
Romagna, that hot-bed of petty tyranny and tumult, he repressed
disorder through his governor Messer Ramiro with a relentless hand.
When order reigned, Machiavelli tells us he walked out one morning
into the market-place at Cesena and saw the body of Ramiro, who had
borne the odium of reform, lying in two pieces with his head on a lance,
and a bloody axe by his side. Cæsar reaped the harvest of Ramiro's
severity, and the people recognising his benevolence and justice were
'astounded and satisfied.'
But the gaze of the Borgia was not bounded by the strait limits of a
mere Italian Duchy. Whether indeed there mingled with personal
ambition an ideal of a united Italy, swept clean of the barbarians, it is
hard to say, though Machiavelli would have us believe it. What is
certain is that he desired the supreme dominion in Italy for himself, and
to win it spared neither force nor fraud nor the help of the very
barbarians themselves. With a decree of divorce and a Cardinal's hat he
gained the support of France, the French Duchy of Valentinois, and the
sister of the King of Navarre to wife. By largesse of bribery and hollow
promises he brought to his side the great families of Rome, his natural
enemies, and the great Condottieri with their men-at-arms. When by
their aid he had established and extended his government he mistrusted
their good faith. With an infinity of fascination and cunning, without
haste and without rest, he lured these leaders, almost more cunning
than himself, to visit him as friends in his fortress of Sinigaglia. 'I doubt
if they will be alive to-morrow morning,' wrote Machiavelli, who was
on the spot. He was right. Cæsar caused them to be strangled the same
night, while his father dealt equal measure to their colleagues and

adherents in Rome. Thenceforth, distrusting mercenaries, he found and
disciplined out of a mere rabble, a devoted army of his own, and having
unobtrusively but completely extirpated the whole families of those
whose thrones he had usurped, not only the present but the future
seemed assured to him.
He had fulfilled the first of Machiavelli's four conditions. He rapidly
achieved the remaining three. He bought the Roman nobles so as to be
able to put a bridle in the new 'Pope's mouth.' He bought or poisoned or
packed or terrorised the existing College of Cardinals and selected new
Princes of the Church who should accept a Pontiff of his choosing. He
was effectively strong enough to resist the first onset upon him at his
father's death. Five years had been enough for so great an undertaking.
One thing alone he had not and indeed could not have foreseen. 'He
told me himself on the day on which (Pope) Julius was created, that he
had foreseen and provided for everything else that could happen on his
father's death, but had never anticipated that, when his father died, he
too should have been at death's door.' Even so the fame and splendour
of his name for a while maintained his authority against his
unnumbered enemies. But soon the great betrayer was betrayed. 'It is
well to cheat those who have been masters of treachery,' he had said
himself in his hours of brief authority. His wheel had turned full cycle.
Within three years his fate, like that of Charles XII., was destined to a
foreign strand, a petty fortress, and a dubious hand. Given over to
Spain he passed three years obscurely. 'He was struck down in a fight at
Viana in Navarre (1507) after a furious resistance: he was stripped of
his fine armour by men who did not know his name or quality and his
body was left naked on the bare ground, bloody and riddled with
wounds. He was only thirty-one.' And so the star of Machiavelli's hopes
and dreams was quenched for a season in the clouds from which it
came.
[Sidenote: The Lesson.]
It seems worth while to sketch the strange tempestuous career of Cæsar
Borgia because in the