The Life of Cesare Borgia | Page 7

history), and the one
conclusion to which you will be forced is that Victor Hugo himself had
never read it, else he would have hesitated to bid you refer to a work
which does not support a single line that he has written.
As for Tommaso Tommasi--oh, the danger of a little learning! Into
what quagmires does it not lead those who flaunt it to impress you!
Tommasi's place among historians is on precisely the same plane as
Alexandre Dumas's. His Vita di Cesare Borgia is on the same historical

level as Les Borgias, much of which it supplied. Like Crimes Célèbres,
Tommasi's book is invested with a certain air of being a narrative of
sober fact; but like Crimes Célèbres, it is none the less a work of
fiction.
This Tommaso Tommasi, whose real name was Gregorio Leti--and it is
under this that such works of his as are reprinted are published
nowadays--was a most prolific author of the seventeenth century, who,
having turned Calvinist, vented in his writings a mordacious hatred of
the Papacy and of the religion from which he had seceded. His Life of
Cesare Borgia was published in 1670. It enjoyed a considerable vogue,
was translated into French, and has been the chief source from which
many writers of fiction and some writers of "fact" have drawn for
subsequent work to carry forward the ceaseless defamation of the
Borgias.
History should be as inexorable as Divine Justice. Before we admit
facts, not only should we call for evidence and analyse it when it is
forthcoming, but the very sources of such evidence should be examined,
that, as far as possible, we may ascertain what degree of credit they
deserve. In the study of the history of the Borgias, we repeat, there has
been too much acceptance without question, too much taking for
granted of matters whose incredibility frequently touches and
occasionally oversteps the confines of the impossible.
One man knew Cesare Borgia better, perhaps, than did any other
contemporary, of the many who have left more or less valuable records;
for the mind of that man was the acutest of its age, one of the acutest
Italy and the world have ever known. That man was Niccolô
Macchiavelli, Secretary of State to the Signory of Florence. He owed
no benefits to Cesare; he was the ambassador of a power that was ever
inimical to the Borgias; so that it is not to be dreamt that his judgement
suffered from any bias in Cesare's favour. Yet he accounted Cesare
Borgia--as we shall see--the incarnation of an ideal conqueror and ruler;
he took Cesare Borgia as the model for his famous work The Prince,
written as a grammar of statecraft for the instruction in the art of
government of that weakling Giuliano de'Medici.
Macchiavelli pronounces upon Cesare Borgia the following verdict:
"If all the actions of the duke are taken into consideration, it will be
seen how great were the foundations he had laid to future power. Upon

these I do not think it superfluous to discourse, because I should not
know what better precept to lay before a new prince than the example
of his actions; and if success did not wait upon what dispositions he
had made, that was through no fault of his own, but the result of an
extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune."
In its proper place shall be considered what else Macchiavelli had to
say of Cesare Borgia and what to report of events that he witnessed
connected with Cesare Borgia's career.
Meanwhile, the above summary of Macchiavelli's judgement is put
forward as a justification for the writing of this book, which has for
scope to present to you the Cesare Borgia who served as the model for
The Prince.
Before doing so, however, there is the rise of the House of Borgia to be
traced, and in the first two of the four books into which this history will
be divided it is Alexander VI, rather than his son, who will hold the
centre of the stage.
If the author has a mercy to crave of his critics, it is that they will not
impute it to him that he has set out with the express aim of
"whitewashing"--as the term goes--the family of Borgia. To whitewash
is to overlay, to mask the original fabric under a superadded surface.
Too much superadding has there been here already. By your leave, all
shall be stripped away. The grime shall be removed and the foulness of
inference, of surmise, of deliberate and cold-blooded malice, with
which centuries of scribblers, idle, fantastic, sensational, or venal, have
coated the substance of known facts.
But the grime shall be preserved and analysed side by side with the
actual substance, that you may judge if out of zeal