On March 29 Cesare Borgia departed from Cesena--whither, meanwhile, he
had returned--to march upon Faenza, resume the attack, and make an end
of the city’s stubborn resistance.
During the past months, however, and notwithstanding the presence of the
Borgia troops in the territory, the people of Faenza had been able to
increase their fortifications by the erection of out-works and a stout
bastion in the neighbourhood of the Osservanza Hospital, well beyond the
walls. This bastion claimed Cesare’s first attention, and it was carried
by assault on April 12. Thither he now fetched his guns, mounted them,
and proceeded to a steady bombardment of the citadel. But the resistance
continued with unabated determination--a determination amounting to
heroism, considering the hopelessness of their case and the straits to
which the Faentini were reduced by now. Victuals and other necessaries
of life had long since been running low. Still the men of Faenza
tightened their belts, looked to their defences, and flung defiance
at the Borgia. The wealthier inhabitants distributed wine and flour at
prices purely nominal, and lent Astorre money for the payment of his
troops. It is written that to the same end the very priests, their
patriotism surmounting their duty to the Holy Father in whose name
this war was waged, consented to the despoiling of the churches and the
melting down of the sacred vessels.
Even the women of Faenza bore their share of the burden of defence,
carrying to the ramparts the heavy stones that were to be hurled down
upon the besiegers, or actually donning casque and body-armour and doing
sentry duty on the walls while the men rested.
But the end was approaching. On April 18 the Borgia cannon opened at
last a breach in the walls, and Cesare delivered a terrible assault upon
the citadel. The fight upon the smoking ruins was fierce and determined
on both sides, the duke’s men pressing forward gallantly under showers
of scalding pitch and a storm of boulders, launched upon them by the
defenders, who used the very ruins of the wall for ammunition. For four
hours was that assault maintained; nor did it cease until the deepening
dusk compelled Cesare to order the retreat, since to continue in the
failing light was but to sacrifice men to no purpose.
Cesare’s appreciation of the valour of the garrison ran high. It
inspired him with a respect which shows his dispassionate breadth of
mind, and he is reported to have declared that with an army of such men
as those who held Faenza against him he would have conquered all Italy.
He did not attempt a second assault, but confined himself during the
three days that followed to continuing the bombardment.
Within Faenza men were by now in desperate case. Weariness and hunger
were so exhausting their endurance, so sapping their high valour that
nightly there were desertions to the duke’s camp of men who could bear
no more. The fugitives from the town were well received, all save one--a
man named Grammante, a dyer by trade--who, in deserting to the duke,
came in to inform him that at a certain point of the citadel the
defences were so weak that an assault delivered there could not fail to
carry it.
This man afforded Cesare an opportunity of marking his contempt for
traitors and his respect for the gallant defenders of Faenza. The
duke hanged him for his pains under the very walls of the town he had
betrayed.
On the 21st the bombardment was kept up almost without interruption for
eight hours, and so shattered was the citadel by that pitiless cannonade
that the end was in sight at last. But the duke’s satisfaction was
tempered by his chagrin at the loss of Achille Tiberti, one of the most
valiant of his captains, and one who had followed his fortunes from the
first with conspicuous devotion. He was killed by the bursting of a gun.
A great funeral at Cesena bore witness to the extent to which Cesare
esteemed and honoured him.
Astorre, now seeing the citadel in ruins and the possibility of further
resistance utterly exhausted, assembled the Council of Faenza to
determine upon their course of action, and, as a result of their
deliberations, the young tyrant sent his ambassadors to the duke to
propose terms of surrender. It was a belated proposal, for there was no
longer on Cesare’s part the necessity to make terms. The city’s defences
were destroyed, and to talk of surrender now was to talk of giving
something that no longer existed. Yet Cesare met the ambassadors in a
spirit of splendid generosity.
The terms proposed were that the people of Faenza should have immunity
for themselves and their property; that Astorre should have freedom to
depart and to take with him his moveable possessions, his immoveables
remaining at the mercy of the Pope. By all the laws of war Cesare was
entitled to a heavy indemnity for the losses he had sustained through
the resistance opposed to him. Considering those same laws and the
application they were wont to receive in his day, no one could have
censured him had he rejected all terms and given the city over to
pillage. Yet not only does he grant the terms submitted to him, but in
addition he actually lends an ear to the Council’s prayer that out of
consideration for the great suffering of the city in the siege he should
refrain from exacting any indemnity. This was to be forbearing indeed;
but he was to carry his forbearance even further. In answer to the
Council’s expressed fears of further harm at the hands of his troopers
once these should be in Faenza, he actually consented to effect no
entrance into the town.
We are not for a moment to consider Cesare as actuated in all this by
any lofty humanitarianism. He was simply pursuing that wise policy of
his, in refraining from punishing conquered States which were to
be subject henceforth to his rule, and which, therefore, must be
conciliated that they might be loyal to him. But it is well that you
should at least appreciate this policy and the fruit it bore when you
read that Cesare Borgia was a blood-glutted monster of carnage who
ravaged the Romagna, rending and devouring it like some beast of prey.
On the 26th the Council waited upon Cesare at the Hospital of the
Osservanza--where he was lodged--to tender the oath of fealty. That same
evening Astorre himself, attended by a few of his gentlemen, came to the
duke.
To this rather sickly and melancholy lad, who had behind him a terrible
family history of violence, and to his bastard brother, Gianevangelista,
the duke accorded the most gracious welcome. Indeed, so amiable did
Astorre find the duke that, although the terms of surrender afforded
him perfect liberty to go whither he listed, he chose to accept the
invitation Cesare extended to him to remain in the duke’s train.
It is eminently probable, however, that the duke’s object in keeping the
young man about him was prompted by another phase of that policy of
his which Macchiavelli was later to formulate into rules of conduct,
expedient in a prince:
“In order to preserve a newly acquired State particular attention should
be given to two points. In the first place care should be taken entirely
to extinguish the family of the ancient sovereign; in the second, laws
should not be changed, nor taxes increased.”
Thus Macchiavelli. The second point is all that is excellent; the first
is all that is wise--cold, horrible, and revolting though it be to our
twentieth-century notions.
Cesare Borgia, as a matter of fact, hardly went so far as Macchiavelli
advises. He practised discrimination. He did not, for instance, seek the
lives of Pandolfaccio Malatesta, or of Caterina Sforza-Riario. He saw
no danger in their living, no future trouble to apprehend from them. The
hatred borne them by their subjects was to Cesare a sufficient guarantee
that they would not be likely to attempt a return to their dominions,
and so he permitted them to keep their lives. But to have allowed
Astorre Manfredi, or even his bastard brother, to live would have been
bad policy from the appallingly egotistical point of view which was
Cesare’s--a point of view, remember, which receives Macchiavelli’s
horribly intellectual, utterly unsentimental, revoltingly practical
approval.
So--to anticipate a little--we see Cesare taking Astorre and
Gianevangelista Manfredi to Rome when he returned thither in the
following June. A fortnight later--on June 26--the formidable amazon of
Forli, the Countess Sforza-Riario, was liberated, as we know, from the
Castle of Sant’ Angelo, and permitted to withdraw to Florence. But the
gates of that grim fortress, in opening to allow her to pass out, opened
also for the purpose of admitting Astorre and Gianevangelista, upon whom
they closed.
All that is known positively of the fate of these unfortunate young men
is that they never came forth again alive.
The record in Burchard (June 9, 1502) of Astorre’s body having been
found in the Tiber with a stone round his neck, suffers in probability
from the addition that, “together with it were found the bodies of two
young men with their arms tied, a certain woman, and many others.”
The dispatch of Giustiniani to the effect that: “It is said that
this night were thrown into Tiber and drowned the two lords of Faenza
together with their seneschal,” was never followed up by any other
dispatch confirming the rumour, nor is it confirmed by any dispatch so
far discovered from any other ambassador, nor yet does the matter find
place in the Chronicles of Faenza.
But that is of secondary importance. The ugliest feature of the case is
not the actual assassination of the young men, but the fact that Cesare
had pledged himself that Astorre should go free, and yet had kept him
by him--at first, it would seem, in his train, and later as a
prisoner--until he put an end to his life. It was an ugly, unscrupulous
deed; but there is no need to exaggerate its heinousness, as is
constantly done, upon no better authority than Guicciardini’s, who
wrote that the murder had been committed “saziata prima la libidine di
qualcuno.”
Of all the unspeakable calumnies of which the Borgias have been the
subject, none is more utterly wanton than this foul exhalation of
Guicciardini’s lewd invention. Let the shame that must eternally attach
to him for it brand also those subsequent writers who repeated and
retailed that abominable and utterly unsupported accusation, and more
particularly those who have not hesitated to assume that Guicciardini’s
“qualcuno” was an old man in his seventy-second year--Pope Alexander VI.
Others a little more merciful, a little more careful of physical
possibilities (but no whit less salacious) have taken it that Cesare was
intended by the Florentine historian.
But, under one form or another, the lie has spread as only such foulness
can spread. It has become woven into the warp of history; it has grown
to be one of those “facts” which are unquestioningly accepted, but it
stands upon no better foundation than the frequent repetition which a
charge so monstrous could not escape. Its source is not a contemporary
one. It is first mentioned by Guicciardini; and there is no logical
conclusion to be formed other than that Guicciardini invented it.
Another story which owes its existence mainly, and its particulars
almost entirely, to Guicciardini’s libellous pen--the story of the death
of Alexander VI, which in its place shall be examined--provoked the
righteous anger of Voltaire. Atheist and violent anti-clerical though
he was, the story’s obvious falseness so revolted him that he penned his
formidable indictment in which he branded Guicciardini as a liar who had
deceived posterity that he might vent his hatred of the Borgias. Better
cause still was there in this matter of Astorre Manfredi for Voltaire’s
indignation, as there is for the indignation of all conscientious
seekers after truth.