The Duke of Valentinois had continued, his road towards Citta di
Castello and Perugia, and had seized these two towns without striking a
blow; for the Vitelli had fled from the former, and the latter had been
abandoned by Gian Paolo Baglione with no attempt whatever at resistance.
There still remained Siena, where Pandolfo Petrucci was shut up, the
only man remaining of all who had joined the league against Caesar.
But Siena was under the protection of the French. Besides, Siena was not
one of the States of the Church, and Caesar had no rights there.
Therefore he was content with insisting upon Pandolfo Petrucci’s leaving
the town and retiring to Lucca, which he accordingly did.
Then all on this side being peaceful and the whole of Romagna in
subjection, Caesar resolved to return to Rome and help the pope to
destroy all that was left of the Orsini.
This was all the easier because Louis XII, having suffered reverses in
the kingdom of Naples, had since then been much concerned with his own
affairs to disturb himself about his allies. So Caesar, doing for the
neighbourhood of the Holy See the same thing that he had done for the
Romagna, seized in succession Vicovaro, Cera, Palombera, Lanzano, and
Cervetti; when these conquests were achieved, having nothing else to do
now that he had brought the pontifical States into subjection from the
frontiers of Naples to those of Venice, he returned to Rome to concert
with his father as to the means of converting his duchy into a kingdom.
Caesar arrived at the right moment to share with Alexander the property
of Cardinal Gian Michele, who had just died, having received a poisoned
cup from the hands of the pope.
The future King of Italy found his father preoccupied with a grand
project: he had resolved, for the Feast of St. Peter’s, to create nine
cardinals. What he had to gain from these nominations is as follows:
First, the cardinals elected would leave all their offices vacant; these
offices would fall into the hands of the pope, and he would sell them;
Secondly, each of them would buy his election, more or less dear
according to his fortune; the price, left to be settled at the pope’s
fancy, would vary from 10,000 to 40,000 ducats;
Lastly, since as cardinals they would by law lose the right of making a
will, the pope, in order to inherit from them, had only to poison them:
this put him in the position of a butcher who, if he needs money, has
only to cut the throat of the fattest sheep in the flock.
The nomination came to pass: the new cardinals were Giovanni Castellaro
Valentine, archbishop of Trani; Francesco Remolini, ambassador from the
King of Aragon; Francesco Soderini, bishop of Volterra; Melchiore Copis,
bishop of Brissina; Nicolas Fiesque, bishop of Frejus; Francesco di
Sprate, bishop of Leome; Adriano Castellense, clerk of the chamber,
treasurer-general, and secretary of the briefs; Francesco Boris, bishop
of Elva, patriarch of Constantinople, and secretary to the pope; and
Giacomo Casanova, protonotary and private chamberlain to His Holiness.
The price of their simony paid and their vacated offices sold, the pope
made his choice of those he was to poison: the number was fixed at
three, one old and two new; the old one was Cardinal Casanova, and the
new ones Melchiore Copis and Adriano Castellense, who had taken the name
of Adrian of Carneta from that town where he had been born, and where,
in the capacity of clerk of the chamber, treasurer-general, and
secretary of briefs, he had amassed an immense fortune.
So, when all was settled between Caesar and the pope, they invited their
chosen guests to supper in a vineyard situated near the Vatican,
belonging to the Cardinal of Corneto. In the morning of this day, the
2nd of August, they sent their servants and the steward to make all
preparations, and Caesar himself gave the pope’s butler two bottles of
wine prepared with the white powder resembling sugar whose mortal
properties he had so often proved, and gave orders that he was to serve
this wine only when he was told, and only to persons specially
indicated; the butler accordingly put the wine an a sideboard apart,
bidding the waiters on no account to touch it, as it was reserved for
the pope’s drinking.
[The poison of the Borgias, say contemporary writers, was of two kinds,
powder and liquid. The poison in the form of powder was a sort of white
flour, almost impalpable, with the taste of sugar, and called
Contarella. Its composition is unknown.
The liquid poison was prepared, we are told in so strange a fashion that
we cannot pass it by in silence. We repeat here what we read, and vouch
for nothing ourselves, lest science should give us the lie.
A strong dose of arsenic was administered to a boar; as soon as the
poison began to take effect, he was hung up by his heels; convulsions
supervened, and a froth deadly and abundant ran out from his jaws; it
was this froth, collected into a silver vessel and transferred into a
bottle hermetically sealed, that made the liquid poison.]
Towards evening Alexander VI walked from the Vatican leaning on Caesar’s
arm, and turned his steps towards the vineyard, accompanied by Cardinal
Caraffa; but as the heat was great and the climb rather steep, the pope,
when he reached the top, stopped to take breath; then putting his hand
on his breast, he found that he had left in his bedroom a chain that he
always wore round his neck, which suspended a gold medallion that
enclosed the sacred host. He owed this habit to a prophecy that an
astrologer had made, that so long as he carried about a consecrated
wafer, neither steel nor poison could take hold upon him. Now, finding
himself without his talisman, he ordered Monsignors Caraffa to hurry
back at once to the Vatican, and told him in which part of his room he
had left it, so that he might get it and bring it him without delay.
Then, as the walk had made him thirsty, he turned to a valet, giving
signs with his hand as he did so that his messenger should make haste,
and asked for something to drink. Caesar, who was also thirsty, ordered
the man to bring two glasses. By a curious coincidence, the butler had
just gone back to the Vatican to fetch some magnificent peaches that had
been sent that very day to the pope, but which had been forgotten when
he came here; so the valet went to the under butler, saying that His
Holiness and Monsignors the Duke of Romagna were thirsty and asking for
a drink. The under butler, seeing two bottles of wine set apart, and
having heard that this wine was reserved for the pope, took one, and
telling the valet to bring two glasses on a tray, poured out this wine,
which both drank, little thinking that it was what they had themselves
prepared to poison their guests.
Meanwhile Caraffa hurried to the Vatican, and, as he knew the palace
well, went up to the pope’s bedroom, a light in his hand and attended by
no servant. As he turned round a corridor a puff of wind blew out his
lamp; still, as he knew the way, he went on, thinking there was no need
of seeing to find the object he was in search of; but as he entered the
room he recoiled a step, with a cry of terror: he beheld a ghastly
apparition; it seemed that there before his eyes, in the middle of the
room, between the door and the cabinet which held the medallion,
Alexander VI, motionless and livid, was lying on a bier at whose four
corners there burned four torches. The cardinal stood still for a
moment, his eyes fixed, and his hair standing on end, without strength
to move either backward or forward; then thinking it was all a trick of
fancy or an apparition of the devil’s making, he made the sign of the
cross, invoking God’s holy name; all instantly vanished, torches, bier,
and corpse, and the seeming mortuary, chamber was once more in darkness.
Then Cardinal Caraffa, who has himself recorded this strange event, and
who was afterwards Pope Paul IV, entered baldly, and though an icy sweat
ran dawn his brow, he went straight to the cabinet, and in the drawer
indicated found the gold chain and the medallion, took them, and hastily
went out to give them to the pope. He found supper served, the guests
arrived, and His Holiness ready to take his place at table; as soon as
the cardinal was in sight, His Holiness, who was very pale, made one
step towards him; Caraffa doubled his pace, and handed the medallion to
him; but as the pope stretched forth his arm to take it, he fell back
with a cry, instantly followed by violent convulsions: an instant later,
as he advanced to render his father assistance, Caesar was similarly
seized; the effect of the poison had been more rapid than usual, for
Caesar had doubled the dose, and there is little doubt that their heated
condition increased its activity.
The two stricken men were carried side by side to the Vatican, where
each was taken to his own rooms: from that moment they never met again.
As soon as he reached his bed, the pope was seized with a violent fever,
which did not give way to emetics or to bleeding; almost immediately it
became necessary to administer the last sacraments of the Church; but
his admirable bodily constitution, which seemed to have defied old age,
was strong enough to fight eight days with death; at last, after a week
of mortal agony, he died, without once uttering the name of Caesar or
Lucrezia, who were the two poles around which had turned all his
affections and all his crimes. His age was seventy-two, and he had
reigned eleven years.
Caesar, perhaps because he had taken less of the fatal beverage, perhaps
because the strength of his youth overcame the strength of the poison,
or maybe, as some say, because when he reached his own rooms he had
swallowed an antidote known only to himself, was not so prostrated as to
lose sight for a moment of the terrible position he was in: he summoned
his faithful Michelotto, with those he could best count on among his
men, and disposed this band in the various rooms that led to his own,
ordering the chief never to leave the foot of his bed, but to sleep
lying on a rug, his hand upon the handle of his soard.
The treatment had been the same for Caesar as for the pope, but in
addition to bleeding and emetics strange baths were added, which Caesar
had himself asked for, having heard that in a similar case they had once
cured Ladislaus, King of Naples. Four posts, strongly welded to the
floor and ceiling, were set up in his room, like the machines at which
farriers shoe horses; every day a bull was brought in, turned over on
his back and tied by his four legs to the four posts; then, when he was
thus fixed, a cut was made in his belly a foot and a half long, through
which the intestines were drawn out; then Caesar slipped into this
living bath of blood: when the bull was dead, Caesar was taken out and
rolled up in burning hot blankets, where, after copious perspirations,
he almost always felt some sort of relief.
Every two hours Caesar sent to ask news of his father: he hardly waited
to hear that he was dead before, though still at death’s door himself,
he summoned up all the force of character and presence of mind that
naturally belonged to him. He ordered Michelotto to shut the doors of
the Vatican before the report of Alexander’s decease could spread about
the town, and forbade anyone whatsoever to enter the pope’s apartments
until the money and papers had been removed. Michelotto obeyed at once,
went to find Cardinal Casanova, held a dagger at his throat, and made
him deliver up the keys of the pope’s rooms and cabinets; then, under
his guidance, took away two chests full of gold, which perhaps contained
100,000 Roman crowns in specie, several boxes full of jewels, much
silver and many precious vases; all these were carried to Caesar’s
chamber; the guards of the room were doubled; then the doors of the
Vatican were once more thrown open, and the death of the pope was
proclaimed.
Although the news was expected, it produced none the less a terrible
effect in Rome; for although Caesar was still alive, his condition left
everyone in suspense: had the mighty Duke of Romagna, the powerful
condottiere who had taken thirty towns and fifteen fortresses in five
years, been seated, sword in hand, upon his charger, nothing would have
been uncertain of fluctuating even for a moment; for, as Caesar
afterwards told Macchiavelli, his ambitious soul had provided for all
things that could occur on the day of the pope’s death, except the one
that he should be dying himself; but being nailed down to his bed,
sweating off the effects the poison had wrought; so, though he had kept
his power of thinking he could no longer act, but must needs wait and
suffer the course of events, instead of marching on in front and
controlling them.
Thus he was forced to regulate his actions no longer by his own plans
but according to circumstances. His most bitter enemies, who could press
him hardest, were the Orsini and the Colonnas: from the one family he
had taken their blood, from the other their goods.
So he addressed himself to those to whom he could return what he had
taken, and opened negotiations with the Colonnas.
Meanwhile the obsequies of the pope were going forward: the
vice-chancellor had sent out orders to the highest among the clergy, the
superiors of convents, and the secular orders, not to fail to appear,
according to regular custom, on pain of being despoiled of their office
and dignities, each bringing his own company to the Vatican, to be
present at the pope’s funeral; each therefore appeared on the day and at
the hour appointed at the pontifical palace, whence the body was to be
conveyed to the church of St. Peter’s, and there buried. The corpse was
found to be abandoned and alone in the mortuary chamber; for everyone of
the name of Borgia, except Caesar, lay hidden, not knowing what might
come to pass. This was indeed well justified; for Fabio Orsino, meeting
one member of the family, stabbed him, and as a sign of the hatred they
had sworn to one another, bathed his mouth and hands in the blood.
The agitation in Rome was so great, that when the corpse of Alexander VI
was about to enter the church there occurred a kind of panic, such as
will suddenly arise in times of popular agitation, instantly causing so
great a disturbance in the funeral cortege that the guards drew up in
battle array, the clergy fled into the sacristy, and the bearers dropped
the bier.
The people, tearing off the pall which covered it, disclosed the corpse,
and everyone could see with impunity and close at hand the man who,
fifteen days before, had made princes, kings and emperors tremble, from
one end of the world to the other.
But in accordance with that religious feeling towards death which all
men instinctively feel, and which alone survives every other, even in
the heart of the atheist, the bier was taken up again and carried to the
foot of the great altar in St. Peter’s, where, set on trestles, it was
exposed to public view; but the body had become so black, so deformed
and swollen, that it was horrible to behold; from its nose a bloody
matter escaped, the mouth gaped hideously, and the tongue was so
monstrously enlarged that it filled the whole cavity; to this frightful
appearance was added a decomposition so great that, although at the
pope’s funeral it is customary to kiss the hand which bore the
Fisherman’s ring, not one approached to offer this mark of respect and
religious reverence to the representative of God on earth.
Towards seven o’clock in the evening, when the declining day adds so
deep a melancholy to the silence of a church, four porters and two
working carpenters carried the corpse into the chapel where it was to be
interred, and, lifting it off the catafalque, where it lay in state, put
it in the coffin which was to be its last abode; but it was found that
the coffin was too short, and the body could not be got in till the legs
were bent and thrust in with violent blows; then the carpenters put on
the lid, and while one of them sat on the top to force the knees to
bend, the others hammered in the nails: amid those Shakespearian
pleasantries that sound as the last orison in the ear of the mighty;
then, says Tommaso Tommasi, he was placed on the right of the great
altar of St. Peter’s, beneath a very ugly tomb.
The next morning this epitaph was found inscribed upon the tomb:
"VENDIT ALEXANDER CLAVES, ALTARIA, CHRISTUM:
EMERAT ILLE PRIUS, VENDERE JUKE POTEST";
that is,
"Pope Alexander sold the Christ, the altars, and the keys:
But anyone who buys a thing may sell it if he please."