Out of patience, Cesare asked for the escort of the Pontifical navy by sea to Genoa from which point he would travel into the Romagna via Ferrara. The Pope acquiesced and Cesare set out.
While Cesare was still at sea, news came that the Venetians had captured Faenza and were massing powerful armies in the Duke's lands. Pope Julius came out into the open at last and sent a message to Cesare suggesting that he surrendered the pontifical fiefs into the Pope's hands in an effort to bring law and order into the Romagna.
Cesare, smelling a rat at last, refused and was immediately arrested by the captain of the navy on the Pope's orders.
Julius broke his agreement blatantly and appointed a bishop as new governor of Cesare's old territories. As it was against Cesare that the enemy was moving, he speciously held the only way to bring peace was for the territories to come directly into his own hands under the Church.
Cesare was brought back to Rome and virtually held a prisoner in the Vatican while the war in the north, in spite of the Pope's argument, continued.
While, Cesare, stripped of his titles, property and power, was being treated with an outward show of friendliness in the Vatican, news came of the resounding victory of Gonzalo de Cordoba in Naples. French power was smashed south of Rome. Ferdinand and Isabella, became monarchs of Naples. Spanish influence with the Pope rose like a sudden heat wave.
Not wishing to make a wrong move which could endanger his position, Julius allowed Cesare to depart by sea to the north where he was to enter France. It amounted virtually to deportation.
But, not far out from Ostia, Cesare, with his few loyal men, had his ship turned about and made full sail for Naples to seek asylum in the Spanish camp where he was assured of a friendly welcome.
There, he found other members of the Borgia family, rallying around Gonzalo de Cordoba in an attempt to escape the antagonism of the Pope, and he was made very welcome by the Great Captain with whose troops he had fought in the original quelling of Naples.
Encouraged by the success in the south, Spain was, in fact, considering an invasion of Tuscany? which was allied to France? and then Milan. It was confidently hoped to drive all French power and influence out of the peninsula which for so long had been dominated by a Spanish-born Pope; Cesare was such an obvious choice to lead an expedition into country that he knew well and which bordered areas where he still had friends, that he was chosen a few days after his arrival to lead the Spanish troops north.
This choice gave Cesare fresh hope for his dreams. With the peninsula subjugated to Spain he saw himself in the role of pro-consul, wielding a complete power, divorced from the distant Spanish Crown. But it was not to be.
Nothing could go right for the Borgias after so many years of everything dropping into their laps.
A few days before he was due to depart at the head of a sizeable army, Cesare was arrested by the order of Gonzalo de Cordoba himself.
In the wings of action, diplomatic exchanges had been passing from Julius to the Spanish monarchs and back. The Pope in these exchanges had complained bitterly and with skill of Cesare's refusal to hand the Romagna to the Church in spite, he alleged, of the desires of the local populace, and of the Borgia's designs on an all-powerful state which he would try to expand against Spanish and French influence, coveting for himself the lordship of all territory south of the Alps.
So successfully did he plead his cause? which, indeed, was not without a basis of fact in its latter hypotheses? that Ferdinand and Isabella took fright. They had heard distant echoes of the determination and ability to succeed with his projected plans of Cesare Borgia and they had no desire to risk a future colony by placing its formation in the hands of a ruthless man who would use their power for his own ends.
Word was sent to Gonzalo de Cordoba and? reluctantly? he complied with the order from his monarchs. Cesare was held in close confinement.
In vain did his friends and his sister Lucrezia write to the new Gonfalonier of the Church to exert his influence with the Pope in securing Cesare's release; the very ardor of their pleas seemed to frighten Julius into renewing his persecution of Cesare's name.
All his former officers were rounded up? some of them fortifying towns they still held in his name and giving bitter resistance? and brought to Rome where they were tortured in an effort to make them sign statements as to the selfish aims of their former chief.
In August of 1504, Cesare Borgia was once again on the high seas. But the bright Mediterranean sun and the loveliness of the azure sea afforded him little joy. He was bound for a Spanish dungeon in the fortress of Medina del Campo where his power would have no hope of revival and his dreams of glory fade into memories of what used to be.
CHAPTER 19
Lucrezia was riding south on what, so she had assured her husband, was a sentimental journey to see her father's grave and visit the places of her youth. In fact, she had come to plead and use every means at her disposal to persuade the Pope to use his influence in securing her brother's release from the Spanish prison in which he was languishing, and from which an occasional letter arrived telling her of his boredom and depression although he was not treated unkindly.
Lucrezia had little to offer. But one trump still remained with her? the undecaying beauty of her flesh. Delia Rovere was accounted just as much a libertine as his predecessors and Lucrezia in a moment of sarcastic humor had declared that to have been the source of gratification for three Popes should open the gates of heaven for her without fail.
She traveled with a small retinue of ladies-in-waiting and a posse of men-at-arms. Her passing occasioned no apprehension in territories which once would have regarded her as a potential spy. Her brother was being forgotten. Some people were no longer sure whether he was dead or alive. Talk was centered rather on the possibility of Spanish invasion, which, since Cesare's departure, had come to nothing so far.
Lucrezia and her party were received with mock cordiality by Julius and accommodated in the Vatican for a short stay. Delia Rovere could guess why the beautiful Borgia had come and he was interested to see what her pleading and encouragement would be.
Over a luncheon which the two of them had alone in the Pope's private quarters, Lucrezia had broached the subject.
“My dear lady,” the Pope said, thinking at the same time what an exquisite creature she was and wondering just how true were all the stories he'd heard, “your brother is a remarkable man, but remarkableness alone is not enough to allow a man pardon for misdeeds.”
“But what did he do? Didn't he recapture for the Holy See lands that had long been lost?”
“He dreamed himself another Caesar, dear lady, but Caesars depend not only on personal qualities. They depend upon propitious circumstances at the right time. The world has, perhaps, become more complicated than in the days of Republic and Empire. Too many powers are equal, so much more depends on compromise, alliance, knowing when to change allies and how to maneuver a man out of favor with his superiors.”
“A cynical outlook.”
“One that your brother practiced well enough in his day, but failed to maintain to the bitter end.”
“But if he were permitted to return to Rome, Capua? anywhere? and undertook to take no part in political or military life. What would you say to that?”
“I would say, my lady, that a man's word is a reed which will bend and bend and eventually snap.”