As if to echo the precariousness of his position, the storms that autumn were more violent and dramatic than usual. Torrential rain caused huge damage in the fields and vineyards around Rome, and the Tiber burst its banks, flooding the city streets. ‘Bolts of lightning struck in many places,’ Burchard recorded, ‘and one hit the Vatican palace in the very room in which the Pope was in at that precise moment; he was so shocked and terrified that he lost the power of speech; two of his servants lost consciousness’; luckily they all recovered.
That autumn plague also broke out in Rome, brought, it was widely believed, by the Jews who had been expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella and who had taken refuge in Rome, setting up their tents in a camp outside the city walls by the gate leading out onto the Via Appia. As the death toll climbed into the hundreds and claimed one cardinal as a victim, Alexander VI decided to move the papal court to Viterbo. Appointing his nephew the cardinal of Monreale to take charge of Rome in his absence, the pope and his huge entourage, which included a horse carrying the Tabernacle of the Eucharist, left the city; they stayed a few days at Alexander VI’s castle at Nepi and at the Bell Inn at Ronciglione before arriving at their destination. The pope and his court stayed at Viterbo, where Alexander VI could indulge his passion for hunting in the wooded hills around the city, for six weeks, accompanied by eighteen cardinals, one of whom was Cesare. Giuliano della Rovere was conspicuous by his absence.
On December 18, the day before his return, a proclamation was read out in Rome ‘to tell all the inhabitants to be present tomorrow on the return of His Holiness,’ reported Burchard. ‘Each must clean the area of street in front of his house, hang out all their tapestries and other items, and do all necessary to honour the Pope, as is his due.’
— CHAPTER 6 — The French in Rome
‘TWICE OUR GREAT GUNS WERE READY TO FIRE ON CASTEL SANT’ANGELO’
FRANCESCO GUICCIARDINI described Italy as ‘never having enjoyed such prosperity or known so favourable a situation as that in which it found itself in the years immediately before and after 1490.’ He continued:
The greatest peace and tranquillity reigned everywhere… Not only did Italy abound in inhabitants, merchandise and riches, but she was also highly renowned for the magnificence of many princes, for the splendour of so many most noble and beautiful cities, as the seat and majesty of religion, and flourishing with men most skilful in the administration of public affairs and most nobly talented in all disciplines and distinguished and industrious in all the arts. Nor was Italy lacking in military glory according to the standards of the time, and adorned with so many gifts that she deservedly held a celebrated name and a reputation among all the nations.
Had Guicciardini described Italy as it was to become a few years later, during the pontificate of Alexander VI, he would have painted a less comforting picture. The quarrel between King Ferrante I of Naples and Ludovico Sforza of Milan was to have far wider political implications, involving France and Spain, each of which laid claim to Naples, and it now brought the threat of imminent war. For, in order to dispose of his enemy, Ludovico Sforza decided to suggest to King Charles VIII of France that he should invade Italy to assert his claim to Naples, as heir to the rights of the House of Anjou, which had been ousted from Naples by Ferrante I’s father, Alfonso of Aragon, some fifty years earlier.
Charles VIII’s belief that he was the rightful king of Naples had been ‘instilled in him from an early age, so that it was almost an innate instinct, and it had been nourished under the guidance of several close advisers,’ so Guicciardini said, and these men played on his vanity and his youthful inexperience, suggesting that, by enforcing his claim to the kingdom, he would ‘surpass the glory of his ancestors,’ and that, having taken Naples, it would be just a simple step to seize the Holy Land from the Turks.
On January 25, 1494, Ferrante I died, ‘without the light of grace, without the cross and without God,’ as Burchard stated. ‘On 21 January he visited the baths at Tripergole because he did not feel well’ — Tripergole, once famous for its sulphur baths, was buried after a volcanic eruption covered it with lava in 1538. On the following day Ferrante ‘returned to Naples and, on dismounting from his horse in the courtyard of Castel Nuovo, suffered a fainting fit; three days later he died, without confession and without receiving the sacraments.’ This, so it seemed, was his own choice: ‘Although his confessor, a Franciscan friar, came into the bedroom and, standing before him, urged him to repent of his sins,’ Ferrante I refused to do so. ‘The friar, it was said, did not see a single sign of repentance from the King.’
Ferrante I died at the age of seventy, loathed by his subjects for the cruel way he had exercised his authority. There was, however, little talk of poison; many in Italy thought it likely he had died of misery at the prospect of seeing his kingdom seized by the powerful armies of Charles VIII, which were poised to leave France on their long march to conquer Naples.
Charles VIII was just twenty-four years old, and he was the ‘ugliest man’ that one observer had ever seen, ‘in all [his] days — tiny, deformed with the most appalling face that ever man had.’ The chronicler Philippe de Commynes added that ‘neither his treasury, nor his understanding, nor his preparations were sufficient for such an important enterprise as the conquest of Naples.’ Commynes believed he never said a word to anyone that could ‘in reason, cause displeasure.’ This unprepossessing but adventurous young monarch also had the most grandiose ideas; he was contemplating a march upon Naples not only to take possession of his ancestor’s throne but also to go on from there to conquer Jerusalem and, on the way, to reform the corrupt papacy of Alexander VI.
In Italy, where the forthcoming conflict now seemed inevitable, reactions varied. Ludovico Sforza promised his support, as did his father-in-law, the Duke of Ferrara, and his cousin Giovanni Sforza, husband of Lucrezia and Lord of Pesaro, who sent details of papal troop deployments to Milan with the warning that ‘if any word of what I am doing is known, I will be in the greatest danger.’ The Republic of Venice remained neutral; Florence and the Papal States were both ill-equipped to fight a war; the Neapolitan army was a more formidable force than any other in Italy, but it had no hope of halting the French advance on its own.
The issue had become even more complicated for Alexander VI since Ferrante I’s death in January and the succession of Alfonso II as the new king. The pope now faced a stark choice — Naples was a papal fief and he had either to crown Alfonso II or to agree to the demands of Charles VIII to invest him as the rightful ruler.
Throughout March Alexander VI sought to placate both sides; he sent Charles VIII the papal rose, a mark of his favour, but when the ambassadors of Alfonso II arrived in Rome, their French counterparts made a point, as they had been ordered to do, of pointedly refusing to meet them. By Easter, which fell on March 30 that year, it was clear that Alexander VI had decided in favour of his alliance with Naples. At the Great Mass in St Peter’s on Easter Sunday, led by the pope in person, it was the cardinal of Naples who acted as his assistant. ‘The Pope gave communion to all the cardinal-deacons, except for the Cardinal of Valencia, who was absent,’ noted Johannes Burchard, using the title by which Cesare had chosen to be known in the college, and ‘afterwards the Lance of Christ was shown twice to the people and the Vernicle three times.’