BORGIA, CESARE

BORGIA, CESARE. - Condottiero, born in Rome in the summer of 1475, died in Viana near Pamplona on 12 March 1507. Son of Cardinal Roderico Borgia and Vannozza Cattanei, destined by his father for an ecclesiastical career, he was appointed apostolic protonotary on 27 March 1482. He studied at the Sapienza College in Perugia and then completed his studies in Pisa, where he was still located on 12 September 1491 when he was elected, by Innocent VIII, Bishop of Pamplona. On 31 August 1492 he received, from his father who had become Pope under the name of Alexander VI, the archbishopric of Valencia, and on 21 September 1493 he was created cardinal. But Cesare aspired to something else: and when his brother Giovanni, second Duke of Gandia and captain general of the papal troops, was assassinated on the night of 14 June 1497, and he himself was later held responsible, on 17 August 1498 in consistory he obtained permission to renounce the cardinalate, and was freed by his father from the duties of the diaconate he had received, thus becoming completely secularized.

Already deeply involved in all the political affairs of the time, he succeeded in turning Alexander VI away from the alliance with Naples towards an approach to France, from which he hoped for greater advantages, and he was entrusted by the Pope with a legation to Louis XII. He offered the king of France the support of the Holy See against Milan and in exchange was invested with the duchy of Valentinois; he was able to marry Charlotte d'Albret, sister of the king of Navarre (1499), and obtain consent for the conquest

of the Romagna. Returning to Italy, he immediately occupied Imola and Forlì, defended in vain by Caterina Sforza, and was appointed by the Pope Gonfalonier of the Church (1500). After assembling an army of about 10,000 men led by excellent captains from noble Italian houses, such as the Orsini and Savelli of Rome, Vitellozzo Vitelli of Città di Castello, Gian Paolo Baglioni of Perugia, he successively took possession of Cesena, Pesaro, where his brother-in-law Giovanni Sforza was lord, Rimini, and in April 1501, Faenza, which resisted him for a long time and whose lord, Astorre Manfredi, he later had barbarously killed in Castel Sant'Angelo. Having also occupied Piombino and been appointed by the Pope Duke of Romagna, he offered his help to Louis XII and took part in the expedition against Naples. In June 1502 he occupied Urbino, driving out Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, whose title he assumed, and Camerino, and planned the occupation of Tuscany, entrusting Leonardo da Vinci with the fortification of Piombino for this purpose. But his ambitious designs and the discontent of several of his captains provoked against him the League of La Magione led by Paolo and Francesco Orsini, Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, Ermes Bentivoglio of Bologna and Baglioni of Perugia. It was at this moment that Niccolò Machiavelli, sent by Florence to Cesare to ascertain his intentions, was able to appreciate the shrewd determination, certainly without scruples, of Cesare and to think of him as a possible great Italian prince. Having succeeded in thwarting the plot and taking refined vengeance with cruelty on all his enemies, he prepared politically for his future conquests by consolidating the alliance with France, making Romagna secure and peaceful, and securing the help of Ferrara through the marriage of his sister Lucrezia to Alfonso d'Este, after he himself had perpetrated the killing of her second husband, Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglie. But the sudden death of Alexander VI on 18 August 1503 upset his plans. Finding himself at that moment ill and therefore unable to react promptly, he had to accept the agreement imposed on him on 1 September of that same year, promising to leave Rome so as not to influence, with his presence and that of his army, the College of Cardinals, while in exchange he was guaranteed free passage to the Papal States. However, as Piombino, Rimini and Pesaro were meanwhile retaken, he was forced to return to Rome and submit to the will of the Orsini, Colonna and Savelli. He was finally imprisoned in Castel Sant'Angelo by Julius II, elected on 1 November of that same year after the death of Pius III Piccolomini, Alexander VI's successor for barely more than a month, and was released only on 29 January 1504 after declaring that he would renounce all the cities still under his dominion. Since, after the unsuccessful French campaign against Naples, he had attempted to draw closer to Spain, he went to Naples, but there he was imprisoned by Consalvo di Cordova and sent to Spain. He managed to escape from the prison of Medina del Campo on 25 October 1506 and take refuge with his brother-in-law Giovanni d'Albret, king of Navarre. He died in battle during the siege of Viana on 12 March 1507 at about 32 years of age.

Exalted by politicians and deplored by moralists, he is one of the most typically grim and dissolute figures of the Renaissance; he was seen by the most extreme theorists of raison d'état as a model of power politics, carried out with ruthless and cruel rationality; in reality, beyond the controversies, Cesare Borgia's attempt also belongs to the painful genesis of the absolute states.