Blood & Beauty The Borgias

PART VIII


Women at War


The Pope plans to make him no less than the King of Italy.

GIAN LUCIDO CATTANEO, MANTUAN ENVOY, 1499


Chapter 42

The archer’s upper arm trembles with the stretch of the bow. The arrow, a high whine of wind, hits the great horse’s left ear full on, shattering it on impact. The shot is greeted with a howl of approval, then one of derision as the next narrowly misses the other ear. A dozen others follow, slamming into the animal’s neck and flanks, and sending chunks of clay flying, crashing, smashing everywhere.

‘Ssssforza, Ssssforza,’ the archers chant and cheer as they load and reload until the air grows dark under the onslaught.

‘Poor old da Vinci. Ludovico should have employed him to design weapons rather than statues.’ From a window high in the Sforza palace, Cesare stands watching the carnage. Before long the horse’s tail is severed from its body. ‘Look at them. Even pissed stupid they shoot better than most Italians. Well, they had to sack something.’

Beneath the plinth, servants run head-down around the hooves and under the belly, dodging the falling debris to gather up the used arrows and return them to the archers. Three months on the road and when the army finally reached Milan, itching for a fight, they had found the gates of the city open, waiting for them to march in, Ludovico Sforza having fled with his tail between his legs and a cartload of treasures behind him.

Another cry goes up as the stallion’s head takes a series of direct hits, the sculpted nostrils splintering and crumbling. Cesare leans out of the window and shouts something in French. The captain looks up and yells back. A few of the archers raise their hands in salute: Cesare is now the darling of the troops as well as of the King.

He turns from the window. In dark silhouette, with the Milan sky the colour of a dirty sheet behind him, he cuts an impressive figure. It is not just the light. Cesare Borgia, Duke Valentino, now dresses only in black: black cap adorned by dyed-black feathers, black cloak, black hose and black doublet, with just the barest sliver of gold silk ripping down through the sleeve. The man who left Italy in blazing colour has returned dark as the devil. How well it suits him.

‘So, gentlemen,’ he says, moving back into the room. ‘We have a deal?’

A fast murmur of assent goes round the table. There are four of them sitting there, hard weathered faces incongruous above the soft velvet of court robes. They are fighting men all of them, condottieri with mercenary troops at their beck and call. In peacetime, you would not trust them to cut a pack of cards without sliding an ace out of their sleeve, but when it comes to war they are loyal to the highest bidder. And right now, no one is offering more than Cesare Borgia. He has picked carefully. The small wiry Vitellozzo Vitelli is the nearest that Italy comes to having its own artillery expert. Next to him, Oliveretto da Fermo is a hungry thug but a well trained one; while across the table sit two Orsini brothers, Paolo and Francesco. Orsini. Cesare would as happily string them up as employ them, but between them they hold a small army of men and until he is ready to take his revenge it is better to have them fighting with him. And while his father is still on the papal throne, each and every one of them is happy to lick his hand and do his bidding.

‘You have a question, Vitelli?’

‘How many men will you field besides ours?’

‘How many men?’ Cesare repeats, smiling. He knows it is what they have been waiting to hear. On the triumphant entry into Milan King Louis and his Duke Valentino had ridden side by side, and since then they have been publicly joined at the hip, hunting, feasting and entertaining. Anyone in any doubt that the history of Italy is being written between them has only to look at the language of their bodies: bent heads, whispers, shared laughter, more like brothers than ‘dear cousins’.

‘I will lead a force of two thousand French cavalry, three hundred French lancers, twenty-seven artillery guns and four thousand Swiss and Gascon infantry.’ He stops to let the numbers sink in. ‘With the troops that our Holy Father the Pope will send from the Papal Guard, alongside the men you bring, the army will be ten thousand strong.’

Someone lets out a small hissing sound between his teeth. The silence lengthens. The Pope’s son has just become the commander of one of the biggest ever forces to move across Italian soil. Cesare glances towards Michelotto, stationed behind the table like an ugly bulldog, and his henchman pulls a paper from his jacket and spreads it out on the surface in front of them.

‘And this, gentlemen, will be our route of campaign.’

The Via Emilia. Even on the map it stands out: a road as only the ancients built them. Beginning in Piacenza in the north, it moves straight as an arrow south-east through Parma and Bologna, running along the eastern edge of the Apennines and then on as far as the Adriatic coast at Rimini. Exactly when it was first built is conjecture, though it must have been well before the birth of Christ. Its reconstruction under Augustus and Tiberius is better known, for there are dated milestones and a set of the finest bridges in Italy; sweeping arched spans of stone, their surfaces worn and pitted by centuries of feet, hooves and cartwheels, though most of those who walk the stones now couldn’t care less about the history of the ancients or even the name of the great Roman general who crossed the Rubicon river before them. No, like most people they are too busy working to stay alive in the present.

The poets – who work hard in their own way – liken this elegant artery in the body of Italy to a string of pearls laid out on a table of green velvet. It is a fitting simile: the pearls because along its length are threaded a number of city-states, each rich enough to have its own ruling family, greedy, squabbling and committed to lining its pockets at the expense of those it governs; and the green velvet because on its unswerving way to the sea the road runs through one of the most fertile plains in the country. It is said you only have to throw a handful of seeds in the state of Romagna, as it is known now, and within a year you will have enough bread, fruits, vegetables and oil to feed an army.

All this in itself would be enough to tempt a new young Caesar looking to secure himself a place in history. But there is another accident of history that makes this area ripe for conquest and explains why Cesare has had his eyes on it ever since he was old enough to read a map. Because in law these city-states do not belong to the families that rule them: they are rented rather than owned. The landlord to whom they belong sits in Rome presiding over the Holy Mother Church. And Alexander VI has already made it clear that he is intending to evict a number of tenants in favour of his own son.

The first attack has been a spiritual one: a bull of excommunication against five of the rulers of papal states in the Romagna on the grounds of non-payment of tribute to Rome. Robbed of God’s protection and the support of any bigger allies (no one is willing to fight the Pope when he has the King of France in his pocket), these five named towns sit close enough together to offer the foundation for a larger single state: Imola, Forlì, Rimini, Faenza and Pesaro. Though the choice is as much strategic as malicious, everyone in the room knows that the ousting of his ex-brother-in-law the Duke of Pesaro will bring with it a special satisfaction.

‘We will start here.’ Cesare places his index finger on a point on the map. The stones in his rings glitter even in the half-light. Their captain-general is wearing the price of a small estate on one hand. ‘The city of Imola, and then Forlì. Vitelli?’ He turns to the weasel-faced veteran. ‘You are a man who knows your artillery. How many cannonballs do you think we need to blow holes in Caterina Sforza’s fortresses?’

Vitelli grins. ‘I think that will depend on what the lady is wearing at the time.’