Cesare Borgia - Early Life [1476-1495])
Caesar Borgia is the most typical representative of the purely political upheaval, and acting on that upheaval his efforts stereotype its most striking features. The term of Caesar Borgia's life from the year of his birth in 1476, to that of his death in 1507, falls within the period generally known as the Renaissance. The very vagueness of the term is almost sufficient excuse for a short attempt to give it a fairly definite content. As the name itself implies, the Renaissance was an age of tremendous fermentation, culminating in a general upheaval- an age of regeneration in religion, in politics, in literature and in art. It was not simply the expansion of Italy, but the expansion of Europe. The exact date, it has been truly remarked, at which this process first began to take place, is as hard to define as the commencement of spring or summer. And yet it was no Swedish summer - a sudden burst, an explosion unforeseen and overwhelming in its headlong tumult. The change had been long coming; and when it finally did come, judged by the dreary ages which had preceded it, it was only what had been looked forward to with hope and fear.
The varied form which tyranny took was illustrative of the complexity of the forces at work. There was the hereditary despotism of the marquisate of Ferrara and the princedom of Urbino, the condottiere type in the Sforzas at Milan, the type produced by Papal nepotism as the Riario at Forli and the Farnese at Parma, and the genuine tyranny resulting from popular favour, as the Bentivogli at Bologna and the Baglioni at Perugia. In himself the tyrant was frequently of low birth, as Muzio Sforza, still more frequently a bastard, as Sigismondo Malatesta or Bosco D'Este, but provided he had the military genius of a Carmagnola, the remorseless conscience of a Caesar Borgia, the profound knowledge of men and things to be seen in Lorenzo de Medici, he was bound to succeed, and to succeed in proportion to the strength of his own individual character.
Caesar Borgia was one of a family of five children by the same mother, of which he was the third, being born, as is inferred from Alexander's own words, in April 1476. The other four were Don Pedro Loys, born about 1467, who died in 1488, Don Giovanni, the unfortunate Duke of Gandia - a title which he assumed on his brother's death - born in 1474, Lucrezia, born in 1480, and lastly Gioffre, born in 1481 or 1482. On April 18, 1480, a bull of Sixtus IV declared Caesar to be a son of Cardinal Roderigo Borgia. As the third son, Caesar was marked out for a career in the Church where he might tread in the steps of, and ultimately succeed, his restless parent.
On August 11th 1492 Cardinal Roderigo Borgia was elected Pope as Alexander VI. The means by which this had been brought about were notorious in Rome. Men in the latter part of the fifteenth century, at least as much as in the time of Walpole, had their price, and the cardinals were quite ready to sell their vote to the highest bidder or the most dexterous deceiver. The new Pope owed his victory over Cardinal della Rovere Ascanio Sforza not so much to his putting into vigorous motion the machinery which lay to hand, as to his fascinating manners and the inimitable way in which he had thrown dust into his opponent's eyes. The fact that he was lax and dissolute was no argument with men who were in a similar plight.
As might have been expected, the lucrative posts, with which his life had begun, were further increased as he advanced in years. In 1491 Innocent VIII conferred on him the bishopric of Pampeluna, the revenues of which, combined with his other sources of income, enabled him, though but a lad of fifteen, to surround himself with a small yet princely episcopal court.
Alexander lost no time in taking advantage of his enormous powers to further the projects which had so long been dear to his heart. Barely a fortnight after his election Caesar was made Bishop of Valentia. The full significance of this appointment becomes clear when it is remembered that it had just been relinquished by Alexander himself, and that its transference to his son turned it into a hereditary dignity for the Borgias. A month later the young bishop was created Cardinal of Valentia, and early in 1493 came up to Rome where he was installed in full pomp on the Transtevero.
With Caesar once settled in Rome, events began to march rapidly. In June, his sister Lucrezia, after being twice betrothed to Spanish noblemen, who were rejected as not important enough for a Pope's daughter, was finally married to Giovanni Sforza, lord of Pesaro. The festivities to celebrate the union scandalized even tolerant Rome, trained in the excesses of Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII. They were the first of a long series which, from being grossly exaggerated by rumor, caused the entertainments at the Vatican to become synonymous in the public mind with orgies of the most degrading kind.
Even at this age a certain air of gloomy mystery had begun to appear in Caesar, which, coupled with a like secrecy of action, caused men to think that behind that handsome smiling exterior and apparent charming frankness, there lay more than at first sight could be discerned. Terror at being on the weaker side was the one unchanging principle in the policy of Italian statesmen, and Caesar, born and brought up in this shifty school of politics, was too wily and keen-eyed to forget its first lessons.
That disturbances were comparatively rare is possible; but when the extreme severity is remembered with which the slightest expressions of hostile - or even discontented - feeling were punished, that is hardly to be wondered at. With examples of severity before their eyes-with a powerful guard under the orders of so ruthless a miscreant as Cesare Borgia - and with spies in every house, it is little to be wondered at if political disturbances were of but rare occurrence.
On June 13th 1497 the Duke of Gandia and his brother Caesar had supped with their mother and then parted. The duke was not seen alive again. In considering the arguments which are supposed to convict Caesar of the murder of his brother it is not hard to draw up a brief of almost equally strong probabilities on the other side. The mere taking of life was no part of Caesar's peculiar policy in the absence of reasons, selfish perhaps and heartless though they be, of the strongest kind. Not a single contemporaneous writer who so glibly pronounces Caesar guilty offers the only reason which could have maddened him into attempting so desperate a way of cutting the Gordian knot, or even definitely pronounces him as the author of the crime until some nine months later, when the march of time had proved in what direction his ambition lay.
The singular career of Caesar Borgia made him a fitting subject to be regarded as a hero of an unbroken series of crimes and a monster who had exhausted the whole list of vices, fit only to be summed up in the epigrammatic description of a debauchee; but common sense, when the value of authorities comes before it, has a right to demand more convincing proof than the scurrilous tittle-tattle of the political pamphleteer or the chroniques scandaleuses of the frequenters of the Vatican. Belief in the truth of these charges ought, as has been judiciously observed in strict logic to involve belief in the many tales of witchcraft and wholesale poisoning to be found in the same annals. An arbitrary selection of instances, warped from their context to heighten the colors of a picture, yet taken from sources where all is stated with equal emphasis, is as unscientific as it is unfair.
Caesar, whether innocent or guilty, quietly prepared to step into his dead brother's shoes and made ready to start for Naples as had originally been intended. He intended to try whether he could not reconcile the opposing factions of French and Spaniards in the kingdom, and perhaps extract from either party the promise of territory to be the nucleus of a kingdom.
A careful examination of Caesar's life brings into clear relief one all-important fact. Every action of any significance is a link in a preconceived plan. Indeed it might almost be said that none of the leading events in his career are simple results of circumstances, or even done at random ; each one of them is a distinct step nearer a goal which is kept steadily in view. Even when he seems most idle or vacillating, closer inspection proves him to be putting his difficulty warily in a cleft stick, or cautiously trying to look round an obstacle which he cannot surmount. History affords no more striking instance of how much a resolute man, untroubled by the moral scruples of finer or weaker natures can effect by sheer dogged obstinacy and persistent refusal to be driven from his path by any individual or any concatenation of circumstances.
On the sword which, Cardinal though he was, he had forged about this time, was engraved the proud motto ' Cum numine Caesaris omen,' which, with the watchword he subsequently adopted from the famous words of Julius Caesar ' Aut Caesar aut nullus' prove the destiny he had marked out for himself.
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