A nation of good haters.—Madama's soldier trade.—A new Pope has to found a new family.—Catherine's bounty to recruits.—A shrewd dealer meets his match.—Signs of hard times.—How to manage a free council.—Forlì ungrateful.—Catherine at bay.—"A Borgia! A Borgia!"—A new year's eve party in 1500.—The lioness in the toils.—Catherine led captive to Rome.
Dr. Samuel Johnson ought to have been a warm admirer of Italian character had he been acquainted with it; for he "liked a good hater." And assuredly the leading physiological characteristic which colours the whole course of Italian history, and furnishes the most universally-applicable master-key to the understanding of its intricacies, is the intensity of mutually-repellant aversion which has always existed among all the constituent elements of society. Private hatred between man and man; clan hatred between family and family; party hatred between blacks and whites, or longs and shorts, or any other distinctive faction-cry; political hatred between patricians and plebeians; social hatred between citizens and the inhabitants of the fields around their walls; and, by no means least though last, municipal hatred between one city and another, has ever been in Italy the master passion, vigorous in its action and notable in its results in proportion to the vigour of social life animating the body of the nation.
Orsini clans no longer level Colonna palaces with the soil in the streets of Rome; the story-graven flagstones of the old Florentine Piazza are no longer stained with the blood of Bianchi or Neri; Siena no more sends out her war-car against Pisa, nor does Genoa fit out fleets against Venice. Despotism has crushed out all vigour from the life and torpified every pulse; and having made a deathlike "solitude, calls it peace."
And has not, then, Despotism done well, even on the showing of the preceding statements? asks its apologists.
The true and enlightened believer in a god-governance, and no devil-governance, of the world, will of course answer unhesitatingly, No! But to answer from the conscience, No!—with faith still as firm as when the nineteenth century was young and proud with chimerical hopes—to answer with convictions still undefeated by the defeats of '48, for ever No!—requires, it must be admitted, a strong and clear belief in the immutability of the causes that result in human good and evil; a lively perception of the truth that no faults of a nation's life can best be remedied by national death; and such a whole-hearted persuasion of the universality of God's law of progress as can cast out all doubt of the fact, that every nation on earth's surface must either advance to improved civilisation, or else prepare to quit the scene, as some little improvable peoples have done and are doing, and leave the valuable space they occupy to more highly-gifted races.
The Italian writers of every age, from the sixteenth century to the present day, are naturally inclined to attribute all the misfortunes of their country to foreign wrong-doing and aggression. And they date the sunset of Italian prosperity, as Guicciardini does in the passage previously referred to, from the French invasion in the last years of the fifteenth century. But not even the dangers to be anticipated from the pretensions of the French monarch, nor the actual presence of foreign troops on the soil of Italy, could avail to check, even for a time, the deadly hatred of city against city.
This had blazed out fatally between Florence and Pisa in 1496, and was still raging in the early months of 1499. Pisa was assisted by the Venetians; and the strength of the two maritime republics seems to have tried the resources of the Florentines severely. Like the other second-rate princes of Italy, our "Madama di Forlì" drove a considerable and important trade in hireling troops. This species of business was in every respect profitable to the rulers of these petty states. They thus, besides pocketing considerable sums, maintained bodies of troops owing allegiance to them and fighting under their flag, which their own resources would have been wholly insufficient to support. And the power of hiring out these to either of two contending powers caused their alliance to be bid for by their more powerful neighbours, and gave them an importance in the political calculations of the time disproportioned to the size of their little territories.
Madama had had considerable dealings of this sort with the Florentines. Ottaviano had taken service with the wealthy republicans, and drew a handsome stipend from them as General. Early in 1499 the Republic had sent proposals for a fresh body of troops, and Madama desired nothing better than to execute the order. But times were hard in Forlì, and were daily threatening to become harder. Pestilence had been raging throughout the city and territory, and had inopportunely raised the value of the raw material of armies.
Worse still, in March of this year Pope Alexander, in full conclave, had declared Catherine and sundry other little potentates of Romagna deposed from their sovereignties, for not having punctually paid up their dues to the Apostolic Chamber. Catherine, indeed, forthwith sent up envoys to Rome—doctors learned in law and others—to point out to Pope Alexander that there was an outstanding account due to her late husband, the noble Count Riario, which had not been settled at the time of Sixtus IV.'s death; and that she would readily pay anything that at a fair settling might be found due. One would have thought that a Riario's wife might have known the Apostolic court better than to have taken such useless trouble. Did she think Uncle Sixtus of holy memory was the only Pope who had a family to found? Of course her envoys were sent about their business without having been allowed to speak a syllable of their errand.
These dues, a feudal tribute always reserved to the Holy See in its bulls of investiture, seem rarely to have been heard anything of as long as a friendly pope occupied the chair of St. Peter; but as soon as ever an excuse was wanted at Rome for getting rid of an obnoxious princeling, the Holy Father looked up his ledger and pronounced sentence of dechéance against the debtor.
Now, Pope Alexander had sons, whom he did not even take the trouble of calling nephews; and he was, to say the least, quite as royal-minded as the Franciscan Sixtus. His eldest hope, Cesare Borgia, was exceeding royal-minded too. And so the Borgias had to be founded as well as the Riarii; and, unhappily for the other princes of Romagna, as well as for Catherine and her son, upon a much wider foundation.
Thus from the early spring of 1499, things wore a stormy and troubled appearance at Forlì. Not that it is to be imagined that Catherine for an instant dreamed of submitting to the sentence pronounced against her. Such a course would have been unheard of in her day. Holy Father might say what he pleased, hail bulls, and do his worst. The Countess of Forlì would hold her son's sceptre for him, as long as the walls of the city and fortress would hold together!
And besides, this old debauchee of a Pope might die any fine morning. He was well stricken in years, and his life said to be none of the best. And then there would be a fresh shuffle of the cards, and a new deal, with who knows what new fortunes, and Borgias nowhere in the race.
Meantime it was very desirable to keep on good terms of friendship with Florence, and Madama accordingly set about preparing the body of troops desired by the Republic. But symptoms unpleasant enough of Rome's ban having already begun to produce dangerous effects were not slow to manifest themselves.
Two deputies were appointed for each ward of the city to make out lists of all the men capable of bearing arms; and the roll having been duly sent in to the castle, all those named in it were ordered to present themselves in the space in front of the citadel at a given hour, to receive, as they were bound to do, their sovereign's orders.[137] Catherine and her officers were there to receive their brave lieges. But time came—time went—and not a man appeared. The lady was angered to a degree she rarely suffered herself to appear; and issued orders that officers should that night go round to every house in Forlì at midnight, when the inmates were sure to be found there, and warn each enrolled man severally, that if he did not appear at the appointed hour on the morrow, he should be dangling from a gallows before the next nightfall. But the result of this vigorous measure by no means tended to mend matters. For the threatened men, almost to a man, used the remaining hours of that night to escape from the city; a contingency against which no provision had been made; as it had never entered into the head of Catherine or her counsellors that the daring disaffection of her subjects could proceed to such lengths. The anger of the baffled sovereign may be imagined. But it was still worse to find, from the unusually loud mutterings of the citizens, that public opinion was in favour of the deserters. One said that citizens unaccustomed to soldiership could be of no use in war; another, that it was hard for men with families to be called on to abandon them for Madama's affairs, and merely because she willed it; while others, more daringly meddling with matters of state policy, maintained, that it was against all reason that Forlì should unite herself with Florence, which could be of no use to her, against the Venetians, with whom was the principal commerce of the city.
The incident was assuredly an ominous one. But Catherine was not to be easily frightened or diverted from her intent; and for this time the required levies were obtained from the apparently more docile and more long-suffering peasants of the territory.
A little later in July of this year 1499, we find the Florentines again negotiating with Catherine, and no less a man than Niccolò Macchiavelli was the agent sent to her by the Republic. The written instructions received by him from the Signory on the occasion of this embassy, and seven letters from him to the Gonfolonière and council, giving an account of his proceedings, have been printed from the originals preserved in the Archives at Florence.[138]
The business in hand was the signing of a new engagement for another year with the Count Ottaviano, as general in the army of the Republic. The young count was now just twenty years old. But he does not appear to have taken any part in the matter, leaving his mother to make the best bargain for his services that she could. But Florence wanted to reduce his pay from the twelve thousand ducats it had been fixed at the previous year, to ten thousand; and this was the point which Macchiavelli was urged to use all his state-craft and subtilty in gaining. The arguments used, the considerations put forward, and the weighing of the probabilities as to the opposite party yielding or holding out, are very amusingly similar in tone and turn of mind, to those of any Florentine driving a hard bargain at the present day; and show us the learned and profound Secretary of the Republic almost a match for any chafferer of the Mercato nuovo.
He alleges the exhausted condition of the Florentine treasury for the moment; enlarges much on the advantages to be drawn from the friendship of Florence, and speaks largely of her well-known gratitude to her supporters. At the same time he points out, that the present proposition of the Republic is solely motived by its wish to continue a connexion honourable to both parties, as, for the present, it has absolutely no need of the noble Count's services.
But the astute Secretary had met with a match for his diplomacy. Catherine said, that she had ever found the Florentines, as now, abounding in most satisfactory assurances and courteous words, but that their acts matched badly with them. She thought she merited better treatment at their hands, having exposed her State to the inroads of the Venetians by her faithful adherence to them. She wished nothing but to continue on the good and friendly terms they had hitherto been on. And as for this matter of the reduction of the salary, it pained her, because it was seeming to cast a slight upon her son to diminish his appointments, while those of other generals were maintained by the Republic at the old amount. Besides, there was the Duke of Milan, her relative, now offering to engage Ottaviano at twelve thousand ducats: and what excuse could she make to him, if she refused his offer, and accepted a worse one from Florence? Then again, the stipend due for last year had not been paid yet; and really she wished to see that settled before entering on new engagements.
Macchiavelli writes home, that he strove hard to content her with good words, saying everything he could think of to cajole her; but was forced to come away convinced, he says, that "words and reasoning will not avail much to satisfy her, unless some partial performance be added to them." As to this offer from the Duke of Milan, he fears there may be some grounds of apprehension concerning it, as Messer Giovanni Casale, the Duke's envoy, had been at Forlì for the last two months, and evidently had much influence there.
It is amusing, knowing as we do right well, what was in the minds of either party, to read the abundance of complimentary speeches, duly detailed by the careful secretary, in which all these bargainings were carefully wrapped up.
At last Macchiavelli writes home to his masters to the effect, that he thinks they must pay off the old score, and increase their present offer to twelve thousand ducats. And the treaty was eventually signed for that amount.
There are signs however in these letters of Macchiavelli, that the Florentine coffers were really running low. The envoy had been instructed to ask for a body of 500 troops; and writes back, that they may be had; and that Catherine will take all care to send picked men, well armed, and faithful;—but that the cash must be sent beforehand, five hundred ducats at the least, before a man could march. If the above sum were sent, they might reckon on having the five hundred men before Pisa in fifteen days; but the ready cash was an absolute sine-quâ-non. And the result of this communication from the envoy was, that the Signory suffered the negociation quietly to drop.
Then come orders to purchase sundry war-stores and ammunitions; to which the reply is, that Catherine had neither powder nor balls to spare, being but badly provided for her own exigences. To show however her wish to do everything in her power for the Republic, Madama had consented to let the Signory have the half of a parcel of twenty thousand pounds of nitre, which she had succeeded in purchasing at Pesaro.
And so on the 25th of July Macchiavelli left Forlì, having been obliged to yield every point in dispute to our business-like heroine.
But the evil days were at hand. Louis XII., who had succeeded to Charles VIII., entered into a league with the Venetians and Pope Alexander, with the understanding that the king should be assisted in seizing the Duchy of Milan, while Cesare Borgia was to be helped to possess himself of the various small principalities of Romagna, specially those of Imola and Forlì. Early in November, Borgia with a numerous army, chiefly French, appeared before Imola. Ottaviano hurried thither immediately, and having done what he could to persuade the little city to make a vigorous defence, returned to the more important care of preparing Forlì to stand a siege.
Imola surrendered at the first summons of Borgia. But not so did Dionigi Naldi the Castellano of the fortress. To every threat of the enemy he replied, that he was determined to do his duty to the last; and in fact only yielded when the fortress had been battered into ruins around him.
Meanwhile Madama and her son were taking every means to defend Forlì. The country was laid waste around, and everything portable brought into the city. The fortifications were repaired, Ottaviano himself labouring as a porter to encourage his subjects, and Madama herself personally superintending the work. But the conduct of Imola made Catherine feel, that unless the Forlìvesi really intended to stand by her and defend their city, it would be much wiser to employ all her efforts in preparing for an obstinate resistance in the fortress, and leave the town to itself. She therefore determined to call a general council of the citizens, and invite every one to speak his opinion freely on the measures to be adopted, for raising the necessary supplies. Her own plans and intentions were first fully explained, and then any who had objections to make were desired to speak. Whereupon many rose to put forward different views, to whom the superior advantages of the lady's plans were duly pointed out. But it so happened, that the objectors were still unconvinced. Whereupon Madama became so angered, that "she regarded this circumstance as an abuse of her kindness; and being resolved to tolerate such opposition no further, caused a gallows to be forthwith raised on the piazza, and a rack to be erected by the side of it; wishing thus to let it be understood to the terror of all, that, though her goodness was great, it had its limits."[139]
Yet these conciliatory measures do not seem to have had all the effect that could have been desired on the minds of the citizens. For notwithstanding the persuasive nature of the arguments mentioned above, it seems, that the result of one or two other councils of her lieges finally convinced Catherine that no hope was to be placed in the fidelity of the city; and that she had nothing to look to but the strength of the fortress, and her own energy in defending it.
In these nearly desperate circumstances the still undaunted Countess determined on the 11th of December to send her son away into Tuscany, that his safety at least might in case of the worst be secured, while she remained to face the storm. The division between the town and the citadel now became complete. The citizens made no longer any secret of their intentions to open their gates to Borgia, and tender him their allegiance; while all those who were personal adherents of the Riarii, or who determined still to link their fortunes with that of Madama and her sons retreated into the fortress.
The citizens had thus abandoned and defied in her danger and extremity the high-handed and haughty mistress, before whom they had so often trembled; and were doubtless congratulating themselves in having been permitted so easily to change their allegiance from a sinking house to one in the ascendant, when they were suddenly reminded that they were not yet well "off with the old love," by the opening of the fortress guns on the city. The astonishment was great, that Catherine, who must well know that she would shortly have need of every arm and every ounce of powder she could muster, should thus commence a contest with a second enemy, as if the Borgia were not enough. But the proud Dame held that all those who were not for her, were against her; and could ill brook the disobedience and desertion of her vassals. But this cannonading her own city, was, under any provocation, an act but poorly excusable by the motives set forth in its defence by Burriel;—that the enemy might not suppose that she was an acquiescing party in the abandonment of the city, or that she was alarmed or discouraged by it.
On the other hand it must not be imagined that the injury inflicted on the citizens by such a measure was in any way comparable to that which we naturally picture to ourselves, as the result of firing on a city from the walls of a fortress. The proportion between the means of offence and defence at the disposal of European combatants, has for the last four hundred years been continually changing in favour of the former. So that the mischief done in a given time by any military operations is infinitely greater now than was the case when Catherine battered Forlì.
On the 19th of December Cesare Borgia made his triumphal entry into Forlì, with all those theatrical circumstances of personal pomp and bravery which in the conceptions of those peacock-like southern idiosyncracies form so large and essential portion of the idea of "greatness." The troops and their officers having filed into the city before him, the great man,—most wicked, base, and incapable of any great or noble thought of all men there;—the great man, most reverenced, admired, and obeyed of all men there, advanced stately in full armour on a white horse, with an heraldically embroidered silk tunic over his armour, a tall white plume nodding above his helmet, and in his hand a long green lance, the point of which rested on the toe of his boot.
And these well selected properties answered their purpose so perfectly, that no man in the vast concourse there guessed, that Cesare Borgia was not a great man, even when to the considerable discomfiture of all the scenic arrangements a sudden torrent of rain threatened to wash out all visible distinction between his Highness and ordinary mortals. The magistrates and deputation of nobles, who were receiving him at the gate, turned and fled in scamping disorder, each man to the nearest shelter.[140] Borgia hastily rode round the piazza in performance of the recognised symbol of taking possession of the city, and then hurried off to the lodging prepared for him. But the storm was productive of far more serious evil to the unfortunate townsfolk. For all the officers, having hurried away to their various quarters, no one remained to superintend the billeting of the soldiers with any regularity. And the consequence was, that they rushed pell-mell through the city, forcing their way into the houses, and finding lodging for themselves according to their own discretion.
The results of this irruption, and of the license which followed it, were almost equivalent to the sack of the city. The town became a perfect hell, writes one chronicler.[141] The shops were gutted. The Palazzo Pubblico was almost entirely devastated. The great council hall was turned into a tavern, and all the seats burned. The guard-room and the offices of the customs were made a slaughter-house; and the utmost confusion and disorder prevailed everywhere. "In the houses," writes Burriel, "neither could any business be carried on, nor could their inmates even live there, as the soldiers entered in parties, made themselves masters of everything, and ill-treated the owners;—not to mention the worse lot of widows, and of those who had daughters, and could find no place of safety for them."
The citizens began to find that things could hardly have been worse with them had they rallied round their courageous liege lady, and bravely defended their walls.
Borgia twice had parley with Madama at his request; and used every argument to induce her to give up the fortress, wholly in vain. Towards the end of December the attack was commenced; and for about a week continued without much result. And then, at the beginning of the new year and century, a truce was agreed on for a few days. The French during this time gave themselves up to festivities and amusements, which seem not a little to have astonished the more civilised Italians. For instance, writes one of the historians, D'Aubigny and Galvani, two of Borgia's generals, lodging in the house of Messer Giovanni Monsignani determined on inviting a party of their brother officers. A sufficiently ample banqueting hall was provided by boarding up the arches of the "loggia" or open arcade so common in Italian domestic architecture; and provision for a feast intended to last two entire days was obtained at small cost by a razzia upon the peasants. When the guests arrived, they were followed, we are assured, by a mob of all sorts of people, who, while the convives sat at table, stood around eating and drinking all they could lay their hands on. And when the repast was finished, two men, "according to their barbarous, and truly too outrageous custom," sprung on the table, and dancing on it, smashed and destroyed all the plates and other utensils thereon, and threw the wreck with all the remnant of the eatables to the ground. "Then came in an exceedingly long procession of men and women," (of whom a considerable number, it should seem, accompanied the camp;) "driving before them a man on horseback in a long gown and cap like a mitre on his head. This procession stood around the tables drinking and making merry, with much laughter. Then all went out arm in arm, parading the streets, and roaring out their tasteless disagreeable songs to the exceeding wonder of the Forlìvesi."[142] We can easily believe it;—easily imagine too the scene produced by the Lord of Misrule, who may probably be recognised in the gentleman with the long gown and mitre, and his roystering crew of roaring swash-bucklers startling the echoes from the tall stone walls of the old Italian town, amid the cautious peeping of the scared and scandalised burghers, quite at a loss to understand the meaning and intention of this strange manifestation of the barbarians.
On the 10th of January, 1500, the attack on the fortress was renewed, and by mid-day on the 12th, the breach was nearly practicable. Borgia left the attack, we are told, at that hour, to go to dinner! and while at table, made a bet of thirty ducats with some of his officers, that he would have Catherine in his hands within three days. Returning to the walls, he found that fortune had prepared for him a more rapid victory than he had hoped for. Either by treachery, as the Forlì historians, of course, maintain, or by the efforts of the enemy, a fire had broken out in the fort, which paralysed the garrison; and driving them from their defences, caused the principal part of the fortifications to fall into the hands of the enemy.
The case was now clearly hopeless; but Catherine retiring into the principal tower, still stood at bay. At the same time another tower, which had served as the magazine, and into which a large number of the enemy had penetrated, was fired by some of Catherine's people; and all those within it met with a fearful death. This act of useless cruelty so exasperated the soldiers of Borgia, that a general massacre of the garrison was commenced. At this juncture, Borgia once again demanded to parley with the Countess, who accordingly presented herself at a window of her tower. They spoke together at length, while he strove to persuade her of the uselessness of prolonging the struggle. But while she still stood at the window speaking with him, a French soldier, who had found some means of entrance into the tower, stepped up behind her, and made her prisoner in the name of his captain.
All this took place on the afternoon of the 12th of January. Catherine was that night kept prisoner in the citadel, where Borgia and the French general visited her, and talked with her, it is recorded, for more than an hour;—an hour sufficiently bitter, one may suppose, to that haughty dame, who had to listen to the courtesies of her captors, while the sounds of falling masonry, and exploding mines, the shouts of the pursuers, and the cries of the conquered as they fell, ever and anon came through the thick walls, and gave clear evidence of the work of destruction which was in progress.
The Forlì historians recount at much length the cruelties and insults which their forefathers had to suffer from the victorious barbarian army during several days,—the insatiable rapacity of all classes of the soldiers, the wanton destruction of that which could not be appropriated, and the general devastation of the city. But all this is unhappily too common, and too well known a story, to need repeating here.
History has for centuries been preaching to mankind from her great stock text, on war and its consequences;—and at last not so wholly in vain, as in the good old time. But if so terrible an amount of evil be inseparable from the most glorious war,—and the valorous assertion of right, against wrong-doing might is, and must ever be, glorious,—what shall be said of slaughter-matches, in which no high idea or noble feeling had any, the least share; by which the basest passions are intensified, the lowest motives alone brought into action, with only this distinction, that the higher the social rank of the "noble soldier," the baser were the objects he proposed to himself as the prizes of the fight!
Towards the end of January, Borgia left Forlì, wholly submitted to his authority, and led away his noble captive to Rome. Catherine, clothed, it is recorded, in a black satin dress, made the journey on horseback, riding between her conqueror and one of the French generals. She arrived in Rome on the 26th of February, 1500. And, as she once again entered that Porta del Popolo, the dethroned widow can hardly have failed to contrast the circumstances of her return with those of her first arrival in the Eternal City.
Catherine arrives in Rome;—is accused of attempting to poison the Pope;—is imprisoned in St. Angelo;—is liberated;—and goes to Florence.—Her cloister life with the Murate nuns.—Her collection of wonderful secrets.—Making allowances.—Catherine's death.
Passing along the same line of streets which she had traversed twenty-three years before as the bride of the then wealthiest and most powerful man in Rome,—as much an object of curiosity now as then to the sight-loving populace, eager to stare at the celebrated prisoner of the now wealthiest and most powerful man in Rome, as then to welcome the great man's bride,—Catherine was led by her captor to the Vatican. Up the well-known stair, and through the familiar chambers, lined, when last she passed across them, with a crowd of bending courtiers, anxious to catch a word or glance from the powerful favourite, who held all Apostolic graces in her hand, she passed on to the presence of the Pontiff.
Alexander received her courteously; assigned an apartment in the Belvidere of the Vatican as her prison, and assured her, that no care should be wanting to make her residence there as little irksome as was consistent with the precautions necessary to secure her safe custody.
No doubt the haughty lady replied to the Sovereign Pontiff, who, when last they had met, had been too happy in being honoured with her friendship, with equal courtesy. But the feelings in the breast of either interlocutor, which were thus decorously veiled, may be easily estimated.
And it was not long before the genuine hatred pierced through the flimsy sham of courtly politeness. In the month of June—that is, four months after her arrival in Rome—an accusation was brought against Catherine of having attempted to destroy the Pope by poison. The story put forward was one strangely characteristic of medieval modes of thinking and acting.[143] It was asserted that when Catherine heard in the spring of 1499, that the Pope had judicially declared her deposed from her sovereignty, she had at once determined on compassing his death. With this view, she had caused certain letters, written by her to the Pontiff, to be placed inside the clothing, on the breast of one dying of the plague, then prevalent in Forlì. These letters, having thus been rendered deadly to whoso should touch them, were consigned to a certain confidential servant of the Countess, named Battista, with orders to proceed to Rome, and deliver the papers into no hand save that of Alexander himself. This man, the accusation went on to say, met in Rome one Cristoforo Balatrone, a former servant of the Riarii, then in disgrace with his mistress; and confided to him the real object of the mission intrusted to him, promising him restoration to Catherine's favour, if he would assist in the execution of it.
The accusation, therefore, it will be observed, supposed that Catherine did not merely avail herself of this servant's aid, as a courier to carry the letters and deliver them as ordered, which would have been all that was needful, but unnecessarily, as it would seem, confided to him the fatal secret of her intentions.
Cristoforo, it was said, instead of acquiescing in Battista's proposal, persuaded the latter to reveal the whole to the Pontiff. For that purpose they forthwith proceeded to the Vatican. It was late in the evening, and they were bidden by one Tommaso Carpi, the Pope's chamberlain, and who was also, as it happened, a Forlì man, to return on the morrow if they wished an audience. In the mean time Cristoforo, not being able to keep so great a secret for so many hours, related the whole matter to his brother, a private in the Papal guards. The soldier immediately reported the story to his captain; and he, thinking promptitude necessary in such a case, forthwith arrested both Cristoforo and Battista, and made the Pope acquainted with all the circumstances on the following morning. Alexander knowing, it was said (although at that period he could have known nothing of the sort, but could only have hoped it), that Catherine would shortly be brought to Rome, ordered that these men should be kept in secret confinement till the arrival of the Countess.
According to this story, therefore, Alexander was aware of Catherine's murderous intentions at the time of that courteous reception we read of. But then, and for four months afterwards, no such accusation was heard of. At the end of that time Catherine was submitted to the humiliation of being confronted with the two men who testified to this accusation, before Alexander himself. To our ideas it would seem that there must have been various means of proving or disproving the facts in question. The letters might have been produced, and means of ascertaining their contagiousness devised. But juridical and medical science were in far too barbarous a state, and still more fatally the sentiment of fairness and appreciation of the desirableness of truth, far too much deadened for any such mode of proceeding to have been thought of. The witnesses maintained their story by their assertion; Catherine utterly denied that there was any truth in any part of it; and the whole scope of the examination seems to have been to see which party would most obstinately adhere to their assertion.
In an ordinary case the obstinacy would quickly have been more satisfactorily tested by placing the accused on the rack. But even a Pope, and that Pope Alexander VI., would hardly venture to apply the torture to Catherine Sforza. The examination, therefore appears to have resulted in a battledore-and-shuttlecock iteration of "You did," and "I did not," so much to the advantage of the lady, that one[144] of her biographers writes triumphantly of her, that "Although confronted with those who audaciously accused her of having sent them to Rome for that purpose, she, with a virile and intrepid mind, conquered by her obstinate constancy the wicked will of Alexander."
This wicked will was not, however, so completely vanquished as to prevent the accused, though not convicted, Countess from being immediately transferred from the Belvidere to the castle of St. Angelo; to the prisons of which ill-omened fortress she was consigned on the 26th of June.
And all the probabilities of the case seem to indicate that the accusation was trumped up merely to justify this change in the Countess' place of confinement. Catherine, while she lived, was likely to be ever as tormenting a thorn in the side of Cæsare Borgia, as the ousted Ordelaffi pretenders had been in hers, even during the Pontiff's life. And after that, when the new sovereign of Romagna would have to maintain himself in his position unaided by Apostolic influence, she would be a far more dangerous enemy. Yet the rank and connections of Catherine, and her own reputation and character and standing among the princes of Italy were such, that it was requisite to proceed warily in any attempt to get rid of her. A good pretext was necessary to justify even the rigour of imprisoning her in St. Angelo. But that step taken, the rest would not be so difficult. Those once hidden in the dreadful vaults of that huge mass of old Roman masonry, were too completely cut off from all communication with the outer world, for there to be any possibility of marking their passage from the living tomb, to the veritable grave within its walls. Papal dungeons reveal no secrets; and there can be little doubt that, but for the interposition of an arm more powerful than that of the Pontiff, Catherine would never have recrossed that threshold passed by so many unreturning feet.
As to the real guilt of our heroine in this matter, it must be admitted that the presumption in her favour rests more on the improbability of the means said to have been selected by her, and on the incredibility of Alexander's having suppressed all mention of the crime for four months, rather than on any conviction that she would have been incapable of any such atrocity. That Catherine would without hesitation or scruple take human life—nay, many human lives—on the provocation of wrong much lighter than that received by her from the Pontiff, is clear enough; but it is true, that many, most probably, of her contemporaries, who would have never thought twice of sending burgher or peasant to the rack or gallows in a fit of passing passion, would have shrunk from poisoning a Pope. The atrocity of the deed, in the estimation of the contemporary writers, is derived from the sacred character and high rank of its object. And these are considerations which, it may be fairly supposed from what we have seen of Catherine, would be likely to influence her less than they might have done others. It is difficult to believe that Popes were very sacred personages in her eyes. She had been too much behind the scenes to be much under the influence of stage illusion. And, in a word, it will be felt, if the foregoing pages have at all succeeded in picturing this masterful woman to the reader as she appears to the writer, that she was not likely to have turned away from any means that presented themselves to her of removing out of her path any individual, be he who he might, whose existence seemed fatal to the objects for which she had lived and struggled.
Nevertheless, for the reasons above stated, it seems more probable that the accusation in question was trumped up for the sake of furnishing an opportunity to the Pope of taking her life, which was almost as dangerous to his aims, as his life was to her. And had it not been for the powerful interference of the French king, doubtless Catherine would never have come out alive from the dungeons of St. Angelo. One of the historians[145] simply says that she owed her life to the protection of France. Things were not in a position to render it possible that Alexander should act in defiance of the remonstrances of Louis XII.; and Catherine was liberated on the 30th of June, 1501.
Having remained at Rome a few days among her relatives and connections of the house of Riario, she left it for the last time on the 27th of July, and went to Florence. All her children by her three husbands had already found an asylum there; where, in consideration of her third marriage, rights of citizenship had, by an instrument bearing date the 27th of July, 1498, been conferred on all of them.
It is not without a certain feeling of surprise that one remembers that Catherine, after a career so full of incident, comprising three married lives and three widowhoods, was now only thirty-nine years of age. The active and useful portion of many an existence begins at as late a period. But Catherine seems to have felt that she had lived her life, and that the active portion of her career was over. Almost immediately on arriving in Florence, she selected the convent of the Murate as the place of her retirement; and she never afterwards quitted it.
More than one change in the political world occurred during the years she passed there, which seemed calculated to make a place for her once again upon the great scene of Europe, and perhaps to open a path for her return to sovereign place and power. Alexander VI. died in 1503; and, after a few months' occupation of the Papal throne by Pius III., Giuliano della Rovere, first cousin of Girolamo Riario, was elected and became Pope under the name of Julius II. It is true that this warrior Pope did not subsequently appear disposed to lend any helping hand to his Riari cousins for the recovery of their dominions; but the elevation of a cousin to the chair of St. Peter might well call forth from the cloister one who had any wish remaining to play a part in the world.
But Catherine remained quiet in the monotonous repose of her cell in the Via Ghibellina, and did not disturb herself to make even the smallest attempt at obtaining the favour of the new Pontiff. It must be concluded that she had in truth abandoned the world, with an earnestness of purpose more durable than is usually the case with such votaries of seclusion.
Yet few can have ever experienced a more violent change than that suffered by this strong-willed woman in passing from a life so filled with movement, excitement, activity, danger, pains, pleasures, and vicissitudes, to the dead tranquillity of a secure cloister cell. Her priest biographer[146] hints that the macerations, fasts, and austerities practised by her during her residence at the Murate, were such as in all probability to have shortened her life. Having followed with infinite complacency the worldly triumphs and grandeurs of his heroine, as long as devoutly worshipped Mammon had rewards to shower on his votary, the greedy biographer seeks to finish off his picture by adding a little halo of sanctity, and thus claims double honours for his client.
But there is reason to think that these severe penances are wholly the creatures of the writer's priestly invention. The Murate, at the period of Catherine's retirement there, was not the place any penitent would have selected for the leading of an austere life. The convent was inhabited exclusively by noble ladies, and some picture of the life led there by them, has been given by the present writer in speaking of the residence there of another Catherine[147] a few years afterwards. Her childhood was passed within the same cloister-wall that had sheltered the decline of that namesake whose character presented so many striking points of similarity to her own.
It is not likely that the Murate convent was the scene of any severe austerities. But if no spiritual excitement of this sort supplied for Catherine the place of that which she had lost, the hours of the long day, however diversified by matins, lauds, complines, and vesper amusements, must surely have passed heavily.
A very curious MS. volume,[148] copied from one in Catherine's own handwriting, may perhaps indicate the disposal of some of those weary hours. It consists of more than five hundred receipts and experiments in medicine, chemistry, cosmetics, perfumery, alchemy, &c. The practice of forming and preserving such collections seems to have been a common one among the ladies of that time; and various similar volumes may be met with. In a short preface, the copier of Catherine's manuscript, a certain Messer Lucantonio Cuppani, declares that he has tested many of the receipts and found the results perfectly satisfactory, and that he doubts not that the rest are equally trustworthy, seeing that so great a woman had recorded them; wherefore he has made the present copy, lest the knowledge of such wonderful secrets might be lost.
Many of these valuable secrets are of a nature to be only too really valuable in the hands of a sovereign possessing a mint of her own. The papal bull authorising the coining of money at Forlì contains a special provision for the goodness of the metal. But the following entries, in the royal-minded Catherine's own hand, suggest strong doubts of the condition having been duly observed:—
"To convert pewter into silver of the finest quality and of standard alloy."
"For giving to bars of brass a fine golden colour."
Several receipts, "For multiplying silver."
More curious and suspicious still, is the possession of a method by which "to give weight to a crown or ducat of gold, without hurting the conscience—senza carico di coscienza"!
A great number refer to subjects, which we must suppose to have been more interesting to Catherine at an earlier period of her life, than when living among "the wall'd-up Nuns." As, for instance, a receipt "to drive away pallor from the face, and give it a colour." For this purpose, roots of myrrh must be shred into good generous wine; then "drink sufficiently of that, and it will give you a carnation of the most beautiful." This is probably one of the receipts tried, and found to answer by Messer Lucantonio.
Then we have a water to preserve the skin against blotches; another to make the teeth white; and a third to make the gums red; and very many others for the beautification of almost every part of the person.
As a specimen of the medical "secrets," of which a great number are treasured up in this curious volume, the following may be cited: For infirm lungs, an ointment is to be made of the blood of a hen, a duck, a pig, a goose, mixed with fresh butter and white wax. And this is to be applied to the chest on a fox's skin. In which the fox-skin holds a place analogous to that of the six pounds of beef in the well-known recipe for making stone soup.
More problematical is a receipt for "a drink to make splintered bones come out of the wound of themselves."
There are many examples of sick-room practice, based on curious combinations of medical with theological treatment; as in the following method for healing sabre wounds: "Take three pieces of an old shirt, steeped in holy water, and bind them on the wound in the form of a cross. The wound must have been carefully washed; and the patient must have no offensive arms about him. He must say three paters and three aves off; if he cannot, some one must say them for him. For the success of this cure, it is necessary that both the wounded man and the operator be in a state of bodily purity."
The following must probably be one of those which good Lucantonio did not make trial of, but took on trust undoubtingly, from his faith in the noble author's "greatness:" "To make a toad cast his stone. Take a toad of those which have a red head. Place him in a cage, and put the cage upon a piece of scarlet cloth; and early in the morning, set it in the ray of the rising sun. The toad will look fixedly at the sun; and you must let him remain there for three hours. And at the end of that time he will cast forth a stone which has three virtues: 1st, It is specific against poison; 2nd, It is good to staunch blood; 3rd, When a horse is in pain, grate some of the stone, and make him drink it."
There are among these valuable secrets, waters "to make iron hard;" "to make it as brittle as glass;" "to dissolve pearls;" "to dissolve all metals;" &c., &c.
There are no less than thirteen different specifics against witchcraft.
Then, if you would know whether a sick person will recover, you must "clean the face of the sick with warm paste, and then give the paste to a dog. If the dog should eat the paste, the sick man will recover; if not, he will die."
Lastly, there are a great number of a kind that, less than any of the others, should have been of any interest to the recluse of the Murate; such as love philtres, specifics against sterility and other kindred inconveniences. Several are for purposes set forth by the noble lady with the utmost cynical directness of terms, but which cannot, under any veil of phrase, be even indicated here. And some instructions there are, which would place any modern English man or woman acting on them, in a very disagreeable position in the dock of the Old Bailey; but which are here, by some theological sharp practice, so cleverly and piously managed, as to attain their object, "senza carico di coscienza."
It would seem, too, that, startling as is the cynicism of some of the language which Messer Lucantonio has not scrupled to copy in his best text-hand, some of the lady's secrets must have been of a yet more abominable description. For passages in cipher frequently occur in a context, which indicates that such has been the reason for so veiling them.
In short, there is to be found in the pages of this strangely curious and tell-tale volume, abundant evidence that the woman who could collect, transcribe, and find an interest in preserving such "secrets," as many of those here, must, according to English nineteenth-century codes and feelings, have been lost to every sense of decency, and deplorably ignorant of the laws, and even of the true nature of morality. But there is no reason to think that Catherine fell in these respects at all lower than the general level of her age and country. There is ample proof, on the contrary, that in these, as in all other matters, Catherine was essentially a woman of her time—in no respect in advance of her time, or behind it; but furnishing a full and fair expression and type of her age and class, as is ever the case with vigorous, bustling, strong, practical natures of her stamp. The men, who are before their time, whose domain is the future, to their utter exclusion from all dominion over the present, are of another sort.
The writers and readers of biographies are, as it seems to the author of the present, too much wont to feel themselves called upon to express, or at least to form a judgment, as to the amount of moral approbation or condemnation to be awarded to the object of their examination. They continually suffer their thoughts to be drawn from the legitimate and useful study of their subject, by a constant consideration of the judgment to be passed on such or such individual soul by the one all-seeing Judge, alone competent to solve any such question. They talk of "making allowance," as the phrase goes; and spend much weighing on the quantum of such allowance admissible. Vain speculation surely, and quite beside the purpose! Not on the ground of "charitable construction" being due, and of "judging not," &c. (for lack of charity towards a fellow-creature, or other evil passion whatever, can hardly find place in our thoughts of one, whose exit from our scene was four centuries ago), but because such questions are insoluble, and if they were soluble, would be unprofitable. For we are not in the position of the bedside physician, whose duty is to alleviate the pangs of the sufferer, and to struggle against the individual malady by individual appliances. We are in the place of the post-mortem anatomist, who, without reference to the sufferings of the deceased, has only to ascertain that a certain amount of mischief to the machine he is examining, resulted from such and such circumstances. And this information is useful only on account of his persuasion that other similar machines will be in like circumstances similarly affected.
We have no need, therefore, of any of that feeling of the moral pulse, which might be useful for the priest or philosopher, who would "minister to a mind diseased." We have only to ascertain that a certain amount of deviation from moral health existed under such and such circumstances. And this, in as much as the laws which govern our ethical constitution are as immutable as those which rule the physical world, is an investigation of infinite and eternal interest. Under the influence of such and such social constitutions, spiritual teachings, and modes of living, this case of moral disease was generated. Here is a practically useful fact. And if it should appear that, under those same influences this malady was epidemic, the interest of the case assumes larger proportions.
Altogether dismissing from our minds, therefore, all considerations of our poor defunct subject's blameableness, and deservings, and all weighing of allowances wholly imponderable in any scales of ours, let us heedfully observe and reflect on the proved facts of the case.
This poor Catherine, born, as our autopsy shows, with so strong, vigorous, and large a nature, came to be savagely reckless of human life, and blood-thirsty in her vengeance; came to be so grossly material in her mode of regarding that part of our nature, which, duly spiritualised, contributes much to our preparation for eternity, but which, unspiritualised, most draws us to the level of the lower animals, as to be capable of writing such things as have been alluded to; came lastly to consider all distinction between right and wrong, and God's eternal laws to be of the nature of an Act of Parliament carelessly drawn, through which, by sharp-witted dexterity, coaches-and-four, as the saying goes, might be driven with impunity; came, we say, to be all this as the result of the teaching offered her by all around her in that great fifteenth century, of the spiritual guidance afforded her by those "ages of faith," and living heart-felt religion, and of the social ideas produced by the medieval relationship between the governors of mankind and their subjects.
Catherine continued to reside with the Murate nuns till the time of her death, in the year 1509, the forty-seventh of her age. She made a long and accurately drawn will, characterised by the justice and good sense with which she partitioned what belonged to her among the children of her three marriages; and was buried in the chapel of the convent; where her monument was still visible, although, strangely enough, its inscribed altar tombstone had at some period been turned face downwards, and where her remains reposed till they were (literally) dispersed a few years ago, on occasion of the old Murate convent being converted into a state prison.