R. Nisbet Bain - The Cambridge Modern History

It must always be a question how far Alexander can be said to have ascended the papal throne with a definite intention, either of aggrandising his children or of consolidating his authority as a temporal ruler by the subjugation of his petty vassals. That he meant to promote his children’s interests in every practicable manner may well be believed; but that he did not contemplate their elevation to sovereign rank seems manifest from his making the most able and promising of them, his second son Cesare, a Prince of the Church, by exalting him to the cardinalate at the age of eighteen. The Pope’s views for his family, however, had necessarily to be expanded in proportion as his secular policy became one of conquest; and, supposing him to have succeeded to the papal throne without any definite intention of subduing his turbulent barons, the need for such a course was soon impressed upon him. A seemingly quite harmless provision made by Innocent VIII for his natural son Franceschetto Cibo gave the first occasion for disturbance. Cibo, a peaceable and insignificant person, recognising his inability to defend the lands with which he had been invested, prudently sold them, and escaped into private life. But the purchaser was Virginio Orsini, a member of a great baronial house already far too powerful for the Pope’s security, and whose alternate quarrels and reconciliations with the rival family of the Colonna had for centuries been a chief source of disturbance in the patrimony of St Peter. What was still more serious, the purchase-money was believed to be supplied by Ferdinand King of Naples, whom Orsini had aided in his war with Innocent VIII, and who thus obtained a footing in the Papal States; and the Cardinal della Rovere espoused the cause of Orsini so warmly as to find it prudent to retire (January, 1493) to his bishopric of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, where he threatened to intercept the food supplies of Rome. Alexander naturally allied himself with Milan, Venice, and other States inimical to the King of Naples, and a general war seemed about to break out, when it was composed (July) by the intervention of Spain, which had penetrated the designs of the young French King, new to the throne and athirst for glory, for the conquest of Naples, and dreaded the opportunity and advantage that would be afforded him if Naples became embroiled with the Pope. A singular change of relations followed. The King of Naples became to all appearance the Pope’s most intimate ally. Alexander’s third son married a Neapolitan princess. He became estranged from his recent allies in Venice and Milan, and the Milanese Cardinal Sforza, till now apparently omnipotent at the papal court, lost all credit, notwithstanding the marriage of the Pope’s daughter Lucrezia to the despot of Pesaro, a prince of Sforza’s house. Yet within two months things took another aspect, when Alexander ignored Ferdinand’s wishes in a nomination of Cardinals which gratified the Sforza and drove the freshly reconciled Cardinal della Rovere into new enmity. The entire series of transactions reveals the levity and faithlessness of the rulers of Italy. Alexander had more excuse than any other potentate, for he alone was menaced with serious danger; and he might have learned, had he needed the lesson, the absolute necessity of fortifying the Pope’s temporal authority, if even his spiritual authority was to be respected.

The signal for the woes of Italy was given by an event which at another time might not have displeased an Italian patriot,—the death of Ferdinand (or Ferrante), King of Naples, in January, 1494. Ferrante was a monarch after the approved pattern of his age, crafty, cruel, perfidious, but intelligent and well understanding how to make the most of himself and his kingdom. While he lived, the prestige of his authority and experience, combined with the youth of the King of France, may have assisted to delay the execution of French designs upon Naples. Upon his death they were carried forward with such warmth that, as early as February 3, Alexander, whose alliance with Naples remained unimpaired, thought it necessary to censure them in a letter to the French King. A bull assigned by most historians to this date, encouraging Charles to come to Naples in the capacity of a crusader, really belongs to the following year. Whether in obedience to the interests of the hour, or from enlightened policy, Alexander’s conduct at this time contrasted favourably with that of other leading men of Italy. Ludovico Sforza, playing with the fire that was to consume him, invited the French King to pass the Alps. The Florentine people favoured Charles VIII, although their unpopular ruler Piero de’ Medici seemed on the side of Naples. Venice pretended to espouse Sforza’s cause, but could in no way be relied upon. Cardinal della Rovere, whose old feud with the Pope had broken out anew, fled to France where, striving to incense Charles against the Pope, he unchained the tempest against which he was afterwards to contend when too late. Alexander alone, from whatever motive, acted for a time as became a patriotic Italian sovereign. Had he possessed any moral authority, he might have played a greater part. But papal dignity had been decaying since the days of Dante, and Alexander himself had impaired it still further. When his tone seemed the most confident, he secretly trembled at the weapons which he had himself put into his enemies’ hands by the scandals of his life, and the simony of his election.

Nothing in Charles VIII, either in the outer or in the inner man, appeared to betoken the Providential instrument as which he stands forth in history. His ugly and diminutive person bore so little resemblance to his parents that many deemed him a supposititious child; his mind was narrow and uninformed; he was equally destitute of political and of military capacity. He knew, however, how to make himself beloved, si bon, deposes the shrewd and observant Commines, qu’il n’est point possible de voir meiUeure creature. His intentions were good; while unconsciously misled by the noble if perilous passion for glory, he was yet fully convinced that Naples was his of right, for he had inherited the ancient pretensions of the House of Anjou. He went to war rather in the spirit of a knight-errant than in that of a conqueror, much less of a statesman. Neither he nor his counsellors dreamed that he was about to bring the political organisation of Italy down like a house of cards, and to launch France on the false path in which she was to persist for centuries without earning in the end anything but humiliation and defeat. He had already yielded Artois and Franche Comte to Maximilian of Austria for his son, under the terms of the treaty of Arras, and ceded Roussillon and Cerdagne to Ferdinand of Aragon, in order to remove every obstacle to his expedition, which he designed to be the first stage of a Crusade, headed by himself, against the Turks. He had bought the imperial rights of the Paleologi, and aimed at reviving the Byzantine Empire in his own person. With this anticipation he was determined to demand from Alexander VI the custody of the Sultan’s brother Jem; whether he distinctly contemplated the deposition of the Pope is very doubtful.

Alexander VI might have secured himself by siding with France; it is to his credit that he remained faithful to his Neapolitan alliance and to the interests of Italy. A joint plan of operations was agreed upon among the Italian States; but the French, though so ill provided with money that Charles was obliged to pawn his jewels, carried everything before them by land and sea. Their land expedition was memorable as the first in which an army bound on a long march had taken with it a train of artillery. Their maritime superiority gave into their hands Ostia, so lately recovered from Cardinal della Rovere; the Colonna revolted at the gates of Rome; and Neapolitan troops, which ought to have moved northward, had to remain in order to protect the Pope. The terrified Head of Christendom sought the aid of the Turk, and employed Charles’s design of setting up the captive Jem against Bayazid as an instrument for recovering the arrears of the pension paid by the Sultan in consideration of his brother’s safe custody. The discovery of the negotiation involved him in obloquy; yet other Popes have preferred heretical allies to orthodox adversaries. The genuineness of his instructions to his envoy seems certain; that of Bayazid’s letters urging Jem’s removal by poison is very questionable: at all events the proposal, if ever made, was not entertained by Alexander.