Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Volume II
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Memoirs Of The Dukes Of Urbino, Volume II By James Dennistoun Memoirs Of The Dukes Of Urbino BOOK THIRD (continued) OF GUIDOBALDO DI MONTEFELTRO, THIRD DUKE OF URBINO CHAPTER XIX The massacre of Sinigaglia—Death of Alexander VI.—Narrow escape of Cesare Borgia. THE principal object of the new combination having been attained by the submission of Urbino, followed by that of Camerino, Borgia hastened to anticipate the suspicions of his allies by sending the French succours back to Milan. He however retained a body of troops, and proposed that the chiefs should co-operate with him in reducing Sinigaglia, which was held by the late Prefect's widow. Accordingly, Paolo Orsini, his relation the Duke of Gravina, Vitellozzo, and Liverotto advanced upon that town, the garrison of which was commanded by the celebrated Andrea Doria. This remarkable man, finding himself excluded by the state of parties at Genoa from all prospect of preferment, had in youth adopted the career of a condottiere. He took service with Giovanni della Rovere, distinguishing himself greatly in the campaign of Charles VIII. at Naples; after which he continued attached to the Prefect and his widow, with a hundred light horse. Seeing the case of Sinigaglia desperate, and dreading Liverotto's bitter hatred of the Rovere race, he retired, having first sent off the Prefectess on horseback to Florence, disguised as a friar. On the 28th of December, the assailants took undisputed possession of the city, and sacked it. His prey now in his toils, Valentino, who had lulled their suspicion by keeping aloof with his troops in Romagna, flew to the spot on the pretext of reducing the citadel, and on the 31st arrived at the town with a handful of cavalry. He was met three miles outside of the gate by the chiefs, and immediately requested their attendance in the house of one Bernardino di Parma, to receive his congratulations and thanks on their success. At the same time he desired quarters to be provided for their respective followings outside of the city, in order to admit his own army, amounting to two thousand cavalry and ten thousand infantry. Startled at the appearance of a force so disproportioned to the service in hand, they would gladly have demurred to this distribution of the troops, but Cesare had contrived that there should be no opportunity for remonstrance, and resistance would have obviously been too late. Affecting a confidence they were far from feeling, the leaders accepted the invitation, and were received with cordiality and distinction. After an interchange of compliments, Borgia withdrew upon some pretext, when there immediately entered his chosen agent of iniquity, Don Michelotto, with several armed followers, who, after some resistance, arrested the Duke of Gravina, Paolo Orsini, Vitellozzo, and Liverotto, with some ten others. Before morning the two last were strangled with a Pisan cord, or violin-string, and a wrench-pin, by the hands of that monster, in his master's presence. Their death, according to Machiavelli, was cowardly, especially that of the blood-stained Liverotto; and their bodies, after being dragged round the piazza, were exposed for three days before burial. That night Valentino, at the head of his Gascons, attacked six thousand of these captains' troops, which had not dispersed on hearing the capture of their leaders, slaughtering and plundering them with the same barbarity they had themselves used towards the citizens. The greater portion were cut to pieces, and those who escaped reached their homes naked, having only straw tied round their legs. Fabio Orsini was saved by his accidental absence from Borgia's levee; Petrucci and Baglioni, suspicious of treachery, had avoided their fate by previously retiring home. Against the last of these, Borgia marched in a few days, carrying with him the remaining chiefs, of whom he reserved the Orsini until he should hear his father's intentions; but each night after supper he is said to have had one of the others brought out, and put to a cruel death before him. Thus did he, by a dexterous stroke of the most refined duplicity, turn the tools of his ambition into victims of his vengeance, and at the same time ridded himself of faithless adherents, whom any change in his fortune would have again converted into overt and implacable foes. Vermiglioli, in his life of Malatesta Baglioni, has printed, from the archives of Perugia, a letter from Borgia to the magistrates of that city, which, in consideration of the comparative obscurity of that interesting volume, we shall here translate. It is, perhaps, the only known document fully stating the case of the writer, and so may be regarded as his defence from the charges we have brought against him: the style and orthography are remarkably rude; and the matter abounds in that common expedient, whereby bold and bad men seek to evade merited accusations, by throwing them upon those they have outraged. "Magnificent and potent Lords, my special Friends and Brothers; "Superfluous were it to narrate from their outset the perfidious rebellion and atrocious treason, so known to yourselves and to all the world, and so detestable, which your [lords, the Baglioni,] and their accomplices have committed against his Holiness the Pope and ourselves. And although all were our vassals, and most of them in our pay, received and caressed by us as sons or brothers, and favoured with high promotion, they nevertheless, regardless of the kindness of his Holiness and our own, as of their individual honour, banded in schemes of overweening ambition, and blinded by greed of tyranny, have failed us at the moment of our utmost need, turning his Holiness' arms and ours against him and ourselves, for the overthrow of our sovereignty and person. They commenced their aggressions upon us by raising our states of Urbino, Camerino, and Montefeltro, throwing all Romagna into confusion by force and by seditious plots, and proceeding under the mask of reconciliation to fresh offences, until our new levies were brought up in irresistible force. And so atrocious was their baseness, that neither the beneficent clemency of his [Holiness] aforesaid, nor our renewed indulgence to them, weaned them from the slough of their first vile designs, in which they still persisted. And as soon as they learned the departure of the French troops on their return towards Lombardy, whereby they deemed us weakened and left with no effective force, they, feigning an urgent desire to aid in our attack upon Sinigaglia, mustered a third only of their infantry, and concealed the remainder in the houses about, with instructions to draw together at nightfall, and unite with the men-at-arms, whom they had posted in the neighbourhood, meaning, at a given moment, to throw the infantry, through the garrison (with whom they had an understanding), upon the new town, in the narrow space whereof they calculated upon our being lodged with few attendants, and so to complete their long-nourished plans by crushing us at unawares. But we, distinctly forewarned of all, so effectively and quickly anticipated them, that we at once made prisoners of the Duke of Gravina, Paolo Orsini, Vitellozzo of Castello, and Liverotto of Fermo, and discovered, sacked, and overthrew their foot and horse, whether concealed or not; whereupon the castellan, seeing the plot defeated, quickly surrendered the fortress at discretion. And this we have done, under pressure of necessity imposed by the measures of these persons aforesaid, and in order to make an end of the unmeasured perfidy and villanies of them and their coadjutors, thereby restraining their boundless ambition and insensate cupidity, which were truly a public nuisance to the nations of Italy. Thus your highnesses have good cause for great rejoicing at your deliverance from these dangers. And on your highnesses' account, I am now, by his Holiness's commands, to march with my army, for the purpose of rescuing you from the rapacious and sanguinary oppression whereby you have been vexed, and to restore you to free and salutary obedience to his Holiness and the Apostolic See, with the maintenance of your wonted privileges. For the which causes, We, as Gonfaloniere and Captain of his Holiness and the aforesaid See, exhort, recommend, and command you, on receipt hereof, to free yourselves from all other yoke, and to send ambassadors to lay before his Holiness your dutiful and unreserved obedience: which failing, we are commanded to reduce you by force to that duty,—an event that would distress us on account of the serious injuries which must thereby result to your people, for whom we have, from our boyhood, borne and still bear singular favour. From Corinaldo, the 2d of January, 1503. "CESARE BORGIA OF FRANCE, DUKE OF ROMAGNA AND VALENTINO, PRINCE OF ADRIA AND VENAFRA, LORD OF PIOMBINO, Gonfaloniere and Captain-General of the Holy Roman Church." News of the Sinigaglia tragedy reached the Pope late in the evening, and he instantly communicated to Cardinal Orsini that Cesare had taken that city, assured that an early visit of congratulation from his Eminence would follow. The Cardinal was perhaps the richest and most influential of his house. He chiefly had organised the league of La Magione, but having always contrived to keep on good terms with Alexander, he believed in the professions of regard with which his Holiness subsequently seduced him from that policy, and thence reposed in him a fatal confidence. Next morning he rode in state to pay his respects at the Vatican, where his own person and those of his principal relations were instantly seized, whilst his magnificent palace at Monte Giordano was pillaged by orders and for the benefit of the Pontiff.