he could inspire little sympathy; he had gained his sovereignty by usurpation, coupled, as was very widely believed on evidence which has however failed to convince history, with secret murder; and he had been the first to invite the French into Italy. It was nevertheless shocking and of most inauspicious augury to see an Italian prince dispossessed by the foreigner, with the active aid of one of his own allies and the connivance of another, and deserted by all the rest, who had not like Alexander the excuse of deriving substantial advantage from their perfidy. The French occupied Milan in October, 1499; in December Cesare Borgia, at the head of troops raised by his father and Gascon soldiers and Swiss mercenaries lent by France, commenced the operations which were to result in the constitution of the States of the Church as a European Power.
Theoretically, the Pope was already supreme over the territories of which, three centuries later, the French Revolution was to find him in possession: practically, his authority was a mere shadow. With law and reason on their side, the Popes had rarely been able to reduce their rebellious vassals. Thrice had this apparently been accomplished,—by Cardinal Albornoz as the legate of Innocent VI in the middle of the fourteenth century; by Boniface IX in the very midst of the Great Schism; and by Martin V after its termination. All Martin's gains had been lost under Eugenius IV; and Sixtus IV, with all his unscrupulous energy, had achieved nothing beyond carving out a principality for his own family. Alexander's projects went much further; he wished to crush all the vassal States, and build out of them a kingdom for his son,—with what ulterior aim is one of the problems of history. He must have known that no alienation of the papal title in Cesare's favour could be valid, or would be respected by his successors. He may-so rapidly was he filling the Sacred College with Spanish Cardinals - have looked forward to a successor who would consent to a partnership with Cesare, receiving military support on the one hand, and according spiritual countenance on the other. He may have looked still higher, and regarded the conquest of the Romagna as but a stepping-stone to the acquisition of the Kingdom of Naples for his son; perhaps even to the expulsion of the foreigner, and the sway of the House of Borgia over a grateful and united Italy. Machiavelli evidently thought that Cesare Borgia was the one man from whom the deliverance of Italy might conceivably have come; and the bare possibility that his dark soul may have harboured so generous a project has always in a measure pleaded with Italians for the memory of the most ruthless and treacherous personality of his age.
There was little generosity in Cesare's first movements, which were directed against a woman. Every petty sovereign in the Romagna had given the Pope ample pretext for intervention by withholding tribute, or oppressing his subjects. It was natural, however, to begin with the princes
