to excuse himself by attributing his own acts to his father's will. He wrote to Ferdinand that he had sought the French alliance against his own wishes, in obedience to the Pope. He tried to conciliate the Duke of Urbino, the most tame and patient vassal of the Church, whom he had twice driven into exile. Cæsar knelt before him, pleaded his own youth, and cursed his father's soul, whose baseness had led him astray.[1]
One point of contrast between the two, which the Pope was in the habit of urging, is curious, for it does not turn quite to Cæsar's disadvantage. The Pope used to represent him as implacably cruel in punishing his enemies, and loved to dwell on his own generosity towards those who had injured or insulted him. In Rome he said speech was free, and he cared not for the things which were published against himself.[2] This praise was not quite hollow. That he was not excessively sensitive, that he could bear with adversaries, appears from the fact that he sent Ludovico di Ferrara to offer a cardinal's hat to Savonarola.[3] He did not proceed to extremities against him until Savonarola had written to the monarchs of Europe bidding them make a new Pope. Cæsar was capable of equal self-restraint, less from temperament than his father, and more from calculation. When, by an act of consummate treachery, he made himself master of Urbino, he published a general amnesty, and observed it even against his worst enemies.[4] But he caused all those to be seized and punished who had betrayed their former master to him, showing, says the chronicler, that he hated the traitor though he loved the treason.[5]
It was said with truth that Alexander VI. succeeded
- ↑ Incolpando la giovintù sua, li mali consigli soi, le triste pratiche, la pessima natura del Pontifice, et qualche uno altro che 'l haveva spirito a tale impresa; dilatandosi sopra el Pontefice, et maledicendo l' anima sua (Letter from Rome in Ugolini, Duchi d'Urbino, ii. 524).
- ↑ Constabili to Duke of Ferrara, Feb. 1, 1502.
- ↑ Quétif et Echard, Script. O. P., i. 883.
- ↑ Ugolini, ii. 111.
- ↑ Per dar ad in tender a tutti, che 'l Signor over Signori hanno appiacer del tradimento, ma non del traditore (Priuli, July 6, 1502).
