Cesare entered the city of Pesaro on October 27, his men-at-arms clad in his personal livery, which had been embroidered with a new emblem, the seven-headed Hydra, the mythical beast that when one head was cut off could grow another — an appropriate metaphor for Cesare’s military ambitions.
The conquest of Rimini and Pesaro achieved with so little trouble and expense, Cesare was in an accommodating mood, exercising the ingratiating charm that he could summon at will when required. He apologized to the Duke of Ferrara’s ambassador with ‘much amiability’ for not having seen him the day before when the envoy had called at his headquarters. But he had had so much to do; also he had been troubled by a painful ulcer in his groin.
‘The Duke’s daily life is as follows,’ the ambassador continued. ‘He goes to bed between three and five o’clock in the morning and consequently midday is his dawn.’ Despite his unusual hours, however, it was clear that Cesare worked hard and had earned the respect of his captains. ‘He is considered brave and strong and generous and sets great store by straightforward men; but he is hard in revenge as I have often been told,’ added the envoy. ‘He is thirsting for fame and seems more eager to seize states than to administer them.’
Having made a quick survey of Pesaro and instructing one of the artists in his entourage to make a painting of the citadel to send to his father in Rome, Cesare set out along the coast for the twenty-mile ride to Rimini, where he made his ceremonial entry on October 30.
Cesare now moved north along the Via Emilia toward Faenza, which, as he had informed the Ferrarese ambassador a few days earlier, he feared would not prove so straightforward as either Rimini or Pesaro; and he was right. Here, unlike so many of the other fiefs in the Romagna, the dynastic lords, the Manfredi, were well liked and respected by the people. A conspiracy to deliver the place over to Cesare was discovered and the plotters arrested: Cesare was forced to conclude that he faced a long siege.
After a heavy bombardment of the town, an assault was attempted but failed. A Ferrarese chronicler reported the news of this unprecedented defeat with ill-concealed jubilation. ‘On Saturday 28 November news arrived in Ferrara that the men of Duke Valentino, bastard son of the Pope, had come to Faenza with artillery and many Frenchmen in order to evict the Lord of Faenza but the men of that land killed many of the Duke’s men, and wounded many more, which was a marvel,’ particularly, as the chronicler explained, ‘because he had already acquired the lordships of Rimini, Pesaro, Cesena, Forlì and Imola by tricks and treachery and driven out those unfortunate rulers.’
Cesare’s hopes of a quick surrender had been met with brave defiance. Toward the end of November, with snow already lying heavy on the ground, his stores almost exhausted, and his irregularly paid mercenaries deserting one by one as the fighting season came to an end, Cesare decided to withdraw his men to Forlì, leaving a small force outside Faenza to continue the blockade of the town.
He spent Christmas that year at Cesena, establishing the administration of his new state and ordering the strengthening of the fortifications of the conquered territories. He also gained the support of the people of the Romagna by such gestures as contributing generously to the peasants in the countryside so as to compensate them for the damage done to their fields and woods during the recent campaigns.
At first he was in such seclusion that he was rarely seen outside the palace in which he had established his headquarters, issuing the orders calculated to gain him the good opinion of the people, hanging looters and men who stole or refused to pay a fair price for provisions. He then gained a reputation as a prankster, going about masked, sword in hand, spattering pedestrians with mud or demonstrating his strength in wrestling contests, his ability to outpace all comers in running races, or his skill at the quintana, a jousting game in which horsemen galloped at a figure of a Turk, gaining points depending upon the part of the dummy they struck. He also excelled at the giostra all’anello (the ring game), in which riders armed with lances charged at a ring stuck on a pole in an attempt to remove it.
In the middle of February 1501, Cesare indulged in another of his pleasures, the pursuit and conquest of a beautiful young lady, the pleasure no doubt heightened by the considerable risks involved. The lady in question was Dorotea Malatesta, the twenty-three-year-old sister of Pandolfo Malatesta and bride of Giambattista Caracciolo, a captain in the Venetian army. She was on her way from Urbino to Venice, where she was to join her husband, and Cesare had been asked by the Venetian government to provide an escort for her party while it was travelling up the Via Emilia. Soon after the escort had seen her safely into Venetian territory, she was waylaid, late in the afternoon, by a gang of ten horsemen armed with crossbows, who carried her off, after wounding several of the men in her entourage. The mayor of Ravenna, who had been told to keep an eye on Dorotea, gave a colourful account of what happened to her and her female companion after they were carried off.
The two women, ‘protesting and lamenting greatly, their hair dishevelled,’ were taken back across the border to a village near Cesena, where the men ordered Dorotea to dismount and led her into a cottage, where they ‘demanded the fire to be lit and the supper prepared.’ When Dorotea asked where she was being taken, they answered, ‘Do not seek to know; you are in good hands and you will be going to better ones, where you are awaited with high desire.’ When she tried to find out the identity of her kidnapper, they replied: ‘Enough, my lady, do not seek to know more.’ The mayor continued: ‘And they set her, weeping and groaning, down to eat. She did not want food, so they threatened her, and she was forced to take an egg; then she was put to sleep with her companion and the peasant’s wife, and she was not molested that night.’ Her destination, according to the mayor, was Forlì.
Cesare was immediately suspected of the kidnapping. The Venetian authorities protested loudly to the papal legate and to the French ambassador in Venice about the duke’s supposed involvement in the affair; the abduction of ‘one of the most beautiful and notable ladies in Italy’ was a horrible crime, to be ‘abominated and detested.’
The government also sent a representative to Cesare to complain of the crime and to demand Dorotea’s release. Cesare denied all knowledge of the abduction, and when the Venetian agent — who had been instructed to make no salutation to him — was received by Cesare, he was arrogantly rebuffed. Cesare assured the man that he had ‘no lack of women’ and did not need to abduct them. He declared, moreover, that the crime had been committed by one of his Spanish officers, Diego Ramires, and that it was he and Dorotea who had been lovers. Indeed, claimed Cesare, Diego Ramires had shown him some shirts that Dorotea had given him.
The Venetian government was not alone in protesting at Cesare’s guilt. The king of France also complained; so did Francesco Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua, on behalf of his sister, the Duchess of Urbino, in whose care Dorotea had been before her marriage. But Cesare brushed aside all such protests, and as the days and weeks passed, while there were rumours that Dorotea was being kept in captivity against her will, perhaps in the castle of Forlì, nothing reliable was heard of her for the moment. She reappeared, however, in February 1504, at Faenza after a long sojourn in a convent.