Pius III was a learned and cultured man, a protégé of his uncle, who had taken him into his household and arranged for him to attend courses in legal studies at Perugia. At the age of twenty-one, he had become, again at his uncle’s instigation, archbishop of Siena and soon afterward cardinal of Sant’Eustachio. For Cesare, everything now hinged on whether he would enjoy the favour of this man, his father’s successor.
The enforced convalescence at Nepi had by now almost restored Cesare to his previous good health, though he was careful to ensure that reports of his worsening condition continued to circulate in Rome. And his spirits rose when he was given grounds to believe that he would soon be confirmed in his office as captain-general of the church by the new pope and returned to authority in his former estates in the Romagna. Certainly, Pius III seemed prepared to condone the indulgence of Cesare’s ambitions, declaring that it had been God’s will that those lords whom Cesare had dispossessed should lose their authority, even though it had been carried out by a ‘wretched instrument.’
‘In consequence of the pressure put upon me by the Spanish cardinals, I have been compelled to issue some briefs in favour of Cesare Borgia,’ he explained to Giustinian, ‘but I will not give him any further help.’ Pius III’s opinion of his predecessor’s son was not encouraging: ‘I do not wish any harm to the Duke, since it is my duty as Pope to have compassion for all men, but I foresee that, by God’s judgement, the Duke must come to a bad end.’ Giustinian reported that ‘the Duke has had good words from the Pope,’ adding later, ‘But His Holiness does not trust him.’
Cesare now decided to return to Rome, where he hoped to be able to press Pius III to confirm him in his offices of captain general of the church and Duke of Romagna. He needed papal permission, however, to enter the city and ordered the Spanish cardinals to plead his case. ‘They tell me he is very ill,’ Pius III informed the Ferrarese envoy Beltrando Costabili, who reported that the pope had never imagined he would feel pity for Cesare but did now ‘indeed most deeply pity him,’ adding that ‘he wants to come to Rome to die, so I have given my permission.’ Much to the surprise of all in Rome, when Cesare returned on October 3, he seemed to be in the best of health.
A few days later Giustinian reported that Cesare was ‘not so ill as we all believed,’ and, moreover, ‘now speaks with his customary arrogance and boasts that he will soon regain possession of all his states.’ The ruse had worked, though, and on October 8, the day of his coronation, Pius III confirmed Cesare as captain-general of the church. Such was the pope’s ill health, however, that the customary procession from St Peter’s to San Giovanni in Laterano had to be cancelled; Pius III was suffering so painfully from gout that he was unable to undertake this lengthy ceremony and retired to his apartments in the Vatican, where, ten days later, he died.
Cesare had spent those ten days making preparations to return with his army to the Romagna, where his grasp was weakening as each day passed, and seeking to acquire the safe-conduct passes needed to move his troops through Florentine territories. But Cesare, still obliged to spend much time in bed, and seemingly disturbed in mind as well as sick in body, was now apparently incapable of acting as decisively as he had been in the past; and when he did make decisions, they were not infrequently the wrong ones. His decision to come to Rome after the election of Pius III, rather than travel directly from Nepi to the Romagna, would prove to be one of these.
In the meantime, however, his plans soon had to be modified as his enemies Cardinal della Rovere and Cardinal Raffaello Riario, Gianpaolo Baglioni and Giovanni Bentivoglio, and the Orsini and the Colonna families, still in uneasy alliance, all began to move, one after the other, against him. Not only threatened by his enemies, Cesare was also troubled by a mutiny of his own soldiers, who were demanding better pay; then he became involved in a ferocious fight with Orsini supporters and, deserted by many of his men, was forced to take shelter first in the Vatican, then in Castel Sant’Angelo.
His situation seemed hopeless, but the death of Pius III a few days later rescued him from disaster, casting away his former gloom and renewing his hopes for the future. ‘The Duke still occupies quarters in the Castel Sant’Angelo,’ Machiavelli reported on October 27. ‘He is more confident than ever that he can still do great things for he believes that a pope favourable to him will now be elected.’
Throughout this time, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere had been strengthening his position in Rome. As the bargaining began between the cardinals for the election of the new pope, it was clear that he was the front-runner. His main rival was the Frenchman Georges d’Amboise, whose election was supported by Louis XII; Giuliano’s emphatic protestations that a French pope might well take the papacy back to Avignon brought him much support among the Italian cardinals.
Cesare’s own position weakened considerably when, toward the end of October, news arrived that Forlì, Faenza, Rimini, and Pesaro had fallen to his enemies. On October 29, two days before the conclave was due to open, Cesare and Cardinal Giuliano signed an agreement in the Vatican whereby all the Spanish cardinals agreed to vote for the cardinal on the understanding that, assuming he was elected pope, he would confirm Cesare in his offices of gonfalonier and captain-general and do his utmost to help Cesare establish himself once more in his possession of the duchy in the Romagna.
Machiavelli was astounded when he heard that Cesare had offered his support to Giuliano della Rovere, his father’s old enemy. ‘No one can be unaware of the extreme hate which the Cardinal bears Cesare, since he cannot easily forget the exile in which he had been kept for ten years; the Duke, on the other hand, allows himself to be guided by a blind, unjustified confidence.’
In the end, the conclave was no contest. When it came to the counting of the slips that had been placed in the golden chalice after the first round of voting, it was found that all but three of them bore the name of Giuliano della Rovere. He had acquired the necessary two-thirds majority in one of the shortest conclaves in the history of the papacy, and he chose to be known as Pope Julius II. Francesco Guicciardini commented:
Everyone marvelled greatly that the papacy should have been granted with such widespread agreement to a cardinal who was known to be very difficult by nature and formidable with everyone. He was notoriously restless and had spent his life in continual hardships and had inevitably offended many people, arousing the hatred and provoking the enmity of many great men… He had been a very powerful cardinal for a long time… and his cause was greatly promoted by the immoderate promises which had been made to anyone who might prove useful to him.
— CHAPTER 25 — Cesare at Bay
‘THE DUKE’S CHOICE WAS A MISTAKEN ONE; AND IT WAS THE CAUSE OF HIS ULTIMATE DOWNFALL’
A MONTH SHORT of his sixtieth birthday when elected, Julius II was, unlike his predecessor, unusually vigorous and energetic; still in his prime and enjoying robust health, he was a strong-willed, purposeful, and resolute man, with a very determined view of the world and his position in it.