In fact, Cesare still hoped to march north from Rome to his strongholds in the Romagna, and accordingly waited anxiously for the letter he expected from Florence confirming his safe conduct through the republic’s territories. But the Florentines, advised by Machiavelli that Julius II’s support of Cesare was only a temporary measure, decided not to agree to Cesare’s request.
And so, on November 18, his power and possessions crumbling around him, Cesare left Rome for Ostia, from where he intended to reach his strongholds in the Romagna, avoiding Florentine territory by travelling by sea to Livorno and from there marching east across the Apennines to Cesena. Before he could leave, however, two cardinals arrived in Ostia with orders from Julius II for Cesare to hand over the passwords he had agreed with his castellans for each of the fortresses. Cesare refused to do so.
Julius II, fearful of rumours that Venice planned to seize these strategically vital citadels for herself, was incensed with rage and ordered Cesare to return to Rome immediately; and if he declined to obey the order, he was to be brought back by force.
At the same time, the pope issued a warrant for the arrest of Cesare’s lieutenant Miguel de Corella, who was to be questioned about the deaths of many persons: Juan, the Duke of Gandía, Cesare’s brother, whose body had been fished out of the Tiber in June 1497; Alfonso of Aragon, Lucrezia’s second husband, who had been strangled on his sickbed; Astorre Manfredi, Lord of Faenza, and his brother, whose bodies, weighted with stones, had been found in the Tiber in June 1502; Giulio Cesare da Varano, Lord of Camerino, who had been strangled at La Pergola shortly afterward, and his two sons, who had had their throats cut; and many more.
So, on November 29, three days after Julius II’s magnificent and extravagant coronation procession, Cesare returned to Rome, a prisoner. There were unconfirmed reports that, now in custody, his spirit had finally broken. There were stories that he wept when he was dragged into his cell in the Torre Borgia, that he had fallen onto his knees before Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, begged for forgiveness for what he had done in Urbino, and undertook to return the works of art that had been stolen from the ducal palace. And on December 1 came the news that a body of Cesare’s troops, under the leadership of Corella, had been captured near Arezzo, thanks, it was said, to a warning sent to the Florentine government by Machiavelli that these men were on their way north.
Worse was soon to follow, when a number of wagons belonging to Cesare, but travelling under the name of Lucrezia’s brother-in-law Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, came to the attention of the customs men in Bologna, who were inspecting baggage for taxable goods. ‘When they opened the chests and bales,’ wrote the Ferrarese chronicler Bernardino Zambotti, ‘they found inside great riches taken from the Church, namely, the cross of St Peter, covered with gems of an infinite value,’ several other pieces of gem-encrusted jewellery that were the property of the church, priceless clothes and altar hangings, ‘a little gilded cat with diamonds for its eyes,’ and even a little altarpiece of the Virgin, worth a total, so Zambotti estimated, of 300,000 ducats.
With his loyal lieutenant under arrest in Florence and much of his fortune confiscated in Bologna, there seemed little alternative to Cesare but to divulge the passwords he had been at such pains to conceal. Machiavelli commented that his life would not be worth much after the strongholds surrendered. ‘It seems tome,’ he wrote, ‘that this Duke of ours is slipping little by little down to his grave.’ The castellans, however, whether out of loyalty to their duke or following some prearranged plan, valiantly refused to surrender the fortresses until they had positive proof that Cesare was no longer a prisoner.
The stalemate continued, much to Julius II’s fury, until the end of the year, when news arrived in Rome that much cheered Cesare: Gonsalvo di Córdoba had won a decisive victory over the French at the Battle of Garigliano on December 27. Hoping, indeed expecting, support from a Spanish Naples, Cesare signed a formal agreement on January 29, 1504, agreeing to surrender his Romagna fortresses in return for his freedom. Pending the surrender, Cesare was taken to Ostia while, one by one, his strongholds were taken by Julius II’s troops.
In April 1504 he set forth, in optimistic spirits, in a galley bound for Naples and the court of Gonsalvo di Córdoba, Duke of Terranova, who had been appointed viceroy of the kingdom by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. He was not welcome, however. The Spanish monarchs, ‘their Catholic Majesties,’ had informed their ambassador in Naples that ‘we regard the arrival of the Duke with great displeasure and not for political reasons alone; for, as you know, the man is deeply abhorrent to us because of the gravity of his crimes and we certainly do not wish that such a man should be considered to be in our service.’ They had, they informed the ambassador, also written to Gonsalvo di Córdoba, asking him to arrest Cesare and ‘to send the Duke to us and to provide two galleys for the journey so that he cannot escape elsewhere.’
Even before Gonsalvo di Córdoba had received these orders, Cesare, his confidence by now restored, had set about planning a march into the Romagna to regain what he had recently lost. When the royal instructions arrived from Spain, he believed that as a fellow Spaniard, Gonsalvo would be prepared to overlook them, and he started to raise troops for a campaign in Italy that he hoped would restore him to power. Gonsalvo, however, remained loyal to his masters.
The Florentine ambassador in Naples reported what happened next:
On 1 June [Cesare] asked for an interview with [Gonsalvo di Córdoba] to discuss his affairs. He had already prepared the artillery for his proposed campaign and had ordered wine, bread and other things necessary for his expedition. In the evening he had his interview with Gonsalvo… [who] was accompanied by Niugno del Campo, castellan of the Castel Nuovo in Naples, and when [Cesare] turned to descend the stairs, Niugno stopped him saying, ‘Signore, your way lies here,’ and led him into a room in the Torre dell’Oro… On Tuesday he was transferred to another room which was very beautiful but very strong with windows protected by iron bars. It is called ‘the oven’ and several important people have been held prisoner there at one time or another. He is there now with two servants. The Grand Captain refuses to talk to him. There is not a single man who does not praise this deed. In truth, it is pleasing to all.
Soon after this dispatch was received in Florence, Cesare was put onto a galley bound for Spain, where, so his sister heard, he was ‘shut up with a page’ in the castle of Chinchilla, high in the mountains behind Valencia.
Cesare’s fall had been as dramatic as his meteoric rise. Machiavelli blamed it on Cesare’s decision to support Julius II’s election, though it is difficult to see how he could have organized an alternative candidate to counter the front-runner and ensure enough support in the conclave to achieve the required two-thirds majority among the cardinals.
As Machiavelli commented in The Prince:
[Cesare] should never have allowed the election of one of those cardinals he had injured, or one who would have cause to fear him. Men do you harm either because they fear you or because they hate you… The Duke’s aim, first and foremost, should have been to engineer the election of one of the Spanish cardinals and, failing that, to enable it to be Rouen [Georges d’Amboise] not San Pietro in Vincoli [Giuliano dellaRovere].Whoever believes that great men allow new services to erase old injuries is deceiving himself. So the Duke’s choice was a mistaken one; and it was the cause of his ultimate downfall.