In January 1511 Julius II arrived at Mirandola to oversee in person the siege of the castle; he took up lodgings, according to Guicciardini, ‘in a farmer’s hovel where he was within range of the enemy artillery.’ He went about the camp in the bitter cold and driving snow, his armour concealed by a white cloak, his head in a sheepskin hood, cursing his enemies, moving his quarters when they were hit by cannonballs, and shouting orders to his captains, his energy and enthusiasm ‘not chilled in the slightest degree,’ added the historian, ‘by the bitter cold which his troops were scarcely able to endure.’
Inspired by his restless energy, his men breached the walls of Mirandola, their task much eased by the icy cold that had caused the water in the moat to freeze deep enough to bear the weight of the papal troops. With no chance of relief, the castle surrendered. This fresh victory encouraged other cities to join the pope. Spain came to his aid against the French, who were Duke Alfonso’s principal allies, while both Parma and Piacenza, abandoned by the French, declared themselves willing to join the Papal States. Julius II annexed them immediately, announcing that he hated the Spanish quite as much as the French, and that he would not rest until they had been driven out of the peninsula too.
Ferrara, however, was to prove a harder proposition for the bellicose pope. On November 28, 1510, the French army arrived at Ferrara to help the defence of the city. Two days later, the duke, in the presence of the French captains, had addressed the ‘courtiers, citizens and artisans’ who had gathered early in the evening in the town hall to hear their duke speak. The chronicler Zerbinati takes up the story:
He told the people how he was expecting the Pope’s army to arrive soon and asked the people to remain as faithful to him as they always had been to the house of Este, and he promised the people that he would not abandon them, as he had been abandoned by everyone except by the French, and that if they stayed faithful to him he was sure of victory because the city was strong, that they would fortify it and that we were well supplied with artillery and with food and with a large population; then he repeated that if the people kept their trust in him then he had no doubts at all… Messer Antonio Costabili replied wisely that his people had always been most faithful to the house of Este, and for the future and for the present they would always be so, and that he was not to worry about this because the people were ready and prepared to fight against his enemies and everyone started to shout: Duke Alfonso! Duke Alfonso! And so His Lordship and the French captains left the room well satisfied with the populace who now prepared for the arrival of the enemy army in Ferrara.
The following day Duke Alfonso had published a decree ordering all warehouses and shops to close for the week and for everyone to work instead on fortifying the city. And then they waited for the enemy to arrive, going about their business as normally as possible while the winter months passed and Julius II’s forces fought relentlessly for the possession of Mirandola, knowing that once that fortress had fallen, it would be their turn next.
On Maundy Thursday, April 17, the chaplains of the cathedral held the customary confirmation service behind closed doors, ‘which they did, not having permission from the Pope to do because of the excommunication,’ reported the chronicler Zerbinati, who added in the margin of his notebook that ‘I was told about this, because I was not there.’
The winter of 1511 had been unusually long and hard, ‘the greatest cold, the thickest ice and the heaviest snow that I have ever seen,’ commented Zerbinati, adding that ‘the winter has lasted for so long that today, the last day of April, we are still lighting our fires and we are still wearing our fur-lined coats.’ Three weeks later, however, came news that warmed the hearts of the brave populace: the Bolognese had rebelled against Julius II, and the Bentivoglio were once again in power. The celebrations that night were exceptionally loud — bells, fireworks, cannonades, shouting, songs, youths roistering on the streets brandishing branches of trees on which blossoms had begun to bloom — to rejoice at the defeat of the mighty papal army ‘which has threatened us all the past winter.’ The next day ‘all the shops were closed, as if it were a Sunday.’
Throughout these difficult years while Alfonso had been frequently absent, fighting first for Julius II and then against him, it was Lucrezia, his duchess, who took his place as ruler of the city, writing regular letters to him, sometimes as many as three a day, reporting the news from the marketplace, the gossip at court, planning policy, and asking his advice. She had pawned her jewels to raise money for her husband and also managed, in what must have been exceptionally difficult circumstances, to preside over their court, acting as a gracious hostess to the many French nobles who had come to Ferrara with the French army and were quartered in the ducal palace or in the residences of the courtiers. ‘She is a pearl,’ one Frenchman remarked; ‘there has never been such a wonderful duchess,’ he extolled, praising Lucrezia’s beauty and benevolence, her kindness and charm, and, he added, ‘a great service to her husband.’
— CHAPTER 28 — The Death of the Duchess
‘OTHER WOMEN ARE TO LUCREZIA AS TIN IS TO SILVER, COPPER TO GOLD’
NOW THAT THE ANXIETY and worry of the much-feared papal invasion was over, Lucrezia, as so often happens on such occasions, fell ill and retired to the convent of San Bernardino to recover, which she did, after some months of convalescence, and of mourning for the death of the twelve-year-old Rodrigo Bisceglie, her first son, whom she had not seen since he was a toddler when she left Rome for the last time. She did, however, have the comfort of knowing that her other son Juan, the result of her affair with the papal valet Pedro Calderon, was safe and well. Since 1505 he had been living in nearby Carpi and was frequently a visitor in Ferrara, where, thanks to her father’s bull ‘explaining’ the parentage of the boy, he was always assumed to be her half-brother.
In August 1509, at the start of the conflict with Julius II and just sixteen months after the birth of Ercole, Lucrezia had given birth to another healthy son, named Ippolito in honour of Alfonso’s brother, the cardinal. During the troubled years that followed, she had taken refuge with her young sons, spending long hours playing games with them, taking part in masquerades, telling them fairy stories, listening with them to strange surreal tales told by her dwarf, Santino, who sat perched upon a chair placed upon a table like a miniature stylite. On occasions the children’s father would look in on the scene with an indulgent eye, no longer jealous of such threats to the composure of his marriage as Francesco Gonzaga and Pietro Bembo.
Julius II’s threat to Ferrara finally ended on April 11, 1512, when his armies were decisively defeated by the French at the Battle of Ravenna. Duke Alfonso’s knowledge of artillery had played an important part in the victory, which had been fought at the cost of ten thousand lives, including that of Cesare’s erstwhile captain, Yves d’Alègre. And a year later, toward the end of January 1513, Julius II, complaining of being suddenly taken ill, took, uncharacteristically, to his bed. By the end of the week, feeling that the end was near, he summoned his master of ceremonies to dictate detailed instructions for his funeral; and on February 21 he died.
Age never mellowed Julius; to the end he was a papa terribile. As a sick old man, he still spoke of waging a war to drive the Spanish out of Italy. He was, indeed, a great patriot and, unlike so many of his contemporaries, he thought of Italy not as a mere collection of rival states but as an entity of its own. Yet, however much the warrior pope he may have been, Julius II was also one of the most enlightened and discriminating patrons of art that the Western world had ever known. He had much of the Vatican Palace reconstructed and rebuilt the main courtyard as well as the immense courtyard that stretches from the palace toward the Belvedere. Beneath its walls he laid out an extensive and lovely garden, the first great Roman pleasure garden since the days of the Caesars.