and he always found victims. Never was there a man with more effrontery in assertion, more ready to add oaths to his promises, or to break them; yet did his deceit ever succeed to his heart's content."*234 Sismondi terms him "the most odious, the most publicly scandalous, and the most wicked of all miscreants who ever misused sacred authority to outrage and degrade mankind." No ecclesiastical writer has undertaken to defend his reputation; most of them have treated him as a disgrace to the papacy. Tommasi has termed him a "perfidious, sanguinary, and most insatiable wolf, capable of insinuating himself like a fawning and attached spaniel."
Out of the conflicting statements which have reached us of the Borgian pedigree and of Alexander's spurious offspring, we have prepared the accompanying table as on the whole probable.235 Francesco (called by others Giovanni or Pietro), his eldest son by La Vanosia, was, at the Pope's request, created Duke of Gandia by Ferdinand the Catholic, and, as we shall see, came to a fearful end. The title descended to his progeny, and was borne by his great-grandson, the famous general of the Jesuits, who died in 1572, and was canonised as San Francesco Borgia.236 Cesare was his father's favourite, and we shall have frequent occasion to trace him through the various phases of cardinal, count, condottiere, usurper, sovereign, and prisoner. Giuffredo, with the hand of a natural daughter of Alfonso II. of Naples, acquired high honours in that kingdom. Lucrezia, after being branded with triple incest and frequent poisonings, and after changing her husbands as often as suited her father's schemes, dedicated her maturer years to the patronage of letters and the cultivation of piety. Upon the details and crimes of such a character there is fortunately little occasion here to enter. Those who wish to learn them have only to turn to any historian of her age; such as would see nearly all that has been charged against her confronted with whatever redeeming traits exist, and ingeniously redargued by negative proofs and assumed improbabilities, may consult the dissertation appended to Roscoe's Leo the Tenth.*237
Anderson
POPE ALEXANDER VI.
Detail from a fresco by Pinturicchio in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican, Rome
We have now reached a period when our narrative must be extended, and must include those great events which, besides revolutionising almost every state in Italy, ultimately affected the political relations of Western Europe. The fiery natures and turbulent spirits of the Italian republicans and condottieri had for many years expended their energies in petty broils and intestine struggles for mastery. Henceforward the bloody drama was to be varied by the introduction of a new class of actors; the battles of European ambition were to be fought on the sunny plains of the Peninsula; her flourishing cities were to be the spoil of victor and vanquished: the protracted struggle was destined to leave her strength prostrated, her wealth wasted, her nationality extinguished, her treasures of art defaced, the character of her people degraded, their political independence destroyed. Although, from 1466 to 1494, Italy had never remained very long free from intestine commotions, the seat of serious warfare was during that interval removed to Hungary, Turkey, and the Levant, and she enjoyed a comparative repose, under the balmy influence of which, letters and the liberal arts rose to high perfection. The invention of printing, the study of the classics, the revival of ancient literature and philosophy, the cultivation of vernacular poetry, and the adoption of these tastes at many of the minor courts, all tended to this happy result.
Under this prosperous state of things the condition of the Peninsula is thus eloquently described by her Thucydides:—"Reduced to profound peace and tranquillity, cultivated on her sterile and rugged sites as in her more fertile districts, swayed by none but native masters, not only did her population, commerce, and wealth abound, but she was rendered gloriously eminent by the magnificence of her many princes, by the splendour of her numerous noble and fair cities, and by the seat and sovereignty of religion; whilst her celebrity was maintained among all nations by the men whom she produced of high capacity for public affairs, of elevated genius and acquirements in each branch of learning, and every liberal or useful art, as well as of military fame not unworthy of their age."238 This was indeed her golden era, but the pure metal was henceforward to be tarnished. The middle ages, during which the civilisation of Europe had centred within her shores, were now passed away: modern history was about to open, and with it her subjugation. She had to learn, on a greater and more impressive scale, the lesson which her annals have too often afforded, and as her old republics had fallen one by one from want of union, so, at this juncture, her states, failing in mutual good faith, became an unresisting prey to the spoiler. She was in truth on the eve of that fearful struggle which, after trampling for half a century on her energies, left her to all intents at the mercy of those northern powers whom she deemed barbarians. Their armies had heretofore descended into her plains to fight under her banners and to receive her pay; henceforward they warred on their own account, though not less at her expense: formerly her mercenaries, they were in future her foes.
The immediate cause of these evils was the disputed succession to the crown of Naples, which we have formerly seen convulsing Italy, and which it will require a brief digression and the annexed table to explain. The Norman knights who in the eleventh century visited Lower Italy in a crusade against the Saracens, soon contrived to make that country their own. One of them, Robert Guiscard, by his valour and talents acquired a supremacy in which he was succeeded by his nephew Roger, who had by similar means made himself master of Sicily. In 1130, the latter procured from Innocent II. the investiture of a kingdom nearly equal in extent to that of the Two Sicilies in our day, which, during next century, passed by marriage into the line of the Hohenstaufen emperors of Germany. But the same incurable jealousies, which gave rise to the Guelphic and Ghibelline parties, made the popes look with little favour on their new neighbours, who however maintained their ground for three generations, notwithstanding repeated offers of a competing investiture, by successive pontiffs, to various English and French princes. The crown, thus sent a-begging, was at length accepted by Charles Count of Anjou and Provence, seventh son of Louis VIII. of France, who, in 1266, defeated and slew Manfred, the last monarch of the Hohenstaufen line, and assuming the title of Charles I., founded the first Angevine dynasty. But in consequence of the brutal behaviour of his soldiery, he lost Sicily in a revolt, during which there occurred, in 1282, the massacre of the French, known as the Sicilian vespers. On this opening, Alfonso III. of Aragon put in a claim through his mother, a daughter of Manfred, and having established himself as King of Sicily, that title continued in his successors, and was ultimately reunited to the crown of Naples. The first house of Anjou, however, maintained themselves upon the throne of Naples for about one hundred and seventy years, notwithstanding the testamentary disposition of the maligned and unfortunate Queen Joanna I., who, in 1382, bequeathed that kingdom and the county of Provence to Louis I., second son of John II. of Anjou.
This will had been dictated by dislike of her second cousin and adopted heir Charles Count of Durazzo, but it did not prevent him, his son Ladislaus, and his daughter the beautiful and dissolute Joanna II., from establishing a de facto right to their heritage. Meanwhile Louis I., Louis II., and Louis III., their rivals of the second Angevine line, as it was called, persisted in styling themselves kings of Naples as well as of Jerusalem, and having patched up their defective title, by obtaining a recognition of their claims and investitures from several popes, they each invaded their titular kingdom. The first Angevine dynasty being about to close by the childless death of Joanna II., she was persuaded to terminate the struggle by settling her crown upon the second Angevine race, which at her death in 1435, was represented by Rénier, usually called René le Bon. The fatality of a disputed succession, with its attendant miseries, was however still in store for unhappy Naples. Joanna II. had already in 1421 adopted as her heir Alfonso V., King of Aragon and Sicily, who was likewise representative of whatever claims might have been transmitted from the old Norman dynasty, being in fact similar to those upon which his family had acquired Sicily before 1300. Eugene IV., at the same time, still further complicated this confusion, by interposing his right as over-lord, alleging that the investiture had, by failure of the reigning dynasty, lapsed to the Holy See.
After ineffectually attempting by an invasion to vindicate his title against his rival of Aragon, René retired to his little state of Provence, to dedicate his life to literature and the arts, but especially