‘To speak clearly to His Majesty [King Louis XII of France] we will never consent to giving Madonna Lucretia to Don Alfonso [d’Este]: nor will Don Alfonso ever be induced to take her’
– Duke Ercole I d’Este of Ferrara, to his envoy at the French court, Bartolommeo de’Cavalleri, 14 February 1501
From the citadel of Nepi in the two months of her exile there, October and November 1500, Lucrezia wrote a series of letters, some sad, some mysterious, to Vincenzo Giordano, her confidant, possibly her major-domo. The first, dated 15 September, was signed in her own hand ‘the most unhappy princess of salerno’, with the last three words, her title, crossed out, as if for greater emphasis. Written shortly after her arrival at Nepi, it was dated 15 September and its contents suggested that she had left in a hurry without many of the things she needed. Not surprisingly, given the suddenness of Alfonso’s death, she was not sufficiently provided with mourning black either for clothes or furnishings. She specified ‘our coverlet of black satin edged and striped in black velvet: with its [bed] furnishings’. She enclosed a list of other things she needed, including lye for laundering which should be sent as soon as possible because her supplies were exhausted. A later letter insisted that Giordano immediately send the black clothes she had ordered for ‘la panderetta’ (possibly a slave) so that she could wear black ‘for our present mourning’. In another letter she asked him to contact Cardinal Cosenza to arrange masses for the soul of Alfonso Bisceglie, paid for with the 500 ducats which she had given him.
By late October, some six weeks after she had left Rome, Lucrezia’s Borgia resilience had begun to reassert itself. Her letters to Giordano now had a practical tone which was both housewifely and commanding. In a letter of 28 October she ordered clothes and cloth for her son Rodrigo, now almost a year old, including ‘tunicelle’—little tunics, enclosing a design for them and ordering Giordano to see that they could be handed for delivery to Lorenzo, her groom, the bearer of the letter, as soon as possible. Acknowledging receipt of Rodrigo’s tunicelle, she sent Giordano detailed instructions for elaborate bed hangings of black taffeta. She reproved him for having some clothes made up before she had had a chance to send the precise measurements; they would need letting out. ‘We are amazed these things should be so costly, so much so that we tell you that when you compute the total that you write what you have computed . . . Do this for me so that you do and look well to everything so that we will know to give a good account of you . . .’I She wrote in great detail as to how the clothes and furnishings should be made up, seams should be covered with a strip of black silk, capi from one side to another should be garnished with fringes of black silk.
More interestingly, around that time her letters take on a secretive note, hinting at intrigues within the Vatican. In an autograph postscript to the letter to Giordano quoted above she enclosed a secret cipher letter for Caterina Gonzaga, the seductive lady of her letters from Pesaro in the summer of 1494, now apparently a close ally and perhaps even the ‘favourite’ of the Pope mentioned in the report of June 1500, asking him to request a written answer to the letter ‘because it is very important’. Vincenzo, Lucrezia wrote, must not be surprised if the letter to Caterina was written in cipher ‘because it is done for more secrecy and less scandal’. She was sending capi with the letter, wrapped in a paper which Lorenzo da Mila would bring to him: for some unexplained reason these caps were to be given ‘secretly’ to Caterina or to a certain Stefania.2 A second letter is even more cryptic: ‘The letter I have told you about for Caterina, give it to her secretly because it contains matters which should not be shown publicly. And I tell you that concerning this letter which you will give her say nothing to “troccio” [Francesco Troche, a confidential agent much employed by the Pope and Cesare, who was eventually murdered on Cesare’s orders] for good reason. Send this messenger back quickly.’
Caterina Gonzaga, acting as Lucrezia’s female contact in Rome, living in or frequenting the Vatican at the time, was equally mysterious, complaining to Giordano of the difficulty of communicating with Lucrezia. She had been so worried about the reception of her letters and parcels to Lucrezia that she was suffering from a quartain fever. She asked Giordano if he could come to the courtyard (cortile) in the Vatican where the Chancery (cancelleria) was, overlooked by the windows of the Pope’s room. If he had received them (the letters and parcels) he should nod his head; if he did not do so she would take it that he had not.
This will be tomorrow, Monday, at the tenth hour, because our being at the window at that time and you being [there] I pray you so that I do not suffer more . . . if you have had all seven advise me . . . I have had one letter here for two days of much importance to the lady. I did not send it to her until I knew for sure that the letters had been received and as I said if you have not had these letters it will be necessary to reconsider as concerns this one I have. I will write to you how it can be certain that you have them, I will write to you on a piece of paper and put the letter in the packet in such a manner that no one will find it.
This was followed up by a reproof: ‘vicenzo [sic], I can only marvel at you not having let me know as you should have if you have had the letters and what you have done with them . . . Let me know as soon as possible . . . if you have had two letters for Mons. De Venosa [the Bishop of Venosa, the Pope’s doctor] and Corberan [a Borgia trusty] and one to our lady [Lucrezia]. For this may it be very soon [time] for me to leave Rome because I in this am with [sic] great danger . . .’3
What danger threatened Caterina Gonzaga, who seems to have been a somewhat hysterical, foolish woman, the letters do not reveal. She appears to have faded from Lucrezia’s life soon afterwards. Lucrezia was clearly angling for a return to Rome and on her own terms since, again emphasizing the need for secrecy, she expressed pleasure at the way Giordano’s talks with ‘Our Lord’ [presumably the Pope] had been going and begged him to continue to advise her particularly on the proposals and answers which could not be entrusted to paper. She was sending with Lorenzo, the bearer of this letter, a letter for Caterina which she wanted him to give her as soon as possible. ‘Also he brings a letter for the Cardinal of Capua [Juan Lopes] of the greatest importance concerning the matter you know of. Make sure you choose the way and the hour when he will not be with the Pope to give it to him or have it given him by Lorenzo as soon as possible and above all do not let this evening pass so that he can speak of it to the Pope because it is very important.’ She had sent a letter for Cardinal Cosenza concerning the Spannocchi (the Borgias’ Sienese bankers), and Giordano should for his own part speak to the cardinal about the necessities (presumably of paying for the goods ordered) which she had received.
Among her last letters was another mysterious missive to Giordano concerning her return to Rome, and her disappointment at not having heard from ‘Farina’ (Lucrezia’s biographer, Ferdinand Gregorovius, hazards a guess that this could be Cardinal Farnese) and mentioning ‘Rexa’ (which Gregorovius thinks could be Alexander).
And as I wrote to you the other day with such melancholy so with as much greater pleasure I am writing you the present [letter] because Roble has arrived at this moment, safe and sound and as if by a miracle. It is true that he brought an order that I should not go to Rome. But I have remedied that by sending first this morning Messer Luis [?] Casalivio as I believe you have seen. Thus it seems to me that everything is going well there and that we have cause to thank God and his glorious Mother and thus I wish that as soon as possible I will have said the Masses of thanks. It seemed to be [good] to write to you all this for your consolation and to remove part of the fear that perhaps you felt.
Since things are going this way please see to it immediately that they take up work on those things which you have ordered and to do so in manner that at all costs they should be furnished in the time promised and all the more because perhaps he will not return so soon and I wish that you will get them there for Christmas Day.
I am sending you the enclosed letter which Roble brought for Rexa, give it to him therefore quickly and tell him on my behalf that I thank him greatly for the diligence he has employed for the coming of Roble and that I am in such bad spirits and unease about my return to Rome that I do not know how to describe it except that I weep continually and that all these days seeing that Farina did not respond or write I have not been able to eat or sleep . . . always in tears and that God forgive Farina who could have remedied everything and did not do so and that I will see if I can send Roble ahead before I leave . . . And make sure that for no reason are you to show this letter to Rexa . . .
Lucrezia must have attached such importance to these mysterious letters from her time at Nepi that on her return to Rome she took care to retrieve them and took them with the rest of her important documents when she left Rome for her third marriage. They were found among her papers in the Este archives at Modena and, although referred to by Gregorovius (who, however, mentioned neither Caterina Gonzaga nor the important Francesco Troche), are not mentioned by her principal modern biographer, Maria Bellonci. The months Lucrezia spent in Nepi after the murder of Alfonso Bisceglie marked a turning point in her life. Whatever intrigue she might have been involved in at the time, it is significant that she did not want Francesco Troche to know of her letters, which suggests that she also wanted to keep her father and brother in the dark. It seems likely that in those lonely months she had determined she should take control of her own life, which inevitably meant escaping from the shadow of her father and brother. She talked of being ‘in such bad spirits and unease’ about her return to Rome where, once again, she would be involved in their plans.
In mid September, even before Lucrezia returned to Rome, probably at the end of November or early December 1500, the acute Mantuan Gian Lucido Cattaneo had picked up rumours not merely of a third marriage but a very illustrious one, to Alfonso d’Este, son and heir to Duke Ercole of Ferrara.4 This time the Borgias were aiming very high. The Este were one of the oldest and most prestigious families in Italy: of Lombard origin, they had ruled over various territories for nine hundred years, taking their name from the town of Este, south of the Euganean hills near Padua, of which they had been lords in the eleventh century. They had ruled Ferrara, their capital, as papal vicars since 1242 and subsequently acquired, as imperial fiefs, the lordships of Modena and Reggio. At their highest point their territory included the county of Rovigo between the rivers Po and Adige and their lands stretched across northern Italy from the Adriatic to the Apennines. Borso d’Este had acquired the title of Duke of Modena and Reggio from the Emperor Frederick III in 1452, and Duke of Ferrara from Pope Paul II in 1471. During the fifteenth century their court at Ferrara was one of the most splendid and cultivated of Renaissance Italy, while, unlike most of their contemporary rulers, their position as benevolent despots was secure with a loyal populace and a network of affiliated local aristocrats. The Este were accustomed to making the most splendid dynastic marriages: Alfonso d’Este’s mother, late wife of the present Duke Ercole, was Eleonora d’Aragona, daughter of King Ferrante of Naples; his sister Isabella was married to Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, while his late sister, Beatrice, who died in 1497, had been the wife of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. The Este arms proclaimed their royal and imperial connections: to the original white eagle of the Este were added the French royal fleur-de-lis granted by Charles VII of France and the black crowned double-headed imperial eagle conferred by the Emperor Frederick III. Beside all this, the Borgia grazing bull was a humble creature. But in this, as in Lucrezia’s other marriages, the power of her father and brother to affect international issues was to be crucial. And, once again, Lucrezia’s marriage was designed to help Cesare’s career.
It could be inferred from Lucrezia’s mysterious correspondence with Rome that Cesare, on his way north to the Romagna early in October, had discussed with her the possibility of the Este marriage. By mid October he had chased her ex-husband, Giovanni Sforza, from Pesaro and the tyrant Pandolfo Malatesta out of Rimini with consummate ease. He was already lord of Imola and Forlì in the Romagna: the fall of Faenza would only be a matter of time. Bologna was within his sights. The state of Ferrara, on the northern border of the Papal States which Cesare intended to make his kingdom, would provide a useful buffer between his territories and those of powerful, aggressive Venice. While Ercole d’Este looked to France for protection, the international situation was once again swinging in favour of the Borgias. On 11 November a secret treaty was signed between Louis XII and Ferdinand of Aragon, partitioning the Kingdom of Naples between them: Louis XII was to be King of Naples, the Terra de Lavoro and the Abruzzi, Ferdinand was to take Puglia and Calabria with the title of Grand Duke. Both were to hold their lands in fief from the Church; the Pope, therefore, was to be a principal player. In the circumstances the King of France would have greater need to please the Pope than he would to accommodate the Duke of Ferrara.
There is no doubt that Lucrezia was as eager as her father and brother to achieve this marriage. To be the Duchess of an important state like Ferrara was certainly the highest position she could have aspired to – far beyond a mere Countess of Pesaro, or Duchess of tiny Bisceglie. Like Alexander and Cesare she was ambitious, clever and a realist. Rome had become oppressive to her, her surroundings a constant reminder of things she would rather forget. This was her chance to establish herself for life, to be no longer the pawn in Alexander and Cesare’s high games. Like Cesare, she was aware that her chances of making such a marriage depended on the life of her father and the twists of international politics.
While Lucrezia was probably still in Nepi, the Pope had made it known to Ercole d’Este that he proposed a marriage between Lucrezia and Alfonso. Ercole was appalled: not only were the Borgias a family of upstart foreigners, pushing to marry the illegitimate daughter of a pope into his illustrious family, but Lucrezia’s reputation was of the worst kind. It was the Ferrarese envoy who had first reported to Ercole the birth of an illegitimate child in March 1498, and the Duke was well aware of the circumstances of her divorce from Giovanni Sforza and, indeed, of the murder of Alfonso Bisceglie. At just twenty, she was a woman with a shocking past. Ercole twisted and turned in his efforts to avoid the Borgia embrace.
Perhaps still unaware of the secret treaty between Ferdinand of Aragon and Louis XII, the horrified Ercole pressed for a French marriage for Alfonso. In December his envoy at the French court, the aged Bartolommeo de’Cavalleri, reported in his crabbed hand a discussion with the King who expressed a desire to have Don Alfonso at court where he would find him a suitable bride. Cavalleri suggested to Ercole that there were two good prospects for Alfonso, the daughter of the recently deceased Count of Foix, who later married Ferdinand of Aragon, and Marguerite d’Angoulême, sister to the heir to the French throne, the future Francis I.5 In February 1501 Alexander made another attempt to press Lucrezia’s suit. Ercole, not wishing to offend the Pope, had responded to the initial request by saying that the matter was out of his hands, that it was the responsibility of the King of France. Ercole began to press Cavalleri to prove the truth of what he had told Alexander: ‘. . . because we do not want His Majesty to govern himself according to the desire of the Pope, we would consider it a singular grace that he should show himself having already deliberated and decided for another matrimony’. He instructed Cavalleri to strain every nerve to ensure that the King would not compel him to give his son to Lucrezia: ‘for to speak clearly to His Majesty we will never consent to giving Madonna Lucretia to Don Alfonso: nor will Don Alfonso ever be induced to take her’.6
Ten days later he reiterated his sentiments to Cavalleri, telling him the Pope had sent the Bishop of Elna, his nephew and apostolic commissioner at Cesare’s camp, to him to urge the marriage. The King of France, he argued, should not seek to gratify the Pope in this because the Pope had more need of him (for troops and money for Cesare) than Louis of the Pope. He urged Cavalleri to do all he could so that the King would act ‘to liberate us from this threat and peril’.7
Louis, in fact, was no keener on the marriage of Alfonso and Lucrezia than was Ercole. In trickery, if not in skill, he was Alexander’s equal and in principle he saw no advantage to himself in strengthening the Borgias’ position which might give them an advantage in negotiations with himself. In March he told Cavalleri that he thought Ercole would be unwise to consider the Borgia marriage since the Pope could die any day, and promised to give Alfonso any bride he chose.8 Through April and early May the King kept Ercole’s hopes of an advantageous French marriage alive, while the Borgias piled contrary pressure on the unfortunate Duke of Ferrara. Giovanni Ferrari, Cardinal of Modena, was deployed by Alexander to write Ercole letters stressing the advantages of the Borgia marriage because of the protection offered by the friendship of the Duke Valentino in Romagna as well as the friendship of the Pope.9 Alexander also sent his most trusted confidential agent, Francesco Troche, to the French court to ask Louis to press Ercole to accept the marriage with Lucrezia; as a result the powerful Cardinal de Rohan, who owed his cardinal’s hat to Cesare, told Cavalleri that he should write to his master encouraging him to entertain the Borgia engagement.10 Cesare for his part kept up the pressure on Duke and King, sending envoys to put the case for Lucrezia.
Ercole, still hoping that, if he could not have his first choice, Mlle de Foix, who was apparently now promised to the King of Hungary, Mlle d’Angoulême was still on offer, was overwhelmed to receive Cavalleri’s letter of 26 May which did not reach him until 9 June. The news that the King now supported the Pope’s wishes threw him into paroxysms of rage and panic which he expressed in a three-page letter to his envoy, repeating all his previous arguments plaintively: ‘And moreover having always affirmed to the messengers of the pontiff that this matter of ours was in the hand of the most Christian King, trusting as we have said above: and now His Majesty writing to me according to the desire of the Pope: we are reduced to such perplexity that we do not know how to act: because since the beginning we have never been in favour of making this relationship with the pontiff. It does not seem to me to be apt to tell him absolutely that we do not wish it: because such a hostile response would make him most inimical towards us . . .’ Ercole ended with a pathetic appeal for help to be transmitted to the King ‘given that it matters most greatly to us . . .’ In an anguished two-page postscript, he blamed Cavalleri for not preventing this, insisting he tell the King to inform the Pope that negotiations for a French marriage had gone too far and that the parties of the other part would not consent to their being broken off; therefore the marriage between Lucrezia and Alfonso was impossible. ‘And this must be done immediately because we think that the Pope will not hesitate to send us the Royal Letters and to insist that we conclude the matter . . .’ Cavalleri must act on the King so that the Pope ‘will not become more inimical towards us than he is already . . .’11
In vain: on 13 June, a few days after this letter was written, Cesare was in Rome, conferring with his father as to how to push Ercole further. As evidence of his usefulness to the King of France, he was on his way with the French Marshal d’Aubigny to execute a brief, brutal and successful campaign to expel the royal house of Naples. The result of the Borgias’ conference was immediately evident in Ferrara, where Ercole was subjected to a personal bombardment by representatives of the King, the Pope and Cesare, as he reported to Cavalleri: ‘Yesterday the Archdeacon of Châlons, procurator of the King at Rome, arrived in Ferrara, sent by M. de Agrimont, the royal ambassador and Don Remolins first chamberlain of Duke Valentino and with him a messer Agostino, the papal commissary in [Cesare’s] camp sent to Bologna by Duke Valentino, who presented us [Ercole] with letters from the King to the Duke Valentino and from M. de Agrimont, exhorting us to conclude the marriage [with Lucrezia] . . .’12 Ercole was outraged that these messengers should appear before him in disguise – ‘travestiti’ – as he complained to Cavalleri. Despite the pressure he was still determined not to give in over the Borgia marriage but equally he wanted Louis XII to take the responsibility for his refusal. He suggested a stratagem by which the King should write inviting Alfonso to the French court, upon which Ercole would immediately send him to find out the King’s true mind on the matter. ‘In this way time can be taken over this affair: the Pope will be kept in hope, knowing that Don Alfonso will have been called to France to discuss it. And His Majesty will be able to make use of the Pope, if at present he has need of him . . . and by this means perhaps God will inspire His Majesty to exercise some good and sound remedy to liberate us entirely from this difficulty in which we find ourselves.’ The King must understand that if he would not do this ‘the Pope will immediately become our enemy and always by every means will seek to ruin us and do us every evil he can . . .’ In a postscript he insisted on a French marriage for Alfonso, if not to either of the ladies suggested, then to another. Anyone, in short, but Lucrezia Borgia. And in a second alarmed letter of the same day he urged, ‘His Majesty should not reveal this to the Pope or to his own people . . . so great is the danger we run if the Pope understood what our disposition was . . . we are in very grave fear . . .’
Again, Ercole’s pathetic pleas were to no avail. On 22 June, Cavalleri sent a letter to Ercole more or less indicating that the game was up: Louis XII absolutely refused to write anything on Ercole’s behalf, although he had written four lines in his own hand endorsing the Pope’s messenger. The King riposted that Duke Ercole was old and wise and knew more while asleep than he [Louis] did while awake. His cynical advice was that if Ercole was really not minded to make this match, he should make such demands that the Pope himself would not want to go ahead with it. As a sweetener, Louis’s envoy to the Borgias, Louis de Villeneuve, Baron de Trans, told Cavalleri that to encourage Ercole to make this marriage he was to get 200,000 ducats and absolution from the papal census, an estate for his second son, Ferrante, plus benefices for Cardinal Ippolito and support for Ercole’s desire to regain his lost lands of the Polesine di Rovigo. The King, as if to underscore the difficulty of dealing with Alexander, pointed out that the Pope was asking 50,000 scudi in return for the investiture of the Kingdom of Naples for Louis, plus an income of 18,000 scudi for Cesare and a state for his ‘nephews’—presumably Giovanni Borgia and Rodrigo Bisceglie. Furthermore, he said, he himself might die any day and his successor might have no interest in Italy, and the money Ercole was now being offered by the Pope would provide for his future security and that of his state. To Cavalleri, these seemed, as he wrote to Ercole, ‘wise words’ which he hastened to transmit.13
Ercole had by now realized that further resistance was impossible: his resigned response to Cavalleri’s letter of the 22nd was that in view of Louis’s need of the Pope, and in order to do his Christian Majesty a service, he was prepared to agree to the marriage.14Meanwhile Louis, involved in outrageously greedy negotiations with the Pope over the investiture of Naples, urged Cavalleri to advise Ercole to draw out the business with the Pope for as long as he could. On 7 July, Cavalleri reported that the Pope had told the King that he had given the Bull of Investiture to Cardinal Sanseverino and that in return Louis and the King of Spain had to pay 150,000 ducats within the space of three months. In order to keep up the pressure on the Pope, Louis repeated his advice to Ercole to prolong the marriage negotiations, even holding out the original prospect of Mlles de Foix and d’Angoulême for Alfonso. He excused his letter supporting the Pope in his pressure for the conclusion of Lucrezia’s marriage because of his present need of the Pope’s goodwill. If Don Alfonso came to France, Cavalleri added, he hoped ‘everything would go well’.15
But the time for tergiversation was over: by early July, Ercole had lain down his arms and accepted his – and Alfonso’s—fate. Cavalleri informed Louis that in the Duke’s view ‘the practical overcame the honourable’, a sentiment which the King applauded, although he still held out the bait of a French bride should the Borgia marriage not come about. Louis added that if Alfonso did marry Lucrezia, he would understand that Alfonso was doing it unwillingly. Haggling and trickery continued on all three sides: Ercole reacted angrily to the accusation that he had made ‘impertinent demands’ on the Pope. He ordered Cavalleri to bring the negotiations to a conclusion on the agreement of 100,000 ducats of dowry, leaving the fulfilment of the other proposals to the Pope. He added, with some justification, that had it not been for his wish to serve the King, the matter could have been resolved three months earlier.16 Later that month Cesare’s man, Remolins, one of the chief negotiators, returned from Ferrara with a portrait of Alfonso to be presented to Lucrezia.17 The Mantuan envoy Cattaneo had already noted on 11 August that Lucrezia appeared to have abandoned her mourning (even though it was less than a year since the murder of Alfonso Bisceglie): ‘Up to now Donna Lucretia, according to Spanish usage has eaten from earthenware and maiolica. Now she has begun to eat from silver as if almost no longer a widow.’18
Early in August, Ercole wrote a note to the person who perhaps most influenced him in his decision and whose enmity he greatly feared – Cesare Borgia: ‘Your Lordship will have heard that we have come to the conclusion of the marriage between the Illustrious Madonna Lucretia, your Excellency’s sister, and the Illustrious Don Alfonso, our firstborn . . .’ This had been done, he said, because of the reverence he had for the Pope and the virtues of Lucrezia but ‘far more still from the love and affection we bear Your Excellency . . .’19
The Borgias now knew that they had won. The marriage contract was drawn up in the Vatican on 26 August, with Alexander writing out the terms in his own hand.20 The nuptial contract was concluded, and the marriage ad verba presente, took place in the Palazzo Belfiore on 1 September 1501. On 5 September Ercole wrote to Cavalleri to inform the King of the terms concluded for Lucrezia’s dowry: 100,000 ducats in cash, plus the castles and lands of Cento and La Pieve with an annual income amounting to some 3,000 ducats. While Cento and La Pieve could not immediately be handed over since they were part of the diocese of Bologna, Cesare had pledged his castles in the territory of Faenza until the deal could be concluded. Any shortfall in income, meanwhile, would be supplemented by the Pope – no wonder Alexander commented that the Duke of Ferrara ‘bargained like a tradesman’. Beyond this the Pope would reduce the census which Ercole paid the Pope for Ferrara and his lands in Romagna from 4,500 ducats to 100 ducats a year. Mentally rubbing his hands together, Ercole told Cavalleri that he estimated the total value of the deal at 400,000 ducats.
Nonetheless, Ercole wished it to be understood that only a desire to serve the King of France and preserve good relations between him and the Pope had induced him ‘to condescend to such an unequal relationship’, as he wrote to Cavalleri on 5 September.21Because of his loyalty to the King of France, he added, he had resisted the angry opposition of the Emperor Maximilian to the marriage, and he had underlined the reason for his agreement to the marriage in the nuptial contract by specifying that it was the wish of the King of France. In a later letter he admitted that fear of the Borgias had played its part: ‘. . . we would have made His Holiness our greatest enemy if we had refused, and having the Lord Duke of Romagna [Cesare], with a great and fine State beside ours, there is no doubt that His Holiness would be able to damage us greatly . . .’22
To Lucrezia he wrote a graceful if wry letter announcing the completion of the marriage ‘per parola de presente’: ‘We rejoice for this with you whom first we loved uncommonly for your singular virtues and for our reverence for The Holiness of Our Lord and as the sister of the Most Illustrious Duke of Romagna who we hold as an honoured brother: now we love you intimately as more than daughter, hoping that through you there will come the continuation of our posterity: and we will operate so that you should be with us as soon as possible . . .’23
Lucrezia no doubt took this letter in the spirit it was intended. She cannot have been unaware of the difficulties her father and brother had encountered in pressing the reluctant Duke into acceptance of a marriage to which he had an extreme aversion. She had been entrusted by her father with the administration of the Vatican in July, while he toured Sermoneta and the lands recently acquired from the Caetani.24 As Burchard had reported: ‘Before His Holiness, our Master, left the city, he turned over the palace and all the business affairs to his daughter Lucretia, authorizing her to open all letters which should come addressed to him . . .’ This time she was no mere pawn in the process managed by her father and brother but an active participant in the negotiations for her proposed marriage, as Ercole himself acknowledged in a postscript to a letter he wrote her on 2 September: ‘Lady Lucretia. Because in the instrument drawn up concerning your dowry a certain article has been remitted to your decision and judgement and that of the Most Illustrious Lord Duke of Romagna. We would urge Your Ladyship not to come to any declaration until you have first discussed it with our representatives who are on their way to you.’
The historian Guicciardini, no friend to the Borgias, gave his verdict on the marriage:
Although this marriage was most unworthy of the house of Este, wont to make the most noble alliances, and all the more unworthy because Lucrezia was illegitimate and stained with great infamy, Ercole and Alfonso consented because the French King, desiring to satisfy the Pope in all things, made strong importunities for this union. Besides this they were motivated by a desire for securing themselves by such means from the arms and ambitions of Valentino (if, against such perfidy, any security whatever were sufficient). For Valentino, now powerful with the monies and authority of the Apostolic See and the favour which the French King bore him, was already formidable throughout a great part of Italy, and everyone knew that his cupidity had neither limit nor bridle.25