A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

Meanwhile, the pope decided that if Lucrezia was to be prevented from causing further
embarrassment, she urgently needed another husband. With his policy of keeping these things in
the family, he decided that Sanchia’s brother Alfonso would be an ideal candidate.
Meanwhile, Rome had a baffling mystery to gossip about. It was a murder mystery, and the victim
was Juan Borgia, the pope’s eldest son. On Wednesday 14 June 1497, Juan and Cesare went to
supper with their mother. They left before dark, accompanied only by two footmen, and by a
mysterious masked man who had joined them during supper. Juan had been seen in public with this
masked man on a number of occasions recently, and seemed fond of him - Juan, like Cesare, was
bisexual. Now they rode off, with the masked man sharing the saddle of Juan’s horse. At a certain
point, Juan announced that he was going off on his own; Cesare apparently warned him that it was
dangerous at this time of night. But the pope’s guards had made the streets of Rome safer than for
many years, and Juan shrugged off the objections and rode into the night with his masked friend.
He was never seen alive again. A boatman on the Tiber reported seeing a man leading a horse, with
what appeared to be a body across the saddle, and heard someone address the horseman as ‘My
lord’. Then there was a splash.
The river was dragged and Juan’s body was recovered; he had nine stab wounds, and his money
was untouched. The pope was shattered, locked himself in the Vatican, and cried and fasted for
three days. Most Romans believed that Juan had been killed by enemies of the pope - perhaps by
the Sforzas or the Orsinis. It was only later that people began to put two and two together. While
his brother was alive, Cesare was doomed to remain in the Church; but what Cesare wanted above
all things was to prove himself as a soldier. After the death of Juan, Cesare was finally released
from his vows and given a French title, the Duke of Valence (it was all part of a package deal with
the new French king, Louis XII, who wanted a divorce). Cesare usually succeeded in getting his
own way.
Cesare’s new dukedom served a double purpose; it cemented the pope’s relationship with the
French king, and it gave the pope an opportunity to get rid of Cesare for a while. He went to
France, asked the French king to find him a bride, and set about making himself thoroughly
disliked. It was not difficult; he had been spoilt and he was very arrogant. The French began
inflicting minor humiliations, and Cesare was thrown into fits of rage. Finally, he was married to
the sixteen-year-old daughter of the king of Navarre; in a letter to his father, he described the sexual
details of their wedding night at length; this was the kind of thing the pope appreciated. Cesare
seems to have acquitted himself manfully, although he was by this time suffering from the disease
that Columbus’s sailors had brought back. The syphilis seemed to be improving with treatment, bin
its signs were already apparent on Cesare’s once-handsome face.
Then, with the pope’s approval, the king of France invaded Italy and Cesare came with him. Back
in Rome, he began a curious campaign of murder against people who had been with him in France,
paying back the slights and insults he had been forced to swallow in the French court. Young men
with whom he had had intimate relations died suddenly after banquets, or were found stabbed to
death in the Tiber. The Romans recalled the death of his brother Juan, and began to see the light.
Meanwhile, Cesare had at last achieved his ambition of being a successful general. There had been
a rather incompetent plot to poison the pope; Caterina Sforza was suspected of being behind it. She
was a widow of a Riario, and as governor of Imola and Forli, one of the pope’s bitterest opponents.
She was also still a beautiful woman. Cesare set out with the hope of conquering more than her two
towns.