Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy Read Online Free PDF Page B

Alfonso, as he told Francesco Gonzaga in a panic-stricken letter pleading for his protection:
     
    If Your Lordship does not help and save me I shall perish because, having been induced yesterday morning to reveal the conspiracy of Don Julio to my Illustrious Lord and brother and thus having facilitated Julio’s escape although knowing him to merit every evil and punishment for conspiracy, nonetheless I earnestly pray Your Lordship that you will give up the person of Don Julio to the Most Illustrious Don Sigismondo, my brother, and Messer Antonio de Costabili, because thus Your Lordship will give me life since the Lord Duke will be content with that for all [despite] the punishment I might merit and however, once again I pray Your Lordship to have more respect for my safety than that of Don Julio and to grant me this grace . . . 3
     
    Gonzaga, however, refused to hand over Giulio to Costabili and Sigismondo, provoking an agitated letter from Alfonso who had taken to his bed with a fever caused by the anxiety of the case. There is no doubt that he had been horribly shocked by the revelations of his brothers’ plot against him and, he told Gonzaga, more and worse facts against Ferrante had been discovered and he had therefore had him imprisoned in the castle. Naively, he still seems to have had absolute trust in the friendship and good faith of Francesco Gonzaga, reminding him of the obligations they had towards each other as heads of state – ‘of being of one mind and will in every fortune’. Far from being trustworthy, however, two days later, Gonzaga wrote to the Pope’s nephew, Galeotto Franciotti della Rovere, Cardinal of San Pietro in Vincula, asking him for his protection of Gian Cantore ‘whom I have always known to be a good man and recognised as such by the Most Illustrious Duke Ercole, my late father-in-law’. 4 Gonzaga’s reasons for doing this are hard to fathom; by this time the complicity of Gian Cantore and his gross betrayal of his patron, Alfonso, were known. Bacchelli attributes it to Gonzaga’s hostility towards both Alfonso, for his pro-Venetian policy, and Niccolò da Correggio, promoter of that policy. That same policy had provoked a hostile reaction in Rome where the fratricidal conduct of the Este brothers had made the worst possible impression.
    The trial of the conspirators began, on Alfonso’s orders, on 3 August, in the privacy of Sigismondo d’Este’s house and concluded with sentences against Albertino Boschetti, Gherardo de’Roberti and Franceschino Boccacci da Rubiera. The guilt of Ferrante and Giulio was pronounced on 25 August and 9 September. The judges (the Savi ) were among the most distinguished men in Ferrara, and the executive sentence was given on 9 September by their leader, the Giudice dei XII Savi , Antonio Costabili. The involvement of the Savi showed that Alfonso was determined to keep to his oath of justice; there were to be no summary punishments even though the eventual fate of all the conspirators was to be cruel. Ferrante had been under arrest since 29 July when Alfonso had personally accompanied him to the castle and had him imprisoned in a room in the Torre Marchesana. After four days, the windows were blocked halfway up so that Ferrante could not see out.
    On the same day Alfonso had had Gherardo de’Roberti brought from Carpi and taken through the piazza to the piazzetta where a great crowd waited to see him. From the windows of Alfonso’s rooms in the via coperta the triumvirate of Alfonso, Lucrezia and Ippolito watched. Afterwards, Alfonso visited de’Roberti in the castle dungeon to interrogate him: enraged, he seized a baton and gave him such a blow that he almost took out an eye. De’Roberti was then consigned to the lowest dungeon of the Great Tower and shackled. The discovery of the plot, symbolized by the imprisonment of the two men, was greeted with the ringing of all the bells, and bonfires were lit that evening all over the city; this