Cesare Borgia

Biography

The illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, made a cardinal at eighteen and the first man in history to resign the office, Cesare Borgia used French arms and papal money to carve a state for himself out of the Romagna in three ruthless years. He was fast, treacherous, and effective: he took town after town, and when his brutal governor Remirro de Orco had served his purpose, Cesare had him cut in half and left in the piazza at Cesena — a gesture Machiavelli, who was there as Florence's envoy, recorded with something close to admiration. He also lured four rival captains to a friendly parley at Senigallia in 1502 and had them all strangled. Machiavelli called it *la bellissima ingannazione* — the most beautiful deception. He spent months watching Cesare at close range and concluded he had seen the future: a prince who understood that a state is built by force, held by fear, and legitimated afterwards. The whole edifice rested on his father, and when Alexander VI died suddenly in 1503 — while Cesare himself lay near death from the same fever — the enemies he had made elected Julius II, who destroyed him within a year. He died in an obscure skirmish in Navarre at thirty-one. Machiavelli's verdict was that he had done everything right and been ruined by fortune, which is the whole argument of *The Prince*.

Key Battles