Cesare Borgia, the pope's son who inspired Machiavelli's The Prince
At 18, Cesare Borgia was a cardinal of the Church, appointed the moment his father became Pope Alexander VI. Within five years he had resigned, taken a French dukedom and begun conquering a state of his own across central Italy. Machiavelli studied his ruthless rise closely and made him a model in The Prince.
Cesare was born around 1475 or 1476, an illegitimate son of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and his mistress Vannozza dei Cattanei; his sister was Lucrezia. The Borgias came from the Kingdom of Valencia, and Alexander VI was the first pope to openly acknowledge children born outside marriage. Before turning 18, Cesare had studied law in Rome and collected bishoprics from Pamplona to Valencia.
The family's hopes originally rested on his brother Giovanni, captain-general of the papal forces. When Giovanni was killed in 1497 in mysterious circumstances, some contemporaries accused Cesare, though his role has never been established. In August 1498 he gave up his cardinal's hat, and Louis XII of France made him Duke of Valentinois, a title chosen to echo his nickname Il Valentino, the Valencian. Marriage to Charlotte d'Albret sealed his French alliance, and he rode beside Louis into conquered Milan.
With French troops, Swiss infantry and hired captains, and funded partly by money from creating twelve new cardinals, he seized towns including Imola, Forlì, Rimini and Faenza and was made Duke of Romagna in 1501. When his own mercenary commanders plotted against him, he invited them to a reconciliation at Senigallia on the last day of 1502 and had them seized and executed, a trick one historian admiringly called a wonderful deception. In 1503 he even occupied San Marino.
His power depended on his father, as Machiavelli noted. Alexander died in 1503 while Cesare lay ill with malaria. The next pope reigned just 26 days, and his successor, Julius II, a longtime enemy, broke the promises that won Cesare's support. Arrested in Naples by a supposed ally and shipped to Spanish prisons, Cesare escaped to Navarre in December 1506 and served its king as a commander. He was killed in an ambush near Viana in March 1507.
Source: Cesare Borgia
