Lehal Library

the prince Before Charles, King of France, came down into Italy, the country was controlled by the pope, the Venetians, the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan and the Florentines. Necessarily, these powerful states had two main concerns: to keep foreign armies out of Italy and to prevent each other from grabbing more territory. The pope and the Venetians were the most eager expansionists. The only way to hold back the Venetians was for all the other states to band together, as they did in the defence of Ferrara; to frustrate the pope, on the other hand, they relied on the Roman barons. Since these barons were divided into two factions, the Orsinis and the Colonnas, they always had something to fight about, and with their swords drawn under the pope’s nose they kept him weak and indecisive. And though from time to time you might get a really determined pope, like Sixtus, all the same he was never quite cunning enough or lucky enough to solve the problem. The reason was that papacies tended to be short-lived. In the ten years, on average, that a pope was in power he might just manage to beat down one of the two factions; but if, for example, one pope had almost finished off the Colonnas, the next would be hostile to the Orsinis and so resurrect the Colonnas, but without quite having the time to see off the Orsinis. This is why the Italian states did not rate the pope’s temporal power very highly. Then came Alexander VI, who more than any other pope in history showed what could be done with finance and force of arms. Using Valentino Borgia and taking advantage of the intrusions of the French, he made all the gains I mentioned in my discussion of Duke Valentino. And though Alexander’s aim was to make his son great, not the Church, all the same his achievements enhanced the power of the Church, which, after his and then Valentino’s death, inherited his conquests. So on his election Pope Julius took over a Church that now possessed the whole of Romagna and was all the more power- ful because Alexander had quashed the Roman barons and