Cesare Borgia
Cesare Borgia was the model for Machiavelli's Prince and lost everything within a year of his father's death. Born in Rome around 1475, the illegitimate son of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia — later Pope Alexander VI — and Vannozza dei Cattanei, he was made Bishop of Pamplona at fifteen and a cardinal at eighteen. He resigned the cardinalate in 1498, the first person ever to do so, and took a French dukedom and a marriage in exchange for a dispensation that let Louis XII annul his own. His brother Juan, the family's intended soldier, had been found stabbed in the Tiber in 1497, and Cesare was widely suspected. With French troops and papal money he set out to carve a hereditary state out of the Romagna, whose petty lords held their territories as papal vicars and had ceased paying anything. He took Imola, Forlì, Rimini, Faenza, Pesaro and Urbino between 1499 and 1502, and governed them better than they had been governed — he appointed a hard administrator, Ramiro de Lorqua, to restore order, and then had him cut in two and displayed in the square at Cesena when the work was done and the population wanted a target. At Senigallia in December 1502 he invited his mutinous condottieri to a conference and had them strangled. Machiavelli, present as a Florentine envoy, described it admiringly. Alexander VI died in August 1503, and Cesare was seriously ill at the same moment. Julius II, an old family enemy, was elected, and the state collapsed. He escaped to Navarre and was killed in a skirmish in 1507.
- Lived: 1475 CE – 1507 CE
- Nationality: Italian (Papal States)
- Roles: condottiero, duke
