Cesare Borgia Appointed: Power in the Papal States

His father was the Pope, and that was not even the scandalous part. Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, handed his illegitimate son Cesare the highest military command in the Papal States after Cesare carved through the Romagna like a knife, conquering fortress after fortress in just months. The appointment on March 3, 1500, made Cesare both Captain General and Gonfalonier of the Church, a prince and the Pope's supreme general at twenty-five. Cesare had originally been made a cardinal at eighteen, a position his father arranged to keep the family's grip on Church power. He was the first person in history to resign the cardinalate voluntarily, abandoning the Church for the sword because he recognized that military power, not ecclesiastical rank, was the path to a dynasty. His campaigns in the Romagna were a masterclass in calculated brutality: he offered generous terms to cities that surrendered and made examples of those that resisted. He executed the condottiero Ramiro de Lorqua by having him cut in half and displayed in Cesena's piazza, simultaneously satisfying the public's desire for justice against a cruel administrator and demonstrating his own absolute authority. Niccolo Machiavelli, who served as Florence's envoy to Cesare's court, shadowed him during these campaigns, taking detailed notes on every ruthless decision, every calculated betrayal, every brilliant tactical move. The observations ended up in The Prince, published in 1532, after both Machiavelli and Cesare were dead. When people describe someone as "Machiavellian," they are actually describing Cesare Borgia with the identifying details removed. Cesare's power collapsed when his father died in 1503, and the new pope, Julius II, was a Borgia enemy. He died in battle in Navarre in 1507 at thirty-one.